Transcript Knowledge Management Systems

Knowledge
Management
Systems
Agnes Bui
MIS 650
12/01/2004
Definition
• Intranets are powerful knowledge
management
systems. Organizations develop
intranets to be used only within the
company and its employees. Its
purpose is organizational
learning. It is a communication
medium to share individuals
learning, insights, or experience
with the rest of the organization.
• www.iorg.com/papers/knowledge.ht
m
Advantages of KMS
•
Many lawyers have taken advantage of the
knowledge management system. Lawyers use
email as a communication tool for clients and to
contact other cousels to work on their
cases. With so many emails coming in and out
each day lawyers need to find a way to organize
emails accordingly. A product called
KnowledgeMail by Tacit Knowledge
Management Systems, Inc. has developed an
approach to help lawyers compile their emails
and make it available to other users in order
to share information. Although this product
seems very promising, no law firms has yet to
implement this new system.
•
Jones, Ashby. "On the E-mail Trail", American
Lawyer, Sept 2002 v24 i9 pS27(1), 2002.
Advantages continued
•
To get the most value of a knowledge
management system, companies need to
maintain a foundation system that can be
shared throughout the company. It improves
customer service by increasing response times,
enhances employee retention, and eliminate
redundant or unnecssary procesesses when
searching for solutions or information. When
the information is easily accessible it improves
employee productivity. To do so, companies
implement a centralized database system. This
system is used as a tool and should be
constantly updated for good business practice.
•
www.cio.com/research/knowledge/edit/kmabcs.
htm#benefits
Disadvantages
•
I’ve read many articles stating why knowledge
management systems will benefit a company. But we
also need to learn about the downside of this type of
system. This article explains why knowledge
management systems fail and how risk of such
failures may be minimized. Because these systems
define inputs as data or information they do not
represent inputs from motivation, creativity, or even
innovation. Also this article has a table that lists many
enablers and constraints of KMS. The lists include
challenges that relate to recent evolution in business
and technology strategy, organizational control,
information sharing culture, knowledge
representation, organizational structure, managerial
command, and economic returns.
•
http://www.brint.org/WhyKMSFail.htm
Purpose of KMS
•
Effective management of knowledge focuses on
solutions that encompass the entire system:
organization, people and technology.
Computers and communications systems are
good at capturing, transforming and distributing
highly structured knowledge that changes
rapidly. Some companies are using analysis,
planning and computer supported work systems
to radically improve decision making, resource
allocation, management systems, access, and
promulgate process know-how and overall
performance as a way to develop core strategic
competencies.
•
http://www.mccombts.utexas.edu/kmananswers.
htm#howdoes
Management Goals
•
Here is a listing of corporate attitudes: 1)Management
involvement is high and has increased over the past
three years (51% of organizations indicate the role of
the board has increased). 2) Companies are missing
out on key business opportunities by failing to exploit
knowledge effectively (6% of revenue is being lost
through failure to exploit knowledge effectively). 3)
The cost of KM is low and has proved to be an
investment with a positive return. 4) KM is applied in
all business areas, with a core in operations. 5) KM
initiatives are shifting focus from internal to external
and will increasingly be embedded in the daily
workflow. 6) Companies underestimate the cultural
change needed to implement KM through busy
employees. 7) Implementation is the key challenge
ahead for further successful deployment of knowledge
management.
•
http://www.infoconomy.com/pages/informationage/group86305.adp
Management Tools
•
•
•
In this ITworld.com article David Essex, reports
that: "Most practitioners agree that Knowledge
Management is about getting the right
information to the right people when they need
it. Knowledge Management captures, stores,
and distributes expertise throughout an
organization. It encourages people to share
what they've learned."
In order to get employees to pass knowledge
incentives should be implemented as a way of
rewarding the employee to share their
knowledge.
http://www.pcdinnovations.com/knowledge_management_tools
.htm
KMS Perspectives
•
•
•
•
This article describes two perspectives of the knowledge
management system.
Knowledge can be viewed as "Knowledge = Object" which
relies upon concepts from "Information Theory" in the
understanding of knowledge. These researchers and
practitioners are normally involved in the construction of
information management systems, AI, reengineering, etc.
This group builds knowledge systems, while the next group
changes the way we use knowledge, which ultimately
changes human behavior.
Knowledge can be viewed as "Knowledge = Process" which
relies upon the concepts from philosophy, psychology, and
sociology. These researchers and practitioners are normally
involved in education, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc.
and are primarily involved in assessing, changing and
improving human individual skills and behavior.
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/knowledge.html
Document Management
•
Document management refers to the management of
information in electronic and paper form, while
knowledge management means technology that
provides better control of networks through control
over information and the way they are handled over
complex networks. These types of management will
be converging making managing knowlege
simpler. One example of such convergence is Open
Text, a document management system vendor which
has reaped more success with Livelink Intranet, a
knowledge management tool that incorporates
document management, workflow, search, project
management and workgroup capabilities.
•
Brooks, Andrew. Managing Documents is Managing
Knowledge, Computing Canada, Mar 2, 1998, v24
n8 p31.
Explicit Knowledge
•
•
•
Here is a listing i found dealing with KMS primarily
with explicit knowledge.
Intranets
Document Management Systems
Information Retrieval Engines
Relational and Object Databases
Electronic Publishing Systems
Groupware and Workflow Systems
Push Technologies and Agents
Help-Desk Applications
Brainstorming Applications
Data Warehousing and Data Mining Tools
Technologies that should be included knowledge
management
http://www.moderas.ac.ir/elearnning/mnaderi/Genetic
%20/engineering%20course%2011/Pages/knowledge
_management.htm
Capturing Knowledge
• Some wireless devises, PDA's and or
tablets can get workers to put down the
information they use to perform their every
day task.
• Incentives when other workers share their
knowledge by training others.
• Another great way is implementing a
corporate skills register so that colleagues
can locate/discover those with whom to
collaborate. Because we all like to
advertise our capabilities!
• http://knowledgemanagement.ittoolbox.co
m/documents/document.asp?i=270
Benefits of KMS
•
1) Knowledge Capturing and Extraction
Automation of information extraction from
ecommerce applications and e-business
applications.
•
2) Knowledge Representation and Organization
Data warehouse technology stores and
organizes vast amount of data for easy retrieval
and data mining.
•
3) Knowledge Sharing and Decision Support
Decision Support Systems enhances the natural
process of decision making by generating and
evaluating many options.
•
http://ebusiness.insightin.com/knowledge_mana
gement/knowledge_management_benefits.html