2022 KM REALITY AWARD WINNER: Walmart and Enterprise Knowledge, LLC

The KM Reality Award recognizes an organization in which knowledge management is a positive reality, not just rhetoric. The award recipient has demonstrated leadership in the implementation of knowledge management practices and processes, realizing measurable business benefits.

To be considered for the Reality Award, the knowledge management program must be in place for at least 1 year, receive support from senior management, and have defined metrics to evaluate the initiative and its impact on organizational goals.

During the KMWorld 2022 conference, on Thursday November 10, Enterprise Knowledge was announced as the winner of the 2022 KM Reality Award.

Enterprise Knowledge is dedicated to providing unmatched consulting services in the areas of knowledge and information management, software development, and project management. Enterprise Knowledge focuses on practical and proven solutions by engaging end users to ensure the systems are designed for them, to truly address their needs.

Walmart's Knowledge Management (KM) program, led by Amber Simpson within Walmart Global’s Enterprise Learning organization, is responsible for improving the processes and tools to build, share, and develop knowledge for the training they create for 2.4 million associates. Amber most notably serves as the Product Owner for the design, development, and deployment of the Learning Content Database (LCD), a digital library that increases the findability and discoverability of learning content items amongst its 200+ L&D experts so learning content that already exists can be leveraged and/or reused for future learning needs expressed by business partners or associates.

Challenge

KM best practices and processes were initially initiated within Walmart U.S. Learning to improve its ability to more effectively and efficiently create and manage learning content. The organization lacked a central, user-centric location to find and store learning material, was dependent on overly complex and manual processes, and did not have a governing body overseeing content creation processes and management across working teams. KM has since been scaled to support the entire enterprise, Walmart Global, to further improve communication and collaboration across the larger organization and to empower them with modern KM technologies.

Results

Many organizations conceptualize the idea of a "single source of truth" for where all of their content lives, and in Walmart's case, they've turned that into a reality. By developing the LCD at Amber’s direction and integrating it with Walmart’s Learning Management Systems, Learning Experience Platforms, Badging software, and content repositories, Walmart Global can now access its learning content from a centralized location to understand its purpose, who it’s delivered to, and what skills and competencies will be gained as a result. The LCD provides a record for all learning content, enabling its trainers to accurately deliver quality learning content to associates across the world in the most efficient and reliable way. What originally took trainers days, if not weeks to find and manage, now takes a matter of seconds.

The Walmart Global KM Program and LCD technology is focused on delivering measurable results, which include improving and managing learning content and processes at scale across multiple enterprise systems, reducing the time it takes trainers to find and discover previously delivered training material, and increasing operational efficiencies with the use of automated processes.

Over the past year, Amber and her team has developed the following Competencies as a result of Walmart Global’s KM Programand technology:

• Content Management
• Taxonomy Design
• Ontology Design
• Enterprise Search
• KM Technology & Implementation
• KM Leadership (Grew into a team of 5 with varying degrees of roles and responsibilities)

Enterprise Learning associates believe in KM and are proactively identifying new ways to further streamline their business processes and improve technology capabilities. Their level of commitment has been widely visible and has given inspiration toother entities within Walmart to improve their processes and tools to build, share, and develop knowledge surrounding their areas of focus.