Knowledge Management Systems

What is a KMS?

Most Organisations have information systems in place (with or without IT support) that are designed to disseminate information within their Organisations. These systems were generally referred to as Management information systems (MIS). However, in the late early 90’s more and more Organisations adopted Information technology to achieve competitive advantage and so specific information systems emerged with focuses either on management activities or business processes. Such Information Systems are the Decision support systems (DSS), Executive support systems (ESS), Executive Information Systems (EIS) and Enterprise Systems. An emerging need for Organisations to capture and retain its knowledge, which forms a large part of its intangible assets, has given birth to a line of systems referred to as Knowledge management systems (KMS) (Alavi M. & Leidner D.E. 1999).

A Knowledge Management System is one that enables an Organisation to efficiently manage its processes for capturing and applying knowledge and expertise (or forte). This system should be able to capture all essential knowledge that may be used to improve the organisation’s business processes and make it available as and when needed. The system should also have a link to other sources of knowledge which may be external. (Laudon K.C. & Laudon J.P., 2007)

Types of KMS

There are three major types of KMS which can also be further broken down into more specialized types (Laudon K.C. & Laudon J.P., 2007)

• Enterprise-Wide KMS
• Knowledge work systems
• Intelligent techniques

KMS in the Organisation

Several research and studies have been carried out on the use of knowledge management systems in an Organisation. Alavi M & Leidner D.E. (1999) carried out a survey on over 190 companies some of who already had KMS and others who were still developing their KMS. The study showed that when asked what they want Knowledge to do for them, their responses could be categorized into three broad groups namely:

Information based knowledge: Internal (clients, competitors and suppliers) and External (financial, HR, product information)

Technology based Knowledge: Intranets, internets, e-mail, Global IT infrastructure etc.

Culture based Knowledge: (also termed organisational/Structure) Includes; Team work, ethics, organisational culture etc.

The survey showed that managers within Organisations believe that in developing a KMS, all three classifications must work together. Some managers had the opinion that the technology component makes up for 20% of the whole KMS, focusing on cultural learning within the Organisation.

Organisational knowledge is viewed as a key resource and a tool to gain advantage. Therefore, the general objective of KMS is to help an Organisation achieve competitive advantage. If an Organisation is able to create transfer and store its knowledge and operational efficiencies, this is knowledge which its competitors cannot easily emulate and therefore can give advantage to the organisation over others.

Role of IT in supporting KMS
The act of knowledge management in Organisation is not a new concept. Manufacturing companies in the past practised this by people applying new knowledge to manufacturing processes. What is new is the use of IT in Knowledge management. Going by the three broad categories identified in the last section, we see that IT (Technology based knowledge) has a part to play in a complete KMS.

The common technologies being used in KMS today are: Browser, Electronic mail (e-mail), search/retrieval tools, information repositories, videoconferencing, external server services and WWW server. For now, the intranet seems to be the most used technology in knowledge management, followed closely by e-mail and search/retrieval tools (Alavi M. & Leidner D.E. 1999).

The Knowledge management value chain by Laudon & Laudon (2007) shows a flow of knowledge which includes information systems activities in addition to management and organisational activities. This value chain says that the activities within a KMS can be categorised into four: Acquire, Store, Disseminate and Apply. It further breaks downs those business activities and processes that make up the 3 broad categories refered to earlier in this post.

References
Alavi M. & Leidner D.E. 1999. Knowledge Management Systems: Emerging Views and Practices from the Field. Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE

Laudon K.C. and Laudon J.P. (2006). Management information systems : managing the digital firm(10th edition). New Jersey:Prentice Hall.