The concept of knowledge management is nothing new: organisations have always struggled to maximise their

intelligence. It can be defined as the process by which an enterprise gath-ers, organises, shares and analyses its knowledge in terms of resources, documents and skills.

The knowledge management culture evolved in response to the in-creasing number of disparate silos of information that emerged in corpora-tions as departmental computing evolved.

Yet according to analyst firm Gartner, at the turn of the century, surprisingly few enterprises had a comprehensive knowledge manage-ment practice operation. Although if one includes groupware, or collabo-ration, in the definition of knowledge management, then the first systems would have been Lotus Notes (which later became IBM Lotus Domino).

But, as Peter King, office server group manager at Microsoft, says, “Ask 10 people what they mean by collaboration, and you will get 10 dif-ferent answers.”

The key to successful implementation of a knowledge management system is to build it around the human processes, rather than the technology, writes Nick Booth

KEY POINTS

● Classic mistake is developers trying to make humans work around their systems

● Knowledge management is something you do, not a system you buy

● Social networking tools can help to galvanise a workforce into sharing intelligence

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

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This illustrates one of the supreme ironies of the information age. It would be more accurate to call it the disinformation age, says Richard Edwards, information management practice director at research firm But-ler Group. As silos of information were crudely cobbled together, cor-porations created a data monster that hindered the productive proc-ess.

If early incarnations of knowledge manage-ment had a failing, it was in the information overload they created.

“Information without context is simply raw data, which is not knowl-edge. Data tells you that red thing is a tomato. Information tells you it is a fruit. But only knowl-edge tells you not to use it in a fruit salad,” says Edwards.

Flawed approach

The classic mistake in knowledge management is that software devel-opers tried to make humans work around their systems, rather than the

Pass the tomato test

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other way around. “Knowledge management is some-

thing you do, not a system you buy,” says analyst Jeffrey Mann, research vice-president at Gartner. “What enterprises should have done is work out what they wanted to do, and picked the best tools to fit around that way of working.”

The problem was that in the early days, IT systems were not fluid enough to be adapted as tools. If groupware could be clunky and un-workable, the corporate intranet was even worse. “Only a fraction of peo-ple used corporate intranets,” says Edwards. “It was too time consuming to look at, let alone contribute to.”

Charles Armstrong, CEO of Tram-poline Systems, says, “The first gen-eration of knowledge management systems was a disaster, because it was all focused on documents, rather than people.”

Trampoline is one of a new breed of suppliers that proposes to harness social networking tools as a way to connect people. Gartner also identi-fied Connectbeam and SocialText as emerging players in this space.

Web 2.0 tools, such as Wikipedia, Digg and Facebook, are more likely to succeed in that they are more flexible and able to fit around how we work. But they need to get back to basics, says Edwards.

“Originally, the internet was pulled together to allow academics to work together, and that was knowl-edge management working at a social level, but somehow, when the inter-net went corporate, we lost the plot,” he says.

As technologists became bogged down by issues such as the choice of servers, browsers and interfaces, the original concept – who knows

whom, and who knows what – was lost. “Person-to-person

connectivity lost out to system-level obses-sions,” says Edwards.

Clive Longbottom, service director at re-search company Quo-

circa, agrees. “The big problem with

old-style systems, built around document management

and databases, is that they can only deal with knowledge that has been captured and is under direct manage-ment – about 20% of a company’s electronic information – which in turn is probably about 20% of its total information,” he says. “So companies try to make their decisions on what they can find in 4% of their actual in-

“Data tells you

that red thing is a

tomato. Information

tells you it’s a fruit. But

only knowledge tells

you not to use it in

a fruit salad”

formation; not a good idea.”Social networking can be good, but

it can also create difficulties, says Longbottom. Say there is a highly specific problem, and only one per-son out of the target audience re-sponds. The information they give appears authoritative and a decision is based on it, only for it to emerge that the individual is talking non-sense.

“Or, as more often happens, infor-

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mation is offered by someone that starts a firestorm. Then you have to try to find the truth among all the crap that is spouted. The wisdom of the crowd can be a dangerous thing.”

