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Introduction to Knowledge Management Bob Flanagan
 Associate Director, KM SolutionsCambridge Technology PartnersBob Flanagan –
What I would like to do is provide an overview of knowledgemanagement – what it is etc, so that I can set a context for some of thepresentations you will see later in the day. Specifically, I would like to start off with defining what knowledge management is and then talk about how it reallytranslates down into leveraging your business confidence. Then mappingback to knowledge management in terms of various business valueorientation models, talking a bit about the emerging field of metrics for measuring the effectiveness of knowledge management and touch very brieflyon a few case studies we have done and then a couple of quick pointers ongetting started.What’s happened in the knowledge management area is that its become sucha buzzword area is that a lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon andcaused quite a lot of confusion. What I hope to be able to do is provide adefinition of knowledge management that is pragmatic and pretty free of vendor and consultant speak. For me knowledge management really startedbecome a buzzword about 18 months ago. At that time the Harvard BusinessReview published an entire edition that was focused on knowledgemanagement and knowledge as it pertained to the enterprise or theorganisation.Theoretical view (from the HBR) ‘the productivity of knowledge andknowledge workers will not be the only factor in the world economy. It is,however, likely to become the decisive factor.Market Reality (from Hewlett Packard) if we only knew what HP knows we’dbe 3 times more productive.Essentially, as we move from the brick and mortar manufacturing economiesinto the knowledge economy, we’re seeing a whole series of new economics,from basing the competitive advantage of a company shifting from use of tangible assets to leveraging intangible assets such as intellectual capital andknowledge. One indication of that is if you look at the capitalisation of companies versus the book value of the company, in other words the tangible,fiscal assets of the company versus what the market views it at, you’ll seemultiples of 5,10,20. In the case of Microsoft that multiple is around 26 andgrowing. What that says is if you took the total market capitalisation of Microsoft and divided it by the assets that they have, that ratio is 26. Thatmeans that 25% of their value is not attributable to tangible assets. Its reallyattributable to the knowledge in the company.We’re seeing the net effect where URL to us means ubiquity now revenuelater – lot of people getting on the bandwagon, not much money being made
 
yet but that will change. Also seeing the ratio of internet to intranetpersonalities of a company; by that I mean how many public facing websitesthere are as opposed to internal intranet websites, is often a ratio of 1 to 20.There is a lot of need for sharing and disseminating information through acompany. That then leads to the problem of navigating through all that datawithin a company. We’re also moving into the post re-engineering phasewhich focuses on eliminating processes that you’re not good at as a companyinstead of trying to rebuild them and focusing in more on what your corecompetences are, how you create value, how you retain value and so on.Moving on to more of an empowerment model as you move into thedisseminating of information to people that need it so that they can act on it.One of the key things in knowledge management to keep in mind is what itreally translates down to is the ability to take information, take knowledge andtake action on it. Another area that gets overlooked is what I’ll call knowledgedeficit disorder.Example – say you’re a company of 100 people and you’re experiencing rapidgrowth – 20% a year. If you add to that an attrition rate of 20%, this meansyou have to add 40 people to your company, therefore a third of your company workforce is new. Two things stem from this – one is the loss of knowledge within the people who are leaving, and the second is how to takethose 40 incoming people and make them effective in as short a time aspossible. Some of the business drivers behind knowledge management areaccelerated cycle times, requiring faster time to market/profit – that’s prettymuch cross industry. A number of transformed relationships with customerswho are expecting higher levels of customised service often in an internetmodel. With business partners where you’re integrating value change whichcan be extranet and internet models. And also with employees where you’redisseminating information quickly to the appropriate places within your organisation on an intranet model. Also with global and expandingorganisations the need to share information on a global basis e.g mycompany has 53 offices and we live and breathe by our intranet to ensure thatwe disseminate information around our methodology, standard operatingprocedures and so on so that we are delivering consistent services regardlessof the location of where that service is being delivered. There’s also a need tobring new employees up to speed very quickly.Knowledge management really boils down to the ability to realise increasedreturns from your managed business competencies, in other words reinforcingthe core competencies of your company in order to create value, to retainvalue and so on.Two of the mechanisms that you can look at for the core competenciesincludes work practice execution which includes your practices, your processes the core values of your company and so on and the expertisewithin your companies both on a technical and a business level. That can behow many inventions your company creates, the skill level of your staff, theknow how within your company – how you take the what needs to be doneand actually do it within your company – the process level view of how youwork, and the skillset of your employees.
 
(Talking about diagram) – on the left side of the diagram we have the contentrepository, persistent expertise knowledge – this is where explicit knowledgeresides. On the right side is the collaborative solution space and this is wherethe knowledge worker lives, where people come together in teams to solveproblems, create new products etc and this is where a lot of the tacitknowledge and experience that resides in peoples heads is leveraged tocompetitive advantage. Its interesting to note that this diagram also showstwo very different philosophies on what knowledge and knowledgemanagement is. On the left side, on the content repository side it is verymuch as US or western view of what knowledge management is – knowledgeis a thing, something you can manage, throw in a database and spreadthroughout an organisation. On the other side is the collaborative solutionside, that’s more an environment view; what you have to do to create anenvironment where people create knowledge, share knowledge freely andthat’s very much a Japanese/Eastern view of what knowledge managementis. So this model takes both of those together – you can’t have one workeffectively without the other. We view this as a comprehensive way of puttingtogether a view of knowledge management.On the content repository side you’re going to talk about shared content andexperience within the corporation so you get into discussions about how younavigate through information, what information sources are required toconduct or execute on a process and that can be both internal or externalinformation. Support for multiple data types and making delivery independentor browser based delivery across your organisation. On the collaborativesolution space its more working on a shared problem or executing a processor developing a product and you get into communications whether itssynchronous or asynchronous communications and how you shareinformation in terms of discussions and so on within companies thateffectively support the transfer of tacit to tacit or the knowledge withinsomeone’s head and sharing/externalising/socialising that with other members of the organisation that are trying to develop a new product or solvea problem etc.Like to take you through a decision loop and show how this plays out. Whatoften happens is something occurs, something comes up, you have a newidea for a new product, an event happens, maybe a competitor has made acertain move and that becomes a trigger event. What you first want to do issay ‘OK I have a problem’ and then ‘where did we do this before, whatexperience do we have in this type of solution’ and that will trigger a search.You’ll want some sort of counsel on where you’ve done this before and so onand what you find is you’ll dip into a content repository to look back and seewhere you’ve had this experience before. From that you’ll come up with someinitial findings and conclusions on the experience level of your company intackling this type of issue. Then you can also, if you’re repositories arestructured properly you’ll be able to establish who contributed that piece of knowledge to your repositories so through attribution you begin to get an ideaof who the experts are within your company and also experts outside of your company. So you begin to move more into the collaborative solutions space
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