KM Artifacts Integrated Around Processes

KANA Agent IQ for Knowledge Management

I inherited a Knowledge Management (KM) project implementing KANA IQ as the Knowledge Management System (KMS).  While KANA provides many features relating to Knowledge Management Initiatives, be aware, it is not an enterprise KMS.  That is a direct quote from a KANA sales rep in 03/07.  While researching the IQ tool, this is what their first two marketing lines read:

Too often, knowledge management solutions simply improve the agent’s ability to research a problem. Unfortunately, search is the wrong solution when it comes to improving the speed and quality of customer service.

While that statement may be true within their toolsets since they incorporated a search engine that Gartner dropped from all four of the magic quadrants, in 2006.  KANA would change their illogical marketing if they demo a tool like Endeca (www.endeca.com) search.  The KANA IQ tool does have value as a repository for the placement of pristine knowledge artifacts, geared for a line of business and not the enterprise.  The tool is not an out of the box solution and requires significant customization.  My advice is to pick a tool that targets the enterprise and spend your dollars customizing that solution instead of a line of business toolset.

Research Validity

Knowledge Management artifacts traditionally reside in disparate Knowledge Management Systems and fail to pose knowledge artifacts around business processes, within the users’ portal workspace. The following are a few research blurbs around the problem.

1. Knowledge Management is rarely thought of as a strategy for redesigning business processes.  Business processes can have enhanced value if documented organizational-knowledge is posed within the context of the business process and related process steps (El Sawy & Josefek, 2003).
2. The future of Knowledge Management functionality will be seamlessly embedded into the business application user interface.  This approach will probably integrate a blend of information and knowledge, required by any given employee and putting it within the user’s intranet portal workspace (Kay, 2003).
3. This report validates that traditional Document Management Systems often support non-real-time processes, effectively making explicit knowledge non-utilized during granular tactical processes (Flint, 2003).
4. Companies’ inability to apply its existing knowledge effectively, which causes management to work around basic problems where supporting documentation resides in disparate locations throughout the enterprise (Gaines, 2003).
5. Many tools exist to manage individual content but none offer complete actionable intelligence derived from knowledge content repositories to add business value to supported business processes.  Approximately 70-percent of business information is unstructured documents; and the next paradigm shift is predicted to incorporate knowledge resources that sit outside of organizations’ business process, unstructured information, and web-based enterprise systems (Hashmi, 2004). 
6. Additional research is needed to truly bring knowledge artifacts directly into the business activities.  (Holsapple & Joshi, 2002).
7. A knowledge approach is necessary for the modern business and will become the strategic driver for the future of businesses.  That future will cause a convergence where knowledge-based systems will integrate within every core-business competency.  The basis for the prediction is that knowledge is useless unless it is shared with those for whom it has business benefit (Kay, 2003).
8. Information repositories often are unused and become knowledge silos without interacting with potential users workspace.  The non-use of these repositories is attributed to the disparity between the repositories and users’ workspace environment where their daily tasks are performed (Kwan & Balasubramanian, 2003).
9. The primary reason for knowledge-based virtual community’s non-use is the difficulty at which members have access to the community.  If users have to navigate outside of the work area to gain knowledge, there is significantly less adoption and utilization of the virtual knowledge-sharing community(Ardichvilli, Page, & Wentling, 2003).
10. Most intranets hold corporate targeted information and do not provide information based upon an audience’s context.  This results in globally diverse departments, emailing relevant content to other group members and bypassing posting knowledge content on their intranet (Stenmark, 2003).
11. Knowledge Management research, traditionally focuses on topics such as the social science of classifying knowledge.  The tendency for Knowledge Management topics and utilization to focus towards knowledge practitioners and experts, and not focused around problem areas within an organization (Liao, 2003).
12. Business Process Management and Knowledge Management are interrelated and that combined, they become a business process that corporations fail to achieve effectively.  New techniques and tools for developing Knowledge Management Systems are needed within the present global corporate environment (Wang & Ariguzo, 2004).

References

Ardichvilli, A., Page, V., & Wentling, T. (2003). Motivation and barriers to participation in virtual knowledge-sharing communities of practice. Journal of Knowledge Management, 7(1), 64-78.

El Sawy, O. A., & Josefek, R. A. (2003). Business process as nexus of knowledge. In C. W. Holsapple (Ed.), Handbook of Knowledge Management: Knowledge Matters (Vol. 1, pp. 425 – 438). Berlin: Springer.

Flint, D. (2003). How to achieve real-time content management (No. SPA-20-0791). Stamford, CT: Gartner Group.

Gaines, B. R. (2003). Organizational knowledge acquisition. In C. W. Holsapple (Ed.), Handbook on Knowledge Management: Knowledge Matters (Vol. 1, pp. 317-348). Berlin: Springer.

Hashmi, N. (2004). ERP and content management: Harmonic convergence. Retrieved July 14,, 2004, from http://www.intelligenteai.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22102269

Holsapple, C. W., & Joshi, K. D. (2002). Knowledge manipulation activities: Results of a Delphi study. Journal of Information & Management, 39(1), 477-490.

Kay, A. S. (2003). The curious success of knowledge management. In C. W. Holsapple (Ed.), Handbook on Knowledge (Vol. 2, pp. 679-687). Berlin: Springer.

Kwan, M. M., & Balasubramanian, P. (2003). KnowledgeScope: Managing knowledge in context. Journal of Decision Support Systems, 35(4), 467-486.

Liao, S. (2003). Knowledge management technologies and applications: Literature review from 1995 to 2002. Expert Systems with Applications, 25(2), 155-164.

Stenmark, D. (2003). Intranet as formative context: A study of an under-utilized corporate web. Paper presented at the Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Tampa, FL.

Wang, S., & Ariguzo, G. (2004). Knowledge management through the development of information schema. Journal of Information & Management, 41(4), 445-456.