It is often very difficult to comprehend what knowledge means to an individual, professional, or an enterprise. The relevancy and authenticity of information is defined by the practical usage of the content in contextual paradigms. Other variable consideration such as content security adds to the information paradox which drives the complexity of defining Knowledge.

KMS could be articulated as a combination of following statements:

• ◾An authentic vault that houses knowledge of defined regimes / disciplines
• ◾Secured information available to people with right access / roles
• ◾Granular information driven by an organization taxonomy
• ◾Knowledge driven by well-defined Information governance
• ◾Information tagged and informed
• ◾front end interface driven by find-ability / proximity and profiling

ome of the most sought functionalities from a KMS include:

• •Document management
• •Collaboration Tools
• •Wikis
• •Federated Search
• •Web portals
• •Blogs
• •Content management
• •Personalization
• Read more

We’ve been in the business of Knowledge Management Consulting for the vast majority of years in our experience, one of the most challenging aspects to KM is its intangibility.

we’ve helped an array of organizations to define their Knowledge Management Success Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in order to make Knowledge measurable and tie it to business value and hard return on investment.

In these cases, though, many of these KM KPIs are only measurable over years and often have a stronger demonstration of value to the organization rather than the individual.

We find that quite often when we say Knowledge Management, we actually mean Content Management or other aspects of explicit knowledge.

That is a logical starting point for most of us, for historical reasons but also because it is the easier of the two knowledge dimensions to quantify and measure both progress and business impact.

What is KM about?

It depends on who you ask and what their experience is with it. Some people/organisations focus on technology, some on people, some on process, a very few recognise that it needs to be a balance among the three, and for good measure also create a strategy to support their plans and ideas and to ensure alignment with the organisation.

But beyond that, what is knowledge management about? Why do we/our organisations do it?

KM Institute partner, Enterprise Knowledge, shares more insight on the application of Design Thinking in development of an organizational KM strategy. . . scroll to bottom of page for info on new course on this topic from KMI.