Kathy Harris

I’m at the CRM conference this week and among the topics of conversation is a familiar one — knowledge management. With the advent of sophisticated search and social software, many people believe the KM challenge is resolved. After all, look at the evidence:

• Whatever knowledge people need is “out there” somewhere in the digital mire and is available and accessible – all we have to do is search for it.
• Social software is compelling and friendly and has lifted the barriers to knowledge sharing.
• And underlying the first two advances is the assumption that the average person is good at search and has the social skills and attitude to collaborate and share their knowledge.

Let’s start with the obvious: Most people aren’t great at search – getting relevant, specific information from the web is a challenge for most people (even with semantic capabilities, tagging and indexing improving in some key domains). Users need some knowledge of the desired content to build a good search argument. They also need an ability to determine the trustworthiness of information and separate fact from fiction. They even need to understand the language of search and the web to take advantage of their power. 

Also, social software and sophisticated search doesn’t make people smarter or less territorial or more collaborative – it does expand information sources and access to experts and interesting people. And for willing participants, social software can enable them to expand their sociability - they can learn from other people, contribute their knowledge and the rich social interactions may influence them to drop their barriers to sharing ideas and knowledge. 

My conclusion is that while it may seem out of sync with the powerful computing capabilities of 2009, organizations still need a strategy, focus and structure in knowledge management. KM is a business practice, a process and a cultural change. It even includes policies — for reuse, for knowledge sharing, and so on. It is not the tools of search, social computing, expertise location, content management, etc. It is about people using those tools and processes to find and apply information to fill a need or resolve a specific problem in the (often unique) context required by a customer, a call center agent or a sales and marketing team member.

And while we might expect to easily find the location of the nearest branch of our company or directions to it, we should not expect to ”discover” the relationship a customer has with our company and where the gaps exist in their service or portfolio of products. This information exists through organizing, structuring, combining and qualifying information. Knowledge is information that is enriched with context and other enhancers — there is no card for “get out of KM jail free” – yet!!