Should the Enterprise Integrate Learning Management Systems with Knowledge Management Systems?

I have recently researched how firms are implementing Learning Management Systems and how those solutions integrate with their Knowledge Management Systems.  Each firm invested heavily in their portal LMS & KMS solutions and notably extended those solutions beyond their feature sets.  Instead of integrating the solutions or purchasing an integrated solution, content is duplicated throughout both of their firms’ specific solutions.  Not only are there duplications within the LMS & KMS, but significant Intranet content and tools are incorporated within the solutions.  Notice, I use the word incorporated not integrated.  Documents belonging on the Intranet are in the LMS, full training PDF’s are in the KMS, and no links from the KMS solution page for an inquiry links back to formal training in the LMS.

One would think my research aspirations to incorporate corporate knowledge within the users’ business workspace would endorse such solutions.  However, the Intranet, KMS, nor LMS are the users’ business workspace.  An example of a business workspace is a billing system for customers who call in for questions about their accounts.  Incorporating corporate knowledge to provide consistent and accurate responses to customer inquiries is an example of integrating corporate knowledge repositories within the business process or business workspace.

Simple description of what is a Leaning Management System?
A Learning Management System enables the management and delivery of corporate knowledge skills development.  It allows gap skills curriculum building, learner registration, delivery of learning modules, testing & assessment, certification compliance, etc. 

Simple description of what is a Knowledge Management System?
A Knowledge Management System is a system for supporting the creation, capturing, storage, and dissemination of expertise throughout the enterprise.

Simple description of what is an Intranet?
An Intranet is a communication medium for internal employees to share organization’s information or operations content.  Intranets increase collaboration and are a platform for deploying web applications to support business operations and decisions across the internal enterprise.

Accenture recommends, a tightly integrated Learning and Knowledge solution (see figure-1).  I am having trouble wrapping my IT and business brain around such a concept.  We use the KMS for short answers to thousands of customer questions.  Without tagging every paragraph within our hundreds of training documents that change everyday, a search engine could not display the correct answers for Customer Service Representatives (CSR’s).  Our CSR’s need answers in seconds and cannot traverse through pages of content, which is how traditional LMS’s store training material.

For me, the only logical solution is to provide separate KMS and LMS.  Provide simple answers in the KMS with contextual links to the LMS artifacts, complex training materials in the LMS, and everything else on the Intranet.  Feel free to shoot me an email regarding the subject or the architecture your firm utilized to integrate the KMS and LMS.