In the 1990s, the IT world was abuzz with the knowledge management (KM) revolution. In preparation, companies started hiring KM managers and purchasing expensive systems with the promise of making information flow easier and more efficiently. Over the years, however, the KM-related positions faded away, these systems remained underutilized, and people were left with a bitter taste in their mouth when KM entered the conversation.
So what happened? For one, there were so many different definitions of knowledge and of KM. Some people thought knowledge was what existed in the hard-copy documents lying around the office, so KM meant record or document management, organizing information in a company so it was easier to find. They simply automated existing information processes, taking paper files and documents and converting them into a digital form.
Others thought of it as a way to capture tacit knowledge from employees, which means it relied on employees to contribute information. This latter definition could be part of a cyclical problem - if your employees are not contributing to the knowledge base, then the knowledge base is not very effective and will not deliver on the promise of making information access and exchange easier.
It was also too rigid - older KM systems did not take into account that people were contributing content, so the content would naturally evolve as procedures and policies changed and employees moved roles. Without a flexible system, knowledge would become outdated quickly and rendered useless.
Why the KM Revitalization?
There are several factors contributing to the revitalized interest in KM, or KM 2.0. It is important to remember that Internet, HTML or audio/video content weren’t part of the equation when KM first entered the discussion - people were just getting comfortable with a relational database management system (RDBMS) and records-oriented content. It therefore wasn't obvious why you needed another content storage system. With the arrival of the Internet and its evolution leading up to today, unstructured data exists easily in so many forms that cannot be accommodated in an RDBMS.
Another driver is the aging workforce - according to a recent study by the Conference Board, by 2010 about 64 million workers - 40 percent of the nation’s workforce - will be poised for retirement, though not all will choose to leave.1 As baby boomers leave the workforce in droves, a growing concern among the companies they are vacating is the knowledge vacuum created in their wake. With a company being only as strong as its employees, companies are faced with the daunting task of capturing the knowledge before it’s too late – and with some sort of efficiency.
Also, competition has intensified across almost every industry as companies focus more and more on the user experience. For companies that sell into a competitive market, purchase decisions often hinge upon customer service quality. Wireless providers, banking institutions and insurance companies, for example, all advertise superior customer service experiences to lure users away from their current providers, leading companies to constantly scrutinize their current offering. Seeking any way to improve their user experiences, many organizations are starting to look to KM as a key part of their customer service function - arming service agents and Web self-service users with the best possible information to solve service issues as quickly and pleasantly as possible, while at the same time preventing future problems from arising for other users. They are also focusing on how employees can benefit from the knowledge their colleagues possess - a call center agent that has dealt with a service issue will have insight into how to solve it quicker and can also contribute to a discussion on how to prevent the issue from happening again.
For many industries, customers are becoming more technically savvy and prefer having the resources available to solve problems themselves. In this competitive landscape, they can and will go elsewhere if the company with whom they do business cannot deliver that level of customer self-service. From a customer satisfaction and an efficiency standpoint, self-service options become even more critical. Taking this a step further, companies in the KM 2.0 world realize that these customers have valuable knowledge that could be helpful in improving the self-service process as well as useful to other users. Companies are becoming more and more open to tools such as discussion forums where users can essentially help each other solve their problems.
