I – What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge Management refers to the collection, processing, and distribution of explicit and tacit knowledge within an organization. It refers to the policies, technologies, and people used to manage and harness information to improve business operations. Knowledge Management encompasses the following stages: Knowledge capture, application, sharing, and discovery.

II – Why is Knowledge Management Important?

Information is crucial for any company wanting to stay ahead of their competition. Hence, to collect and implement information, companies must set policies and a culture that encourages the curation and implementation of knowledge to improve a company’s productivity. Knowledge Management is the policy framework and work culture companies need to generate new information and integrate it meaningfully into their production chain.

A culture of Knowledge Management means employees find and learn new facts and figures. Instilling a learning culture into a firm encourages people to discover, assess and store information that can be used to improve productivity.

Knowledge facilitates decision making. Information like metrics and statistics helps managers and leaders make better, more informed decisions. Too much information can overwhelm companies and deter effective leadership. However, by using a knowledge management system, Chairmen, CEO’s can cut through the white noise to get to what is truly important in making decisions.

Companies with a knowledge management system in place, stimulate an environment of change and innovation.  Knowledge Management refers to policies, tools, and technology, but also changes the way professionals think about their work. Companies with knowledge management allow employees to be creative and encourages innovation through the free flow of ideas with a proper Knowledge Management policy in place.

The first step in knowledge management is completing the four steps:

1 – Identify the main expertise of the firm.

2 – Leveraging knowledge already available in the organization.

3 – Building the expertise to match strategic requirements.

4 – Identifying, isolating and removing obsolete knowledge.

Companies implementing knowledge management must adjust policies, work culture and adopt new tools into their work system. Tools to use for Knowledge Management include a repository database, a ‘higher’ database that physically regroups data items from different databases. Companies should also develop a policy that encourages people to learn new things about their profession and share them with others.

Companies must develop a knowledge retention policy to make sure information stay within an organization after personnel. Creating a Knowledge retention strategy is highly cognizant on what knowledge is worth retaining, what knowledge could be lost and what must be done to retain the knowledge.

Curating knowledge means developing an external network which includes partners, suppliers, customers, and mergers. Having a knowledge built from an external network is an asset for companies because it gives them excellent insight into whom they should do business with.

Information must be carefully structured for knowledge management to be effective. Structure means categorizing knowledge according to industry, type, and expert level. Having structure makes it easy to gather and organize knowledge in a systematic manner.

The article has been written by the EFutures team (www.efuturesworld.com).
This information is our opinion, through our experience in the industry and other content sources.
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