Building a knowledge management system Get the most out of your data through organization and automation By Yun Wang Summary "Knowledge management" may sound like the latest buzzword to come down the company pipeline, but some of its core concepts can be extremely helpful in getting real value out of your vast data resources. To get started on turning information into knowledge, you'll have to focus in on key goals and find the right role for IS in building and maintaining the system.(970 words)

April  1998

t Spring Internet World in Los Angeles this past March, the biggest buzzword was definitely "knowledge management." Unfortunately, the term is even more vague and difficult to pin down than "extranet," "XML," or any one of the myriad past and present hot topics. Knowledge management is often defined as the ability to get the right information to the right people at the right time. In a way, this is what IS should have been about from the beginning -- after all, "IS" stands for "information systems," and most of the tangled corporate networks built and maintained by IS departments have as their main purpose the storage and transport of company information. What has kept these networks from serving as true knowledge management systems in the past is the haphazard way in which they tend to grow. New technology routinely is added on to old without systemwide reengineering; new data sources are hooked up to the network without recategorization of the entire information base. In the past, this mish-mash quality of much corporate technology would have posed a large obstacle for anyone trying to turn the network into an easy-to-use knowledge management system. But today, more tools exist that allow you to integrate disparate data sources and interfaces into one coherent whole. This integration ability is one key to taking full advantage of your company's information repositories, both formal and informal. Planning your strategy The first step in transforming your eclectic mix of data, applications, and clients into a well-oiled system for knowledge management is clearly identifying your strategic business goals. Converting to such a system means going beyond such needs as e-mail or Internet access -- clear needs, but with little strategy attached to them -- and defining how your new system will have a direct and positive impact on productivity, revenue and your company's competitive position. One helpful way to start thinking about strategic information engineering is to divide your company's information by purpose. Some information, like customer addresses, purchase orders, contracts, and inventory information, is vital to the day-to-day business processes of the company. These are mission-critical categories of knowledge, without which your company would fail to function properly. Many large companies already have relatively good systems in place to deal with this kind of information. Other information might fall under the category of personal productivity. This often includes e-mail, contacts, memos, human resource guidelines, and jotted-down ideas. This kind of information is obviously not critical to the company's immediate functioning, and often isn't even useful to anyone but its owner -- but it makes a giant difference in the long run. Employees that have a rich information base of their own are more likely to make important contributions to the company in terms of hard work, innovation, or strategic vision. Finally, some information is useful in planning the direction of the company and determining its position at any given time. This information can include statistics like revenue, growth, sales, and the numbers for a company's competitors; it can also include both formal and informal analysis, such as memos from strategic planners, management, or anyone with a suggestion. It can include reports from outside sources like consulting firms, and it can also include the history of the company and the marketplace. These sources are obviously very important to a company's CEO and strategic planning team; if these kinds of records are made increasingly available to other employees, however, it's quite possible that companies would benefit from the extra brainpower working on making the company succeed. Another advantage to including more employees in the strategic process is that it can boost morale by making people feel that they can actually make a difference. When planning your knowledge management system, you should start by thinking about which information is most critical to move to which people, and begin planning accordingly. Thinking about the purpose of each kind of information can help you devise a scheme for information distribution and storage that best fits your company's business needs. Parts of a greater whole -- knowledge management systems The difference between a typical company network and a knowledge management system has to do with the deliberate engineering of an information structure. If you want to empower your employees to use your company's formal and informal information base to its full potential, you have to begin thinking of disparate data sources, applications, and interfaces as parts to a greater whole. From this vantage point, you can begin engineering an information retrieval system that makes the most sense for your company's purposes -- the integration of multiple sources and interfaces in a logical fashion is what causes "information" to magically transform into "knowledge." IS as librarian Another important piece of the puzzle is having someone or some group that is actively managing the system -- corporate librarians, in a sense. The role of librarian is essential to maintaining a working knowledge management system. Although automated tools can go a long way towards making it easy to find the right information quickly, no automated tool can provide the level of analysis and overview that a knowledgeable human being offers. Such roles already exist to some extent in the form of database administrator positions or even typical IS manager capacities. The rise of larger systems that are more integrated with business strategy, however, requires that such librarian roles expand to include analysis as well as data retrieval. The danger of having one person or a small group act as the responsible authority for information, however, is the "big brother" effect it can entail. Employees at corporations where only IS can look up information often chafe against the restrictions such a system imposes. Understaffed IS departments scramble to fill never-ending information requests, while end-users impatiently count up the hours, days or weeks until they finally receive what was once vital information. This happens frequently in environments where the information system is either too hard to use (Lotus Notes is often used as an example) or too insecure to allow users to muck about in it. The key is for IS to strike a balance between being helpful and being controlling. This can be achieved most often through the use of modern automation technologies and applications to arrange data retrieval so it is both easy to use and non-life-threatening to your data sources. It's still extremely helpful to have someone to whom end-users can go when they need help finding something -- and someone who can provide useful analysis of data for strategic planners. Also this month in Netscape Enterprise Developer - Web Perspectives: For a successful intranet, get users involved - New Products: Netscape releases Communicator source code to Web - Understanding Netscape's source code license - Shoot small with your public key infrastructure - "This site brought to you by..." - New Java products highlight JavaONE conference - Start thinking like a CEO - 'Net ethnographer explains freeware to corporate natives - Shoot small with your public key infrastructure - Shoot small with your public key infrastructure

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About the author
Yun Wang is senior software engineer for InfoWorld's test center. She is an experienced developer in a variety of languages. Reach Yun at yun.wang@ne-dev.com.

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