What’s the New Face of Knowledge Management?
He continues: "It is good to construct a knowledge ‘backbone’ (processes, CMS, etc.) to capitalize on, but a knowledge access solution will definitely add value. It just is the next step and a wise investment to make, and maybe the one to make in priority (to have a global picture of available knowledge) before deciding where it makes sense to invest more on backbone, capitalization and process."
Do any of the experts I’m talking with see movement toward a more enlightened view of KM? Yes, in many ways. "There’s a momentum," says Brent Hayward. "It’s surprising how quickly we’ve gone from call-center support (driving down escalation, serving a tech support effort) versus a self-service model. Six to 12 months ago, these were two separate initiatives, without linkage. But what’s encouraging now is that the full suite of capabilities is coming into play, and there’s an appreciation for the foundational infrastructure. The call center agent has the same information that the customer sees. Some of the usability isn’t there yet; but it’s encouraging that companies are taking on broader initiatives," says Brent.
"We have customers who have created ad hoc solutions on ‘incumbent’ technologies, like flash drives, and email and phone that stand outside the strict realm of an information management or traditional search system," says Bryan House. "So the challenge is how to add 10X the value to these incumbent technologies."
And according to Curt Meltzer, VP, total solutions strategy for LexisNexis, the presence of knowledge is changing the organizational structure of at least one traditional business: law firms. "There’s a new career track emerging in law firms, and it has to do with KM. Senior partners who bill 2,000 hours a year don’t want to spend time messing with the knowledgebase. Younger employees don’t know enough yet. But there’s a sweet spot for a growing number of legal professionals who aren’t on the ‘partner path,’ but love doing the work. For them, working with the firm’s knowledge assets makes a nice alternative."
Curt continues: "There’s a difference of opinion on how to attack KM in the legal profession. In the UK, they throw non-billable resources—non-time-keepers; non-revenue-generators—at the information to collect and distribute it. And that’s expensive!
US law firms have not generally gone that route; they want to limit their non-billed resources based on KM ... so they have decided to find magical technologies to solve the problems. In the US, the senior partners’ non-billable time is NOT devoted to KM; it’s devoted to business development and the management of large matters."
He admits that there’s still plenty of room for improvement. "This is an emerging space. Presently, automation is mainly applied in law firms for time-keeping purposes...to track phone calls, websites visited, documents reviewed, etc., as part of the billing process. That’s a pretty superficial view of the lawyer’s work," says Curt. The next step, he says, is to bring more substantive advice to the mix; to provide additional information sources that are relevant to the lawyer’s current activities, matter or case, automatically, and with greater effectiveness and accuracy than a human could achieve. "We have more work to do on that, but the two are definitely coming together."
Kicking Down the Door
In the service of full disclosure, I’ve been slow to embrace "Enterprise 2.0"-type initiatives as valid and viable for application in the enterprise. But when I really think about it, "collaboration" and "sharing" are hallmark goals of KM. So, is it possible that blogs and wikis and forums are the ultimate expression of KM?
"This is a fierce debate right now," says Brent. "The key question is one of control. The difference between a public community and an organization is that an organization has responsibility for the accuracy of its information. If we go down the ‘wiki-est’ path, you can have customers providing information (example, a forum article on how to modify an electrical capacitor) that could not only void the warranty, but might be dangerous! The manufacturer has a responsibility regarding any channel that disseminates information that could cause bad things to happen. There’s a line; the collaboration is fantastic, but it’s important to know where the responsibility lies. It’s true that a forum with bad content might eventually be repaired by the community members, but how many people see that content BEFORE it’s fixed, and march off a cliff with it?" wonders Brent.
"Wikis are clearly a great place for informal exchange," says Jean Ferré. "They favor creation of ‘clouds’ of informal knowledge on specific subjects and help to identify those who can help with a topic. However, wikis are only one silo of content and are only an informal place to collaborate."
And simple collaboration isn’t enough to support business goals, says Morris Beton. "People know when they accomplish or exceed their goals. The problem is when they want to look deeper and become predictive about how things will change over time. They want to foretell the future," says Morris.
It’s slowly changing, says Marko Saarinen. "The acceptance of KM has grown largely because the tools have gotten better. People are now comfortable with enterprise search, ECM, collaboration tools, and now they can shift their focus to where it belongs...on the processes and the organizational culture."
"With operational margins of 6%, and penalties in form of delays, one good story justifies the whole investment, and there are plenty," Jean Ferré. "ROI is not like in the good old IT solution/business cases about reducing the cost linked to a process. It is about providing the appropriate tools for one of the most important assets of an enterprise...the PEOPLE."
The others agree on this point: that the days of "faux KM" (thinly disguised transactional automation tools masquerading as knowledge management) are giving way to a far more people-centric vision. But it’s not entirely a done deal.
"The thing that surprises me most is a thing that’s not there," says Paul Sonderegger. "There’s a lack of focus on the user experience. The wealth of research in this area is enormous. We know from many areas outside of KM, such as behavioral economics, that human beings have a very difficult time making predictions about the right next step in solving a problem. So, that’s where we should be focused," insists Paul.