Page 227 - DMGT505_MANAGEMENT_INFORMATION_SYSTEM

Management Information Systems

Notes 11.4.1 Building Enterprise Knowledge Management

Enterprise knowledge management can be defined as a consistent and incorporated vision of
the sources and uses of knowledge across an association. Enterprise knowledge management
considers into account every knowledge source—from what employees identify to what clients
tell us—and combines it with traditional corporate knowledge like standard operating procedures.
To implement enterprise knowledge management initiate by creating a single corporate data
model that recognizes common data and objects and makes them usable across the whole
enterprise.
The enterprise knowledge management scheme depends on a few simple principles and traits:
1. The first principle of enterprise knowledge management is that there is no “natural” view
of data. Each and every data object is generated in a manner that is autonomous of the
eventual use of that data. To generate data objects, standard definitions of them must be
formed and adhered to. In the same way that relational databases must normalize data—
remove redundant data and replication of objects—so as to be efficient and avoid
maintenance confusion and errors, so too does enterprise knowledge management rely
on normalized knowledge for smooth operation and ease of management.

2. Enterprise knowledge management needs open architectures and standard protocols. The
individual applications that will maintain enterprise knowledge management all through
the organization must be able to converse with each other, which is why applications with
proprietary data stores have no position in enterprise knowledge management.
3. Enterprise knowledge management must incorporate internal and external data. The
restrictions of corporate knowledge go beyond internal knowledge. The knowledge shared
by suppliers, distributors, and clients in their transactions with us is significant company
data that must, along with internal data, be managed. Additionally, every company requires
access to analyst reports, aggressive information, macroeconomic information, and much
more. While we typically have some control over the format of internal data, we normally
have much less control over external data. This is why standards like XML tags will in the
upcoming days be critical.
4. The enterprise knowledge management effort must embrace all electronic corporate
communications; intranets, extranets, and public Web sites must all sketch from the same
data resources. The traditional view of intranets, extranets, and Websites is that they
represent diverse repositories or networks. They were considered of as exclusive entities
with little in common beyond their shared infrastructure. But this view is incorrect.
To generate separate repositories of data for each of these entities is redundant and
unnecessary. There is plenty of data that can and should be shared across these sites:
project data, phone numbers, news, etc. It’s the data that should be labelled as public or
private, confidential or non-confidential, not the network.
5. Ultimately, and most significantly, enterprise knowledge management must cross
functional boundaries inside the organization. Businesses are managed into functional
groups (IT, HR, Sales, Research) to make management simpler. Don’t make the error of
trying to make your corporate knowledge fit into the same inflexible structure. Corporate
organizational structures occur to make it simpler to organize people, not knowledge.
There is no reason that your corporate knowledge and your people should share the
similar organization chart. Once you appreciate the different uses for your corporate data,
the structure of the data mapping should fall into position.

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