Knowledge is power, but only to
the extent that it can be wielded like a sword, and brought into the
realms of judgment, decision-making, and execution. Corporate effort is
awash with data, and one serious concern of every enterprise is to find
better ways to turn raw data into actionable information, and
subsequently into its knowledge repository.
The two great
issues with knowledge management are how to gather data into the
knowledge-processing system, and how to allow users to retrieve
relevant knowledge from the system with pinpoint accuracy and
timeliness. A cycle develops as ways are found to build on the
retrieved knowledge and re-input results or developments into the
system for further processing.
Even purely within its own
technology and application areas, knowledge management is a continually
evolving discipline. In addition, it exists within the corporate family
dynamic as sibling to other, equally evolving disciplines, such as
business intelligence, performance measurement, and collaboration. CRM Daily has the following to say about this family:
“Over the next several years, expect to see the
business-intelligence, collaboration and knowledge-management segments
converge.” Business Intelligence Gets Collaborative
The CRM Daily article
shows that business intelligence has fallen more into the area of
acquiring knowledge than of disbursing it, mainly delivering targeted
reports and analytics to specific users. Widening the realm of access
to this knowledge by collaboration will be performed principally
through messaging, with the inevitable addition of Web 2.0 technologies:
“Likewise, expect to see such interactive Web 2.0 technologies as AJAX,
blogs and wikis revolutionize the business intelligence experience.
Many vendors realize that decision support environments should let
users access intelligence wherever it may reside, be it in data
warehouses or in the heads of remote colleagues.”
The ever thoughtful Zoli Erdos has a
controversial opinion on wikis as they relate to knowledge management:
he thinks the wiki spells the end of knowledge management systems:
“KM projects typically do not fail due to software
issues, but for human reasons: lack of input [...] the wiki is the end
of Knowledge Management as we know it: the after-the-fact collection,
organization and redistribution of knowledge objects [...] The wiki
becomes the primary platform to conduct work, the fabric of everyday
business, where people create, collaborate, and in the process capture
information.” Wikis are Not Knowledge Management Tools
Erdos is pointing to the puzzle of how to inspire
knowledge workers to input information into the knowledge system. He
cites commentary by Ross Mayfield, to the effect that knowledge management is broken precisely because of this lack of buy-in by workers.
But the same is often said of CRM:
“You can have the greatest CRM
system in the world but if you can’t get people to use it in a
consistent and structured way then it will generate no value. And
nowhere does usage seem to be more of an issue than in the sales area.”
Why sales won’t use the CRM system – and what to do about it
The issues of inspiring input into the system are
separate issues, although Zoli makes a profound point about ordering
the knowledge during the collaboration phase, because this is when
workers are focused and motivated. But the need for the archiving
system still exists. A comment to the Mayfield article addresses this:
“The reality is that as documents increase in size,
and the number of documents on a topic increase there is a necessity,
especially for casual or new readers using the system as a knowledge
lever to quickly jump to the most relevant posts. Tags are one
alternative, as are wiki links, however library like approaches have
the advantage of providing granularity, and order as volume increases.
“The back end ordering of information is likely to
increase in importance because – as you say – wiki’s, blogs etc have
solved the front end problem of getting information into the system.” comment
We would add that there are entire ranges of
processing trying to converge upon corporate data. Integration
throughout the enterprise remains the ultimate goal. How the models of
knowledge management and collaboration converge with the systems of CRM and business intelligence, are part of an exciting future. This will be a job for software.
