Knowledge Management
Knowledge management in its three main system manifestations is very big business! Typically the approaches to knowledge management organizations take are a combination of two or three systems. Any one of these systems is usually beyond the financial reach of a small to medium enterprise (SME).
Content Management
This approach is typified by a data repository or warehouse. The 'content manager' is typically a server based software platform and the presentation of any material resident within the content manager is facilitated by another application - either custom built or customized to facilitate various "schema" for presentation.
Analogy: The interfaces can only display the dynamic content they have been designed to display, so the analogy is really; 'linked or embedded spreadsheet fields in a document'. New data requires 'updates' to the application layer to display or accommodate new fields in the content manager database.
Cost Profile: Content Managers are usually 'big money', accompanied by a typically lengthy implementation. The platform goes upwards from many ten's of thousands of dollars depending on size of organization. The annual licensing fee can be up to 35% of the initial purchase. Changes to the display application are 'developments' with developers paid to carry them out.
Support: Both the content management, the interface application content display and meta-tagging development require ongoing IT professional support. When linked to workflow - every process change impacts and must be reflected in the content management and display - although this is a good thing in principle, it does increase the support activity for the applications.
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Document Management:
This approach is typified by identifying actual documents as opposed to the content of those documents. Through numbering, organizing and storing these documents for retrieval, the view is that by preserving everything, anything of importance is preserved.
Analogy: The analogy is 'intelligent filing' - right down to versions. Its problem is similar to that of physical filing or in fact relying on your own memory - labels! It is under the label you first put it - what was that?
Your brain and search functions share the same dilemma. They work on your associations and as long as you still have the same associations with that label, for that document, in some cases years on, you should still be able to find it! This problem is exacerbated by new material coming along with which you form a new associating label that retrospectively would have worked for some of the other ones (now there are more of this subtype) Not withstanding the difficulties there are documents that need to be kept on file in their entirety that we need to be able to find quickly. Cost Profile: document management is big money and high maintenance. Sophisticated document management systems can cost similar sums to content management systems with pricing similarly capable of exceeding $100 per head, per month.
As the number of documents grow the noise and delay in locating what you were looking for increase, a bit like the 30 million pages you can be served, 10 at a time, on an Internet search. Support: It is a career! The constant filing may not require IT support but the altering of labels or tags to that material almost certainly will, as will managing band width, storage and access to material.
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Collaboration:
This approach is typified by identifying the people who know what you need to accomplish tasks or achieve a goal in the organization and working with them, sharing files and team based decision making. Collaboration systems can also provide skill and experience inventory in some instances to enable the right networking to happen. However this very important ability is not an inexpensive substitute for accessing content directly.
Analogy: The analogy is 'who you know you know'. If you know the person that knows what you want to know the fastest route to learning what they know is to ask them. The draw back is that you contacting them may not be the best thing for them - unless you are both called to collaborate by work force or process design. Secondly, artifacts created in the collaborative space will supposedly have use outside of or beyond the collaboration team and will need to be placed into content or document management eventually anyway.
Cost Profile: Typically collaboration tools are less expensive than content and document management ones but are often seriously under utilized for their cost. Industry standard collaboration tools are licensed from around $50 per head, per month.
Support: Notwithstanding that the application can allow individual collaboration to occur and dissolve largely with little IT involvement, long term workflow related collaboration and the collaboration tool requires constant IT support.
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