People who worry about knowl-edge management technology are missing the point, warns Mann. “If you talk about this challenge in terms of the technology or platforms you want to invest in, you are on the wrong track straight away. It is about

what you do, not what you buy,” he says.

Mann says businesses should start by identifying the human processes. What are the needs of your work-force, which assets do you want to bring together, and which do you want to keep apart?

Create an inventory first, then work out which intellectual or knowledge assets you need to bring together as a priority. Remember, bombarding eve-ryone with too much information can be even worse than too little. If people desperately need information, they can always find a way (through e-mail, phone calls and instant messag-ing). But switching off the tide of use-less information – without cutting yourself off from the useful nuggets that might come in – is much harder.

Identify the bottlenecks, says Mann. “Where are the commu-nication prob-lems? Where are the areas in any process where decision times take too long? Once the targets are well established, it is a question of bringing in the right tools.”

Then work out the simple areas where you can effect change and get results. This, says Mann, is where so many projects go wrong. But the damage caused by overambition can be rectified .

Prove value

It is important to understand that im-plementing a knowledge manage-ment system is a political act, and in office politics, as in party politics, you need to introduce some eye-catching initiatives that will quickly prove the value of your work. Go for what Mann calls the easiest “multi-pliers”, the obvious bottlenecks you can fix straight away, which will immediately create value.

Then it becomes a technology project, and each case has a different requirement. In some cases, social net-working technology is the best way of galvanising the workforce into better teamwork and sharing more intelli-gence. In other areas, a specialist sys-tem, such as IBM Lotus Connections, could do the job, but will initially make demands on your staff’s time and the department’s training budget.

The beauty of social networking tools, argues Trampoline’s Arm-strong, is they don’t require training. Facebook is doing the training for you. A system such as Trampoline’s

Remember,

bombarding

everyone with too

much information can

be worse than giving

them too little

Case study Knowledge

management failures central to 2003 space shuttle disaster

computerweekly.com/196769.htm

Flightdeck, for example, gives users a front end they recognise, while under neath it is a corporate tool.

On the other hand, in the National Health Service, Wikipedia and Google have become the knowledge manage-ment tools of choice. Visit Kingston Hospital in Surrey, for example, and even an imminent sur-geon will be on Wikipedia in minutes, trying to match your symp-toms with the various types of hernia described in the online encyclopae-dia.

Customised interfaces

Having made the case for free tools, there is an argument to be made for traditional corporate software suppli-ers, such as Microsoft.

Arguably, Explorer and Office ap-plications have the greatest user base of all desktop tools. Microsoft’s Sharepoint platform allows users to

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Add insight to information

computerweekly.com/229745.htm

customise these interfaces into what-ever shape their knowledge manage-

ment project requires, says Mi-crosoft’s Peter King.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs achieves its current levels of ef-ficiency using Share-point. A more positive

advertisement for knowledge management

might be the NHS Confed-eration. The organisation used

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server to create an intranet, Fednet, to promote better internal communication across 200 locations. It claims 90% of em-ployees use Fednet.

However, there can be problems if success relies on the users’ fastidious operation of the system. Finding in-formation depends on how well it is tagged, and according to Butler Group research, only 6% of people properly tag a document.

It might be better to assume that users are lazy, and to ensure that eve-

rything is automated, which is where applications such as Google Search Appliance could be better used. In-surance company Royal & SunAlli-ance, for example, uses the Google Appliance to locate information on clients, market conditions and its own financial products more quickly.

“The number one finding was that we needed a search engine that worked,” says David Copp, the insur-er’s UK intranet manager.

Royal & SunAlliance turned to Google after integration problems be-tween its Lotus Notes environment and the existing enterprise search technology.

Clearly, knowledge management is difficult to pin down. And in any case, the concept could soon be su-perseded. The future, according to Longbottom, is ideas management.

“It is about how companies can do more with their intellectual property, drive new processes and optimise in-dividual tasks,” he says. “It is what companies originally wanted from knowledge management.”

There can be

problems if success

relies on the users’

fastidious operation

of the system