Knowledge Management - Knowledge management

In article devoted to a question of the applicability of management tools corporate content for knowledge management (Knowledge Management, KM) published on the industry CMSwire resource, her author, Jed Cawthorne, the Canadian specialist in the field of information management on the example of different types of the companies (the pharmaceutical or military industry) upholds several key provisions connected with the choice of an ECM product for the solution of business challenges. The expert considers that to manage information, it needs to be received whenever possible in a complete type - from structured (transaction documents) to unstructured and informal (blogs, correspondence in IM clients). Similar amount of data in principle cannot be controlled the one and only corporate system, and the search solutions as a part of ECM products indexing all or almost all information which is stored in the organization are incapable to be satisfied completely to requirements of knowledge management. Domestic players of the market of EDMS share views of the western expert in an occasion of this problem and consider that in Russia there are successful examples of creation of KM solutions.

Kuryanov Sergey, the development director of DocsVision, believes that the problem of knowledge management consists in impossibility of universal determination of border between information and knowledge. According to him, it is possible that only one record in the ERP system already gives knowledge necessary for management, and it is possible, as terabytes of documents do not give any knowledge, except information on their quantity. He agrees with the western colleague concerning deep dependence of knowledge management on a context of the specific organization as in each organization there are own interrelations between the different records generating knowledge. "In practice any attempt to create the qualifier, the reference book of categories or document types or records is an attempt to construct the KM system. If it was succeeded to construct an end-to-end categorization of information objects in the context of the specific enterprise, it would be possible to tell that the task of KM is solved, - mister Kuryanov argues. - In visible and stable space of such objects the task is quite solved, however in the big continuously changing organizations which offices work in the different cities and the countries, this task is represented unsolvable". His opinion is shared also by Senkevich Victor, the managing director of PayBot. According to him, determination of KM is not strict, allowing to record accurately data domain: the concept "data" is strictly formalizable and, respectively, data management is rather accurately certain scope of software applications, and the concept "knowledge" like that is not. The specialist, however, sees progressive trends in development of this sphere: "Rapid development of the applications implementing a web 2.0 functions allows to hope for emergence in the future of "killer application" (applications - "murderers") and in the field of KM. Probably, the market already waits for emergence of such products - success of iPad demonstrates that the future behind the products allowing easily, to gain in couple of clicks "knowledge" on the basis of "data".

Sergey Kuryanov believes that the situation in Russia is similar to western – a large number of analysts and IT specialists try to create or improve corporate qualifiers and reference books, however success in this work is defined not by a technology platform, but depth of understanding by these analysts of the business and trends of its change. Uses of Enterprise 2.0 mechanisms (rating, commenting, tags) specified in article of mister Kotoron of a way help to find the solution, however, it often does not work as at people who should expose ratings and comment on texts, there is no motivation to these occupations.

Meldov Vladimir, the director of quality of Corus Consulting, notes that demand for similar KM solutions in the Russian market nevertheless is, but costs for their implementation exceed possible effect so far. He explains it with specifics of a task which such is that for obtaining effect certain organizational objective and subjective conditions which really now in the Russian organizations did not develop are necessary. According to him, in the market should exist as objective conditions (the target, i.e. concentrated application of the solution from the knowledge base in a specific point; highly skilled content management which is not a technical, but information and strategic task; motivation of personnel), and subjective (technology discipline, job specialization (the personnel which manage the knowledge base should be included directly in a technology chain through communications of management, but is exempted from accomplishment of production operations), sharing of management tools knowledge and joint work).

"The modern knowledge management system is on intersection of many areas for which different subsystems of corporate information environment usually are responsible. The elements characteristic for ECM, CRM and also sets of other products which are earlier not carried to corporate solutions enter it. The most important functionality of such system is the possibility of preserving and enhancement of knowledge accumulated by the company as as a result of internal works, and external interaction", - explains Nazarenko Alexey, the director of quality InterTrust, continuing that with the advent of modern concepts of knowledge management, there were also new solutions which main feature is the organization of many-sided interaction between workers which includes both social networks, and forums, and blogs, and wiki-solutions, and electronic document management systems. "Knowledge management is one of the major disciplines in the concept of ECM. But at the same time it is impossible to forget that it is beyond far software products. Specialized software for knowledge management is only one of tools, often even not most important. On the other hand, the organizations quite often come to use of ECM systems after understanding of that, it is how important to save the accumulated experience and also to make it available to all employees", - believes Kochurov Evgeny, the IT analyst Directum. He believes that complete approach to knowledge management is possible, but not so much based on the ECM systems, how many based on the practician of their implementation. "So, if to consider close any of problems of knowledge management, in the forefront there are organizational and methodological issues, and software can not be required at all", - he notices. Mister Kochurov emphasizes that as practice of the last years shows, ECM systems even more often are attracted for problems of knowledge management, but they cannot apply for inclusiveness, except as in several specific industries, such as IT or consulting. Yakimchuk Sergey The head of Competence Center of MS SharePoint of the company Terralink when says that the choice of this or that platform is only a small step on the way of creation of a knowledge management system holds the same opinion and. He believes that a variety of systems for such tasks is optional - the existing trend on reduction of quantity of information systems quite positively affects also KM solutions, and the ready uniform KM systems exist, and the question of their use is connected with the organization of knowledge processing and also requirements to interfaces.

Respondents of CNews specialists note that in Russia there are in pure form no solutions for KM, but there are software products which can be used for their creation. In turn, the projects in the large companies executed by large integrators which are positioned as projects in the field of KM directly do not belong to implementation of EDMS and are based on technologies of the organization of corporate storage and techniques of extraction of the data allowing to analyze and obtain coherent information from such storages. Experts carried solutions in MegaFon, "Yandex", FSB to such projects.

Source: CNews, on July 22, 2010