Can't We Just Use SharePoint?"
It's the suggestion that people running a knowledge management program fear the most: After presenting requirements for a KM tool, it's almost inevitable that someone at the table looks thoughtful and says, "I think you should use our content management system instead."
How can we make the case for our much-needed tool to a skeptical IT audience focused on consolidation? First, let's see what content management (CM) is good for—and then explore why KM isn't one of those things.
CM is Great (Just Not for KM)
Gartner describes enterprise content management tools as an "essential part of enterprise information architecture".1 Chances are, if you're a knowledge worker, you have access to one or more CM systems. While the "paperless office" has not arrived, CM systems have allowed enterprises to make great strides in storing, retrieving, sharing and managing electronic documents.
Teams used to share work by emailing files back and forth, so there was no single place to go to find the most up-to-date set of project documents. As a result, people would make conflicting edits on different versions of the files. And, when new people joined the team, there was no way to easily get them all the documents they needed. Today, CM systems solve these problems by providing a single place for teams to store, update and share content in an organized and efficient manner.
But enterprise content management systems don't really concern themselves with content, per se. The content is created and viewed in other applications. CM systems treat content the same way that warehouses treat boxes: they put labels on the outside, so they don't have to look inside.
The fact that CM systems are content-agnostic is generally a very good thing—it means that they can manage content created in any possible tool equally well. This strength turns into a serious liability, however, when we consider using CM tools for knowledge management.
What's Different About KM?
It's not surprising that the well-meaning IT analyst suggests that you use a CM tool for KM: on the surface, it seems like a good match. KM functionality includes knowledge capture, structuring and retrieval. From a high-level functional perspective, this sounds just like CM.
But once you get past the sound bites, KM and CM are not alike. We've identified the three biggest differences—areas where CM technology isn't the right tool for the KM job.
Structure matters. Best practices like Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS) state that knowledge must be structured for reuse, separating the question from its environment, from the underlying cause, the actual resolution or answer and other topics.2 In effect, knowledge capture becomes a case of filling out a form that specifies both what's to be done, and under what conditions to do it.
KM systems also need to support rich media—images, useful formatting, attachments and even video. But they need to start with the structure.
The desktop office tools typically used to author documents for CM aren't designed for this kind of structure. It's not practical for a busy knowledge worker to open a template in a word processor and try to not break the formatting. Users need a simple, structured environment for capturing and improving knowledge. Of course, documents can also be presented in query results to make the experience even richer, but structured knowledge is the catalyst for efficient resolution.
Knowledge must be in the workflow. A CM system is a little bit like a filing cabinet: you take files out of it, use them for a while, then put them back so you can get to them later if needed. It enables the work to get done, but it's not part of doing it.
Knowledge management, in contrast, is the work. As the KCS Practices Guide says, KM "isn't something we do in addition to solving problems... it becomes the way we solve problems." Accordingly, KM systems need to be tied in to the workflow.
For service and support, it must be easy to do case documentation and knowledge management at the same time, as the work is being done, without needing to enter the same information twice, and without copy and paste. The KM system must be actively integrated into other tools, especially CRM or incident management.
When integrated in the workflow, KM can measure and report on how knowledge is created and used: participation, citations, create:reuse ratios—all the other measures specified by KCS best practices. Since CM is outside of the workflow, it has no visibility to these metrics and simply can't provide these necessary reports.
People don't know what they're looking for. Searching inside a CM system is a relatively simple matter. Users know what they want, and they just need to enter the right parameters to find it. For example, if one is looking for a project plan, it's usually enough to go to the project "page" or folder, and look for a Microsoft Project file. Or, if you're looking for the current manual for the Gizmotron 380, you can look for files of type "Documentation" tagged to product "Gizmotron 380".
Knowledge is different. If someone has a problem, or question, he doesn't yet have the answer. He may not even know what pieces of his question or situation are relevant-which symptoms are important clues, and which are red herrings. He needs help, and other than a vaguely formed question, he doesn't know what to enter in the search box.
Keyword search is fine for CM, but it doesn't work for knowledge management. KM systems need to lead the user through the process of finding the information she needs by guiding her through the search process, suggesting alternative factors and search terms.
Despite superficial similarities, KM and CM are very different, and attempting to implement KM with a CM tool is a path to frustration.
Consona Knowledge Management is an enterprise-class KCS Verified solution, especially designed to handle even complex service and support queries across channels. We work with the world's most demanding, high-volume service and support organizations, ensuring our products meet their high standards. Learn more about Consona KM and find a longer version of this article in the resource library at crm.consonoa.com.
1 Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 16 November 2010
2 The Consortium for Service Innovation, "The KCS Practices Guide, Version 5.0"?