Contextual Knowledge: Your Key to Building Effective Knowledge Tools

Managing Context

Like knowledge, context is an ever-evolving phenomenon and needs to be tracked, managed, and evolved. Many contextual elements exist as metadata and taxonomies. Where these are enabled to scope knowledge delivery, it is important not only to tag information accurately and completely, but also to periodically revisit how and whether multiple elements of context are working together to drive the best knowledge outcomes. User feedback, reports, and consistent knowledge base testing can help ensure that the elements of context evolve in a mutually supporting way, and do not under- or over-scope the information returned.

Measuring Context

Contextual knowledge can make the difference between delivering weak, generalized results and clear, targeted information. Well-maintained contextual knowledge can improve the speed, accuracy, and overall confidence in the knowledge base. But how do you measure context? Some things to consider include:

♦ Speed of use of knowledge tools, and accuracy of answers

♦ Ease of use of the knowledge itself, and its overall quality

♦ Confidence in the answer

♦ Reporting on positive outcomes from contextual knowledge delivery

As a whole, contextual knowledge is a core component of an optimized knowledge management system. If user identity, actions, and issues can be reliably captured and linked to the scope of the results returned, that context can improve the accuracy and quality of results returned from the knowledge management system. It’s a core capability well worth the effort of designing, delivering, and validating.