The purpose of this research is to show
the importance of knowledge management systems and knowledge management in
business and even other fields of life. Knowledge is the key for many
businesses successes. It could be considered the most important part of many
businesses as well. “In today’s business world, knowledge is the single most
important competitive advantage.”[1] With organized and easily accessible knowledge,
companies are equipped with the information they need for different business
aspects. Everybody believes that
knowledge is automatically learned when you learn different subjects, but in
the business world, if knowledge isn’t organized into things like KMS, many
important knowledgeable factors could be lost, forgotten, or kept from being
shared company wide. “Having an effective knowledge management system not only
protects revenues, it may also improve retention, increase productivity, and
promote innovation.”[2]
One way that knowledge management systems can
be of importance to a business is in the support that it provides decision
makers. In my opinion this is the most important way that a KMS could help a
company. Bits and pieces of knowledge separately are not all important to a
company when it comes to making decisions, but when organized in a meaningful
way it changes and becomes extremely useful. “While information overload or needing
knowledge from people in other parts of the company for decision-making can
handicap managers, putting in place knowledge management systems can facilitate
better, more informed decisions.”[3] Once a source of data is entered into
the system, it can be analyzed, refined, organized and stored into areas of
knowledge, which then can be accessed and gone over when it comes time to
making an important business decision. For example, if a clothing company was
deciding what their next line is going to look like, and what are the
demographics they are to market it to. Knowledgeable facts such as who are
their customers (male, female, adults, children, etc..), the locations where in
the past showed the best sales figures, and what kind of clothing sold the best
can be accessed, analyzed, compared and spoke about, before the decision of how
they are going to proceed. “Sharing
corporate information through a knowledge management system assures that key
players use the same data when analyzing a situation, checking alternatives and
forming conclusions.”[4]
Sharing knowledge through a KMS also helps to speed up the decision making
process, due to the fact the every person reviews the same data and
information, allowing everybody to be on the same knowledgeable level.
Another thing that makes KMS useful in a
business setting is the knowledge it can provide not to their customers, but to
their employees. Bits and pieces of knowledge are collected everyday by
employees of businesses. Many times the importance of that knowledge is lost
upon the company because the employee keeps it to himself instead of sharing it
with fellow employees. On the other hand if every time an employee encounters a
new situation that provides him/her with a new piece of knowledge beneficial to
the company, he creates a report, which is stored and analyzed into the KMS.
This provides a growing base of universal company knowledge that would make
other employees jobs easier. A couple examples prove this point. One for instance,
is an employee for television company runs into an issue on a job where he
cannot fix the problem due to his personal lack of knowledge. With a KMS,
instead of having to call other employees for assistance, the worker can look
up how past employees have dealt with problems alike. This cuts down on the
expenses of the company, by avoiding paying two employees for the same job, and
shortening the work time, saving the company money. Another example is from the
US Army. They call it After Action
Reviews (AAR), which is an example of a knowledge management system that has
helped build the Army into a learning organization by making learning routine.
“The U.S. Army’s After Action Reviews (AARs) are an example of a knowledge
management system that has helped build the Army into a learning organization
by making learning routine.” After every activity or event, teams sit down and
review what just occurred. They go over positive and negatives, successes and
failures, and ways in which to improve the next time around.[5]
The next time these teams are sent into the field, and are presented with life
and death situations, the knowledge that they learned from the KMS gives them
the confidence in their knowledge, which leads to safely completed missions.
KMS will continue to make the lives of
businessmen and women easier in the coming future. “American companies will spend $73 billion on knowledge management
software this year and spending on content, search, portal, and collaboration
technologies is expected to increase 16% in 2008.”[6]
The more companies see that these systems are beneficial to their companies
bottom lines the more they will be used. With “Fortune 500 companies lose roughly “$31.5 billion a year by failing to
share knowledge”[7],
it is obvious that companies will focus more on the area of knowledge
management. Showing how businesses use KMS to make decisions, teach their
employees, and the amount of money they are willing to spend, because of how
much they are actually losing in lost knowledge, proves how important knowledge
management systems are to the success, and even failure if mishandled, of
businesses.
[1]
http://www.aptean.com/en/Solutions/By-Product-Name-AZ/Knova/Additional-Resources/Benefits-of-Knowledge-Management
[2] http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_87.htm
[3]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2012/08/20/why-knowledge-management-is-important-to-the-success-of-your-company/
[4]
http://www.ehow.com/about_6660592_knowledge-management-decision-making.html
[5]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2012/08/20/why-knowledge-management-is-important-to-the-success-of-your-company/
[6] http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/IT-Management/Knowledge-Management-5-Big-Companies-That-Got-It-Right/
[7] http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2012/08/20/why-knowledge-management-is-important-to-the-success-of-your-company/
