The Value of Knowledge Management

A certain Sir Francis Bacon once said: "Knowledge is power." This phrase is one of the most popular realities but what is not said here is that without action, knowledge means absolutely nothing. This is where the term "management" comes into play. The success of many small and large companies lies in the management of the total knowledge it can acquire. Knowledge management is widely described as the process of capturing, allocating and efficiently using data to the benefit of an organization. The importance of conducting this function in a business is vital as the next two sections describe why:

Three key reasons why it is important for a business to constantly manage their knowledge in order to gain success:

1. Facilitates Decision-Making Capabilities

In order for an organization, especially large ones, to have well planed methods to share and collect important information and knowledge, they need to have innovative and effective knowledge management systems in place. This will in turn give the organization the ability to cut through the noise, share information more efficiently and improve their decision making.

2. Builds Learning Organizations by Making Learning Routine

By making learning routine in an organization it encourages the workforce to continuously assess themselves, their department and the organization itself, looking for manner in which they can improve their performance. After every important activity or assignment done in the organization, the whole workforce should review and identify their successes and failures in order to perform better the next time. This approach to capturing learning from experience builds knowledge that can then be used to streamline operations and improve processes.

3. Stimulates Cultural Change and Innovation

Another benefit for actively managing the knowledge of a company is that it can also stimulate cultural change and innovation by encouraging more ideas from the workforce. Businesses need to develop knowledge management programs that will enable them to embrace change as well as encourage ideas and insights that will lead to innovative business processes.

The steps on how to implement a good knowledge management program:

Organizations that want to implement a successful program should consider aspects such as people, processes, technology structure and culture. Only then will the business be able to follow the eight steps effectively. The eight steps include the following:

1 Establish Knowledge Management Program Objectives

The first stage implies that organizations should envision what they wish the outcome of the knowledge management program should be by setting short-term as well as long-term goals.

2 Prepare for Changes

Seeing that knowledge management is more than just an application of technology, businesses should prepare for changes within the culture as well as the norms and shared values of the organization.

3 Define High-Level Process

The business should develop a quality program that can develop with detailed procedures and work instructions. However, this should be completed and approved before the seventh step (implementation) is being executed.

4 Determine and Prioritize Technology Needs

This will depend on the objectives set in step one. Because there is such a variety of knowledge management solutions available, it is important for organizations to understand the options with their benefits. They must also know what their situation will need in order to find the best suitable solution.

5 Assess Current State

In this step, organizations should assess the knowledge management program an it should cover all five of the core components such as people, processes, technology, structure and culture. It should provide an overview of the assessment, the gaps between the current and the desired situation, and recommendations to attend to the gaps.

6 Build an Implementation Road-map

Organizations need to develop strategies on how to implement the program as well as how to attend to the changes that will occur. This will give them a clearer vision on what to do when, when implementing the program.

7 Implementation

By executing the implementation phase, businesses have to make sure to review their progress continuously as this will allow them to rectify mistakes that may occur, as soon as possible.

8 Measure and Improve the Program

In the final stage, organizations should measure their preferred outcome against the actual one and improve on the aspects that have not met their expectations in order for the next implementation to be more successful.

It is then evident that by agreeing that a knowledge management program is complex and may be costly as well as time consuming, it is definitely a worthwhile investment in order for an organization to be successful in the business world of today.