Content Management vs. Knowledge Management
A Summary of Key Differences

Comparing CMS to KMS
Step	Characteristic	CMS	KMS
Create	Granularity of Information	Support for publishing pages and sites	Support for publishing small to large articles
	Frequency of updates	Periodic—yearly, quarterly, monthly	Frequent—weekly, daily, hourly
	Number of Contributors	Site developers and content creators	Partial to entire user base including employees, partners and even customers
Manage	Authoring and Review Process	Part of a dedicated process—authoring often the primary or secondary job function	Part of regular job function—authoring is responsibility of the ecosystem
Publish	Publishing Process	Staged process of approvals—often similar to source code—dev/test/production	Authoring, approval and publishing all done in the production environment
	Deployment Target	Serve one or two primary consumption points	Serve many consumption points based on interest

It is important to understand the implications of these new demands on recognized workflow processes. Instead of the more static create/manage/publish flow that embodies most CMS, organizations need to embrace a more fluid capture/route/convert workflow—and be able to cohesively measure the entire process from within one KM system. The table above summarizes the differences between the two approaches.

Capture vs. create: It is clear that business-critical knowledge needs to be captured as a by-product of daily work interactions, versus created as part of a dedicated process. The capture of this information can only succeed if it is easy to create content as part of one’s work process, and cleanly integrated with existing systems. A customer service agent, for example, could request or author a new solution from within the CRM environment they typically use to answer calls. Similarly, email threads and forum posts could be systematically harvested to create new knowledge.

Route vs. manage: Information management is important, but in an environment that emphasizes knowledge capture, the ability to route information to the right individual or teams for verification and approval takes on even more importance. To facilitate this process, organizations need to harness category-based permissions, which allow for authoring and technical reviews based upon preassigned skills and specific team member responsibilities.

Convert vs. publish: Organizations that place a premium on quickly publishing information from multiple authors need a system that supports authoring, routing and publishing in a production environment. Given the specific business needs that dynamic, knowledge-rich sites serve, it is important to associate knowledge management processes with the "conversion" goals of the organization. Conversions can be broadly defined, but generally imply a discrete action—i.e. a purchase transaction, a closed service request, a business referral, a completed loan application. In addition, organizations should offer proactive and reactive methods for finding information. Options could include alerts and subscriptions, or integrated search and retrieval mechanisms.

Measure: The ability to holistically monitor and measure critical elements of the entire workflow process is a fundamental difference between KMS from CMS. Following are some of the core elements to measure:

• Capture effectiveness. Tracking contributions of authors, and the value of those contributions for rewards and recognition is critical, so that authors have an incentive to divulge the tacit knowledge in their heads and take the time and effort to document it. This also helps discourage information hoarding since, in the old model, information is power. Given that there is widespread authorship, it becomes critical to distinguish the more expert authors from the beginners. This is especially true in self-publishing environments such as blogs and forums.
• Route efficiencies. In the route process it becomes critical to measure time in the workflow and identify approval bottlenecks. Given that knowledge has a shelf-life, it also becomes critical to measure the speed of knowledge updates and ensure a timely flow.
• Conversion success. In the convert process, the whole objective is to drive the user to the best solution for his or her needs. This is only possible by providing ways to capture feedback from users and customers, such as ratings and comments, discussions on content or surveys. Further, document ratings need to be captured, and automated review tasks need to be initiated for documents that receive poor ratings.

In summary, we live in a world where information is created and consumed more quickly than ever before. Today’s business-critical Web presences need to deliver targeted, business-critical information in a timely manner so that customers can either serve themselves or receive fast, effective service from company representatives. Instead of being just content or data, this information now embodies the critical knowledge people need to perform in their jobs. It changes constantly, and has a shelf life.

This knowledge is egalitarian in nature; instead of residing in the hands of a few content creators, it is generated by employees, partners, distributors and customers. And given the sheer volume of information, critical knowledge needs to be easily found or, better yet, proactively delivered to those most likely to be interested in receiving the latest updates. The value and usefulness of knowledge needs to be measured and knowledge that is no longer useful needs to be culled, while new contributions need to be monitored and encouraged. The process must evolve from a more static create/manage/publish process to a more dynamic and holistic capture/route/convert/measure process. These are the realities that differentiate content-driven websites from conversion-focused, knowledge-based Web applications.