KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Compiled and Presented by:Shruti Dasgupta

Content:What is Knowledge Management?Definitions: Data, Information, KnowledgeTypes of KnowledgeKnowledge ChainKnowledge Management ProcessKnowledge Management StrategyKnowledge Management System & Their

TypesReasons to Practice Knowledge ManagementBenefits of Knowledge Management System

What is Knowledge Management?Knowledge management is the leveraging of

collective wisdom to increase responsiveness and innovation.

KM [Knowledge Management] involves blending a company’s internal and external information and turning it into actionable knowledge via a technology platform.

KM is an effort to increase useful knowledge within the organization. Ways to do this include encouraging communication, offering opportunities to learn, and promoting the sharing of appropriate knowledge artifacts.

Data, Information & Knowledge Data: it may be defined as the facts or observations or

perceptions; it represents the raw numbers or assertions available.

Information: Data that has been organized within a context and translated into a form that has structure and meaning.

Knowledge: Knowledge is the combination of data and information, to which is added expert opinion, skills and experience, to result in a valuable asset which can be used to aid decision-making Knowledge will remain information unless attitudes, systems, and skills exist to retrieve the information and share it in a new context

For example:

DATA:- 32: 3: 15: 2000 INFORMATION: 32 new

cases of tuberculosis have been reported in the last three months which is up from 15 from the same time in 2000.

 KNOWLEDGE: You know

this trend is alarming and signals a need to understand it and take corrective action.

Types of KnowledgeExplicit knowledge: it is knowledge that is

articulated in formal language and easily transmitted among individuals both synchronously and asynchronously.

Tacit knowledge: it is the personal knowledge embedded in individual experience and involving such intangible factors as personal belief, perspective, instinct, and values.

Implicit Knowledge: it is that knowledge whose meaning is not explicitly captured, but can be inferred in effect, the codification process is incomplete.

Comparison of Tacit and Explicit Knowledge:

The Knowledge Chain:Internal Awareness: In its simplest terms,

internal awareness is the ability of an organization to quickly assess its inventory of skills and core competency. It is the awareness of past history in terms of talent, know-how, interaction, process performance, and communities of practice.

Internal Responsiveness: it is the ability to exploit internal awareness. An organization may be well aware of its strengths and market demand, but if it is not able to adequately effect change within itself quickly enough to meet market requirements, its competencies are virtually moot.

External Responsiveness: it is the ability to best meet the requirements of the market. When all is said and done, an organization’s ability to better satisfy this cell in the knowledge chain than its competitors will determine its success or failure. External responsiveness is measured by the ability to effectively respond to opportunities and threats outside of the organization in a timely manner.

External Awareness: it is the mirror image of internal awareness. It is the organization’s ability to understand how the market perceives the value associated with its products and services, to understand who are its customers, what those customers want, who are their competitors, competencies of competitors, market trends, competitive actions, government regulations, and any other relevant market forces that exist outside the organization itself.

Knowledge Management Process:Generation/CreationCapture/RetentionTransfer Utilization

Knowledge Management Strategy

Knowledge Management StrategyCulture: Organizational culture can be defined as the learned way of

perceiving, thinking and feeling, shared and transmitted among organizational members. It is a social / behavioral manifestation comprising such features as:

The values and beliefs of staff How people are and feel rewarded, organized, and controlled The work orientation of staff, the way work is organized and experienced The degree of formalization, standardization and control through systems How authority is exercised and distributed The value placed on various functions within the organization How much scope for individuality and creative expression, risk-taking and

initiative is given Notions and concepts on the importance and use of time and space The organizational rites, rituals and stories Organizational “language”.

Content: This element represents the knowledge to be managed. “Data, information, skills, and expertise can be thought of as the content resources of an organization”. Organizations often create content on an ad-hoc basis, without the procedures to make the information accessible to employees. But, making content electronically available does not necessarily make it useful. Data may need to be reformatted, translated or integrated to optimize use. Any KM system has three critical activities related to content:

Collecting the content - should come from both internal and external sources. Using the content – including the technology for finding, accessing and

delivering the content to users (e.g., search engines). Managing the content – organizing it through taxonomies. Key concerns for

managing content:1. Collecting the right content2. Finding sources for content3. Selecting the best technology to deliver the content4. Developing ways to organize the content5. Establishing processes to manage the content

Knowledge Management Strategy

Process: The processes to support KM are vital to its success. KM processes are the activities or initiatives you put in place to enable and facilitate the creation, sharing and use of knowledge for the benefit of your organization. Processes also refer to your organization’s general infrastructure and ways of doing things and the extent to which these act as enablers of, or barriers to, good KM practice. The key steps in the process of KM most commonly include the following:

Establish standards for the KM systemConduct knowledge audits to identify existing knowledge needs,

knowledge resources and knowledge flowsCreate a structure for classifying knowledgeCreate a KM strategy to guide the overall approach, including specific

objectives that contribute to the organization’s overall goals and ideally can be measured in the evaluation of the strategy.

