Knowledge Management

The focus of knowledge management is to collect and share information, like best practices and lessons learned that would help your company operate more efficiently or effectively. The knowledge may represent some of your intellectual capital.

Considerations

How you go about collecting, analyzing and distributing the data depends on your needs. Knowledge management is typically thought of as an internal database, but the knowledgebases can also be shared with customers, suppliers or other parties if it will benefit the business. Because knowledge management is open to interpretation, it can be difficult to distinguish knowledge management from other collaboration applications.

Features

• Collect

  Capture information that may help the business.

• Share

  Share the information with anyone that is in a position to help make the company more efficient or effective.

• Content & Document Management

  Store, track and share content and document files.

Based on the generality of the features above, knowledge management could include a single document, web pages, wikis, blogs, content management applications, document management applications and databases. Two of the relatively new types of applications are described below.

• Blog

  The term "blog" comes from combining the words "web" and "log". Blogs are usually written by one person and provide expert commentary on whatever subject or focus the writer chooses. Blogs targeted at customers may serve as both knowledge management and marketing because they can boost credibility.

• Wiki

  You have probably heard of Wikipedia. A wiki is a collaborative website that allows easy updating by anyone with access. The emphasis is on quick collaboration that can be loosely structured.

Implementation Options