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.

Knowledge, Information and Data (K.I.D.)

The most featured terms in KM are Knowledge, Information and Data. These terms all have to do with the cycle or science of information and are often misinterpreted.

A comparative analysis carried out by Stenmark, D. (2002) indicates that though it has been established that data, information and knowledge are not the same, there still isn’t a very clear line between information and knowledge.

The following definitions of K.I.D. make sense to me:

Data is the representation of facts, concepts, or instructions in a formalized manner which is suitable for interpretation, or processing. It is any representation such as quantities or characters to which meaning is or MIGHT be assigned. Telecommunications’ (1996)

Information is defined by Wikipedia (2009) as data that has been processed into a format that is understandable by its intended audience

Knowledge is information in action or information transformed into the capability for effective action. Taking action and building experience turns information into knowledge. R.G. Smith (2008)

My understanding
In applying these definitions to an organisation, I would use my bank as illustration.

At the end of each day, there is a batch print-out which is a long sheet of paper containing transaction codes, posting tellers, account numbers, amounts posted etc,. This document is data to a relationship manager because, it is a representation of facts and meaning has not been assigned to it; however, there is the ability to assign meaning to it.

When this data categorised by account managers, a manager is then able to make meaning of the data because he can now see all accounts under him and see amounts withdrawn and deposited in a day. This meaningful data has now become Information because it is now understandable by the recipient (the client manager)

An analysis of this information may indicate that deposits reduced drastically from the previous day. Based on this information, the manager would put measures in place to find out the reason and take decisive action if need be. This is Knowledge.

Knowledge vs Information vs Data
The most common view of the relationship between these terms by Knowledge management scholars is that a linear relationship exists which starts with Data leading to Information and information to Knowledge (Nissen, 2000; Davenport and Prusak, 1998).

However, contrary views exist which argue that Knowledge is a requirement for data and information and thus the relationship between data, information and knowledge is actually interwoven in a complicated manner and therefore is more complicated than the linear representation (Tuomi, I., 1999)

The question is; Is the relationship between data, information and Knowledge that simple?

I do agree that Data CAN produce information, and Information CAN produce Knowledge. I also agree with Tuomi (1999) and others in his school that Knowledge is required to distinguish data from information in the first place. After all, several definitions of knowledge indicate that it resides within the mind of someone. This means that knowledge should be present first even before data and information.

Based on this, neither a linear or cyclic relationship may be accurate to express the relationship between KID. An interesting viewpoint on the hierarchy of knowledge is by Hicks R.C, Dattero R and Galup S.D (2006) who came up with the five tiers of knowledge to include both personal knowledge(knowledge contained in the mind of one person) and codified knowledge (knowledge that has been captured and may be shared) knowledge.

My viewpoint
Using the bank again as an Organisation for illustration, a relationship manager knows the difference between data and information because he has acquired knowledge to do so. This knowledge could be from what he’s been taught or from his experiences. This same manager, from his knowledge can produce facts which can be termed as data or meaningful data which can prove to be information for some. However, if knowledge were absent, none of it would be possible.

Therefore, knowledge is the most important of these three terms.

References:
Davenport, T. and Prusak, L. (1998), Working Knowledge, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA

Hicks, R. C., Dattero R. and Galup S.D., 2006 The five-tier knowledge management hierarchy, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 19-31

Nissen, M.E. (2000), An extended model of knowledge-flow dynamics, Communications of the
Association for Information Systems, Vol. 8, pp. 251-66

Stenmark, D. 2002 Information vs. Knowledge: The Role of intranets in Knowledge Management, Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE.

Tuomi, I. 1999, Data is More Than Knowledge: Implications of the Reversed Knowledge Hierarchy for Knowledge Management and Organizational Memory, Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 16, No.3, 1999, pp. 107-121

Online references;
Telecommunications (1996): Glossary of Telecommunication Terms, Federal Standard 1037c, Available online: http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/ [accessed January 25, 2009]

Wikipedia (2009) Available online: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/data, [accessed February 2, 2009]

R.G. Smith and Associates (2008) Resources, Available Online: http://www.rgsmithassociates.com/Glossary.htm, [accessed January 26, 2009]