Market the opportunities for knowledge exchange ensuring they are relevant to the needs of the users.

Knowledge Management Strategy

Connect people with people to share tacit knowledge using approaches such as communities of practice or learning events.

Connect people with information to share explicit knowledge using approaches such as best practices databases and content management processes to ensure that explicit knowledge is current, relevant and easily accessible.

Create opportunities for people to generate new knowledge, for example through collaborative working and learning.

Introduce processes, such as peer assists, to help people seek and use the knowledge of others.

Teach people to use storytelling techniques as an inspiring way to share knowledge.

Encourage people to prioritize learning as part of their day-to-day work -- before, during and after the tasks and projects they have performed

Continually monitor the fit between the processes used and their usefulness and effectiveness for the user.

Technology: it is an essential component as it involves responding to the knowledge needs of staff, partners and clients by using appropriate technology to offer easy access at the point of need. Technology aids in the transition of data from information, to knowledge and ultimately to wisdom. Types of enabling technology tools include:

Knowledge bases (content management tools) Access to expertise (many incorporated into e-mail tools) eLearning spaces (ranging from interactive collaboration tools such as

Blackboard to learning management systems) Synchronous interactions (online Web meetings) Discussion groups Web site communities (linking people to people as well as to

documents) Project spaces (many of which are linked to Outlook e-mail and

incorporate shared folders and project management tools) Knowledge workers’ desktop tools (customizable Web portals).

Knowledge Management Strategy

Knowledge Management SystemKMS systems deal with information, so they are a class of

information system and may build on, or utilize other information sources.

A KM system could be any of the following:1. Document based i.e. any technology that permits creation/

management/ sharing of formatted documents such as web, distributed databases etc.

2. Based on AI technologies which use a customized representation scheme to represent the problem domain.

3. Provide network maps of the organization showing the flow of communication between entities and individuals

4. Increasingly social computing tools are being deployed to provide a more organic approach to creation of a KM system.

A KMS offers integrated services to deploy KM instruments for networks of participants, i.e. active knowledge workers, in knowledge-intensive business processes along the entire knowledge life cycle.

A KMS can be used for a wide range of cooperative, collaborative, adhocracy and hierarchy communities, virtual organizations, societies and other virtual networks, to manage media contents; activities, interactions and work-flows purposes; projects; works, networks, departments, privileges, roles, participants and other active users in order to extract and generate new knowledge and to enhance, leverage and transfer in new outcomes of knowledge providing new services using new formats and interfaces and different communication channels.

Types of Knowledge Management Systems:Expert Systems Knowledge directories Data Warehouses Workflow Systems Groupware and Collaborative Systems

Expert SystemThe basic components of an expert system are a knowledge

base (KB), an inference engine and user inference. The information to be stored in the KB is obtained by

interviewing people who are expert in the area in question. The interviewer, or knowledge engineer, organizes the

information elicited from the experts into a collection of rules, typically of an 'if-then' structure. Rules of this type are called production rules. The inference engine enables the expert system to draw deductions from the rules in the KB.

The user inference requests information from the user and outputs intermediate and final results.

In some expert systems, input is acquired from additional sources such as data bases and sensors.

Knowledge DirectoriesKnowledge directories are structures where

pieces of knowledge are placed in a proper folder or in categories of a hierarchical tree.

The idea originates directly from the directory structure of organizations in operational systems. Such directories are typically shared among multiple users.

The purpose of using knowledge directories is to persist, share and categorize knowledge.

Data Warehouse and Workflow SystemData warehouse is a kind of a database which maintains a copy

of the transaction data. But in contrast to the original data base this data is “specifically structured for query and analysis”.

A Workflow process contains the specification of a set of activities and the specific order according to which they should be executed in order to achieve a common goal . This specification can be modeled as a workflow graph. A workflow system can be based on a formal description of business processes. Software components can execute this description and take care of the state of processes executions, including recovery and reporting. Workflow systems can be used to support efficient cooperation between persons, software applications and machines taking a part in processes.

Groupware and Collaborative SystemsGroupware (also referred to as collaborative software or

workgroup support system) is a technology designed to facilitate the work of groups.

This technology may be used to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate.

Groupware systems allow users to overcome common problems which emerge during teamwork. They are especially well suited for a non-collocated teams.

Groupware services include the sharing of calendars, collective writing, email handling, shared database access, electronic meetings with each person able to see and display information to others, and other activities. Sometimes called collaborative software, groupware is an integral component of a field of study known as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

Reasons to Practice KM Increase in core competencies of the organization.Succession PlanningTranslating knowledge into policy and action Sharing and reapplying experiential knowledge It helps in identifying functional gapsMaking available increased knowledge content in

the development and provision of products and servicesAchieving shorter new product development cycles.Leveraging the expertise of people across the organization Increasing network connectivity between internal and external

individualsSolving intractable or wicked problemsManaging intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the

workforce

Benefits of KMS

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