Building Knowledge Management (KM) Systems in Organizations

“KM is more of a strategy supported by Information Technology (IT) that can show a quantifiable and sometimes substantial return on investment” (MacSweeney, 2002). Knowledge needs to be put at the fingertips of people within an organization i.e. readily available to everyone in an organization. This should not only be available but ease of use is very important. It needs to be the culture of the organization to use the knowledge available either by IT or collaboration. It needs to be enabled for users internally.

Buyers and customers need to be educated as with Armonk insurance company: with the use of the internet, products are described online, as well as coverage type, liability, background process for rating etc. Applying this scenario to Albion (organization for group coursework), the use of the internet for buyers, garment technologists and customers may prove to be a beneficial KM strategy in the organization (MacSweeney, 2002).

MacSweeney (2002) suggests that the focus of a knowledge strategy can either be inward or outward, either way the strategy should not be Information Technology (IT) driven but IT can support a strategy. He further purports that to have a successful KM strategy, the business community has to be involved from the inception and sponsorship from business executives in essential.

Role of IT in Supporting Knowledge Management (KM)

Case Study (Laudon and Laudon 2006)

Content Management Systems as an IT support for KM: Southern Company is an organization that generates electricity for over 4 million people in the United States of America.

The introduction of documentum system (content management system) cut down search time for essential documents and processes to 10 minutes from 2 hours and also increased the success in locating current content to 90% from 50%.

Another benefit that the IT supported knowledge management system brought to Southern Company was the helped to be more prepared for the hurricane Katrina compared to other organizations in that they were able to copy to disk critical drawings/plans and other information allowing those workers that are field based with laptops to retrieve much needed information thereby enabling them to restore energy to their users.

Southern Company’s energy restoration to their users was accomplished in 1 day and 20 hours compared to their competitors restoration time that averaged 3 days and 5 hours.

The above benefits show how efficient and effective an organization can be if KM is supported by IT. It also shows that Southern Company can gain competitive advantage by delivering faster than their competitors.

Problems Faced by Southern Company:
Document intensive i.e. piles of documents to go through before reaching the needed document(s)

• Fragmented information in legacy system i.e. a lot of legacy systems holding different forms of information
• Manual processes: so many paper based forms to fill and manual processes to follow.

Ideal situation:

• Reduced paper based documentation

• Consolidated information in one accessible system

• Automated processes

Results:

• Reduce cost: saving in the long-run on man hours regarding searching for information, designs, processes etc.
• Reduced time: to complete processes of energy restoration i.e. the knowledge required to restore energy, to find documents, to find information or content
• Competitive advantage gained through cost and time reduction
  

References:
Laudon, K., Laudon, J. (2006). Management Information Systems: Manging the Digital Firm (10^th Edition) p14
MacSweeney G., (2002). The Knowledge Management Payback. Insurance and Technology May 6, 2002