Knowledge is not only power, it also tantamount to greater flexibility, enhanced productivity and better commercial feasibility across all IT and other business domains.
In the context of IT, the role of knowledge creation is entrusted upon knowledge management software, which forms a key element in shaping and influencing the long-term objectives of any enterprise.
For business solution providers, knowledge provides them with an effective platform to address the concerns of their clients, quicker response times, better reputation, lesser technical problems and the ability to impart new skills.
Sharing Knowledge: The key to success
It is rightfully said that a successful KM Endeavour must encapsulate internal tacit information into explicit knowledge so that it can be shared among all. By the same token, the process must also let people internalize this information and judiciously analyze it to contribute towards their team.
The benevolence of knowledge management software is better transmuted when a company gains control over it and then shares it generously with the appropriate group of individuals they’re dealing with.
Whether it pertains to a local team setup or large-scale project collaboration, appropriate delegation of knowledge in every aspect of operational realm assumes great significance.
Depending upon your organizational requirement and the level of sophistication you desire, the choices of appropriate knowledge management software are aplenty.
Categories
Knowledge management systems have come a long way from their humble origins in the 1990s with the launch of online yellow pages that acted as a location-based information retrieval mechanism. Document management systems followed suit, which paved the way for the onset of a host of collaborative e-learning technologies to help IT companies tap an unexplored aspect of business expansion.
As a broad-based assessment, knowledge management systems can be classified into:
- Document management systems
- Groupware
- Semantic networks
- Artificial Intelligence
- Expert systems
- OOD (object oriented database)
- Relational database
- Social computing (blogs, bookmark, etc)
Further, knowledge management entails six key steps- creation, capture, analysis, indexing, storage and dissemination.
Importance of effective Knowledge Management Software
At an everyday level, all of us are targets of enormous amounts of confusing, sometimes contradictory data; be it through newspapers, internet, books, and television or just about anything else. Not surprisingly, Managers of multinational (or even small-scale) enterprises are not impervious to this phenomenon either.
The tendency to overload scattered data necessitates a mechanism that helps you make sense of it from technological standpoint.
That is exactly where the role of knowledge management system is magnified because it takes into account all the factors that an entity misses or may miss which could potently impact its image, revenues or bottom-line, in the long-run. Let’s face it; dozens of fortune 500 make billions of losses because of their inability or unwillingness to share knowledge appropriately.
On a practical level, knowledge management software does the following:
1) Imparts the culture of true learning
Learning is not merely acquiring new pieces of information and applying them randomly. It is essentially about pausing for a moment, looking behind and evaluating the things you’ve done in the past.
It is indeed about revisiting your past in order to avoid making the same mistakes and implementing the lessons learnt. No longer should the wheel be re-invented over and over again.
Knowledge management software is a tremendous tool in this regard because it provides top-middle level management teams with a benchmark to fall back upon.
Based on evaluative and analytic features of these systems, you can motivate your team to constantly evaluate their performance, observe their shortcomings; seeking intelligent solutions to overcome the same in a spirit of genuine learning and holistic growth.
Using this strategy, companies can literally ‘learn’ form their experience and leverage a robust system to enhance its structural operations.
2) Speeds up decisions
It is one thing to collect large chunks of data, but quite another to properly synthesize it for an organization’s benefit. By deploying an effective knowledge management system, companies can encourage their operational teams to block out the noise and take what is relevant to their long-term goals.
Knowledge management systems offer intelligent search and display technologies that allow for better understanding of trends, patterns and statistics.
Although information overload from various quarters can vitiate their task of streamlining workable information, it is really up to the knowledge managers to use a technically sound system to make better decisions not just for themselves, but for the entire company.
This is the reason why many corporate houses choose to conduct short seminars and conferences to expedite knowledge sharing techniques, encourage best practices, and eliminate common impediments.
3) Exchange of creative ideas
When knowledge management systems are being effectively utilized and shared by all the concerned groups, it inevitably accommodates an uninterrupted flow of innovative ideas from all participants.
Through an open dialogue, brainstorming sessions, informal team meetings and innovation nurturing workshops; a lot of creative influx can be channeled for fulfillment of their organizational objectives.
This practice in turn allows managers to acknowledge the spirit of healthy cultural transformation through idea sharing and creative approach to long-standing problems.
4) Customer Service
If we think about it dispassionately, all that the customers want is a hassle-free product/service and a good support staff. If they have to go through a lot, in order to get to the experts, the perception of your quality level would have already taken a heavy beating in the eyes of those who matter the most.
That’s why it is very important to inculcate the spirit of KM in every member of the team by making them knowledgeable. KM software can be of great help in this regard by translating into quicker responses, encourage long term solutions, and good communication.
A robust KM system is frequently deployed by help desk and other teams to address the technical and functional issues faced by their customers. In addition, they also provide relevant feedback to prevent and/or manage these problems. KM systems make use of modern features like ontology’s to resolve specialized problems in a customized manner.
Although a KM-based problem resolution model, questions are directed to the best suited person in order to achieve uncompromised customer satisfaction.
In the end, businesses can implement KM systems proactively to bring about the elusive change they so earnestly want to experience.
