Thinking of Implementing a Knowledge Management System (KMS)? You Need to Read this.

A few months ago, I worked on the implementation of a new knowledge management system (KMS) with a financial services organisation. During the course of the project, I realised that for many people, there is a limited or vague knowledge of what a knowledge management system is, and how difficult it could be for organisations in selecting the right product from the pool of vendors in the marketplace.

This article will attempt to answer the question - what is a knowledge management system? It will explain the major differences between a content management system (CMS) and a knowledge management system (KMS), emphasise on why organisations (especially large organisations) need a KMS, and lists some of the best knowledge management systems in the marketplace.

Knowledge and knowledge management

There is no single definition of what knowledge is. I believe what is important is to recognise the relationship between knowledge and information. Some scholars have explained knowledge as information in action. Experts in the field of knowledge management over the years identified that knowledge can be categorised into 3 types: explicit, implicit, and tacit knowledge.

Explicit knowledge is the most basic form of knowledge and it’s easy to pass along because it’s written down and accessible. Typical examples include, user manuals, textbooks, and articles such as this piece that you are reading.

Implicit knowledge is knowledge that is not clearly stated. For example, the information you will internalise (and interpret as you see fit) from reading this article, which you could communicate to others.

Tacit knowledge is the knowledge you have but is not codified, hence difficult to communicate and can sometimes only manifest when you react to things. As Michael Polanyi simply put it, "we can know more than we can tell". An example of a tacit knowledge may be an experience you have which is difficult to express.

Knowledge management is about understanding how these 3 different types of knowledge are effectively identified, captured, acquired, shared, and stored.

According to the American Productivity and Quality Centre, in the context of an organisation, “knowledge is what employees know about work-related disciplines, products, processes, their customers, one another, mistakes, and successes”.

What is a knowledge management system?

A knowledge management system (KMS) is any central repository that can quickly provide users with the most current and accurate information that users need to do their job. Applications such as Microsoft Excel, workstation, and other forms of data store are sometimes used as KMS, however this article is about enterprise knowledge management system (KMS).

Before the introduction of any tool, an organisation should produce a knowledge management strategy, which should take into consideration the intensity of information that needs to be processed. An enterprise knowledge sharing platform that an organisation deploys should depend on the key requirements, which should be based on the organisation’s business objectives, and factors such as sector, size of the organisation, etc. For example, a financial services organisation may be interested in security and analytics capabilities while a global organisation with many business units may likely have a complex navigation structure so, navigation capability will likely be a key requirement when selecting an application. As a global organisation, multi-language, search, navigation capability, etc., were among the key capabilities we looked out for.

The difference between a content management system (CMS) and a knowledge management system (KMS).

A lot of people struggle to understand the difference between a CMS and a KMS, and the reason is because both CMS and KMS act as a content repository. As you can see in the table below, the main differences are based more on the type of information they contain, how it is created, used, and how the information is managed, rather than the software features.

Why do organisations need a knowledge management system (KMS)?

Organisations need a knowledge management system for the following reasons:

·    An enterprise knowledge management system will quickly provide users with the most current and correct information when needed.

·    KMS encourages sharing of ideas and insights among employees - resulting to positive organisational culture that can encourage innovation.

·    It can be used to capture tacit information held by an employee which normally gets lost once the employee leaves the organisation.

·    Users can easily access snippets of information e.g., how to? information, which they can use to do their job without seeking help, thereby reducing calls to other teams.

·    Employees ability to make the right decision and serving customers on time will lead to increased customer satisfaction.

·    Management can create robust metrics in the analytics that can be used to improve knowledge within the team and also manage customers better.

·    A KMS that is properly managed gives managers and other decision makers the confidence in the information they access thereby helping them make more informed decisions.

·    It saves employees time they could have spent recreating information.

·    A knowledge management system encourages learning within an organisation.

Top Solutions

Our sourcing strategy included going through Initial Market Scan, RFI, RFP, and Vendor Demo phases. We carried out market research using the following websites g2crowd.com, capterra.com, and getapp.com, so the listed solutions were based on the outcome of the research and the subsequent vendor selection process. To keep the article as short as possible, I have opted not to produce a comparison chat for the applications (as you can read the pros and cons of each on the websites listed above), rather I have listed the top solutions based on a wider KMS capabilities. In no particular order, I have selected the following applications below as my top solutions:

Bloomfire, Igloo, Confluence, Guru, Exo, KnowledgeOwl, ProProfs, Simpplr, Helpjuice, SharePoint (needs customisation)

Additional Points

If you are going through vendor selection - RFI/RFP phases, make sure you verify that a vendor's solution meets all of your must and should have requirements as necessary. Do not assume that because a requirement is a common feature of a CMS/KMS, that a vendor's solution would provide such capability. As the saying goes, "assumption is the mother of all ...".

 Also, if you want to develop your KMS based on a SharePoint solution, I would advise that you consult a Microsoft gold partner. You can find a few vendors if you browse the Microsoft website or just by doing a quick search. It would also help if you work with a gold partner that has previously implemented a knowledge management system.