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Knowledge Management in many organizations is in the key investment priorities

 

If Knowledge Management [KM] is planned, designed and implemented intelligently, it can improve the ability of organizations and companies to fulfill their mission, competition, efficiency, effectiveness and transformation.

KM Utilization

Benefits of KM

Some benefits of KM correlate directly to bottom line savings, while others are more difficult to quantify. In today’s information driven economy, organizations uncover the most opportunities -and ultimately, derive the most value from intellectual rather than physical assets.
To get the most value from an organization’s intellectual assets, Knowledge must be shared and serve as the foundation for collaboration. Yet better collaboration is not an end in itself; without an overarching business context, KM is meaningless at best and harmful at worst.

Consequently, an effective KM program shall help an organization by i) Fostering innovation by encouraging the free flow of ideas and thoughts; ii) Improving customer service by streamlining response time; iii) Boosting revenues by getting products and services to market faster; iv) Enhancing employee retention rates by recognizing the value of employee’s knowledge and rewarding them for it; v) Streamlining operations and reducing costs by eliminating redundant or unnecessary processes.

In summary, a creative approach to KM can result in improved efficiency, higher productivity and increased revenues in practically any business function.

Challenges of KM

Some challenges with potential to diminishing solid Knowledge Management initiatives are:
i) The need to sell the KM concept to employees shouldn’t be underestimated. In an environment where an individual’s knowledge is valued and rewarded, establishing a culture that recognizes tacit knowledge and encourage employees to share it is critical. If KM doesn’t make life easier for employees, it will fail.
ii) While technologies can support KM, it’s not the starting point of a KM. Make KM decisions based on who (people), what (knowledge) and why (business objectives). Save the how (technology) for last.
iii) A KM programme should not be divorced from a business goal. While sharing best practices is a commendable idea, there must be an underlying business reason to do so. Without a solid business case, KM is a futile exercise.
iv) KM is not static; as with many physical assets, the value of knowledge can erode over time. Since knowledge can get stale fast, the contents in a KM programme should be constantly updated, amended and deleted. What is more, the relevance of knowledge at any given time changes, as do the skills of employees. Therefore, there is no endpoint to a KM programme.

Like product development, marketing and R&D, KM is a constantly evolving business practice.

Learning is Key

One of the key concept of knowledge management is learning.
Learning is a complex dynamic process of interacting with many sources of information in meaningful ways to construct new knowing and understanding. KM enables a learning group to learn more effectively. 

Knowledge management is very important to an organization. There is a positive relationship between learning & development and knowledge creation process.
An emphasis on individual learning and development infuses an organization with new ideas. Intense training, mentoring, and peer pressure literally force professional to the top of their knowledge works. The great intellectual organizations seem to develop deeply ingrained learning and development culture.

However the mere presence of traditional training and development activities is not sufficient for knowledge management. Continuous learning is required.

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Advantages of KM

Key Concepts

  • Knowledge management [KM] is all about managing organization’s knowledge effectively by sharing and having a systematic activity for creation of knowledge and exploiting it for the market and benefit of the organization.
  • KM refers to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival and competence against discontinuous environmental change.
  • While KM is often facilitated by IT, technology by itself is not KM.
  • There is a positive relationship between collaboration and knowledge creation process.
  • There is a positive relationship between knowledge creation process and organizational creativity.