Hierarchy

In many types of companies, there is good reason to arrange knowledge management systems in a hierarchical manner to ensure that information is available only to those members who have reason to be given access to it. For example, it’s often a good idea to keep most sensitive customer data hidden from lower-level employees who have no use for it. And for people who work higher up in the company, it’s sometimes safest to simply remove their access to unnecessary information to make data breaches that much harder.

Trust

As part of creating the hierarchy for the knowledge management system, the company needs to consider which employees should have access to the system and which should not. This can be a difficult choice, as it’s important not to alienate employees by restricting their access to information that might be useful. In any case, it’s a good idea to work with an outside consultant to determine who should have access to what. This way, there is no bias from within the company.

Continuous Change

Security systems that stay in place unchanged are at greater and greater risk of a data breach as time goes on. This is simply because anyone who wishes to break into the knowledge management system gets more time to figure out a way. That’s why it’s a good idea to have systems in place that continuously change credential information. Static passwords are convenient, but they can also be insecure.

Monitoring

When a knowledge management system is not monitored, data breaches can happen in secret, and it may be months or years before the problem is discovered. That’s why there should be at least one staff member tasked with monitoring the system for signs of data breaches. Many companies assign this to the IT department, who monitor the security of the knowledge management system as part of their daily routine checks.

Swift Response

It’s important to have plans in place so that everyone knows how to respond when there is a breach of the knowledge management system. When a breach occurs, the difference between a close call and disaster can be a matter of minutes. So everyone needs to know exactly what to do and how to do it if that moment should arise. Make all the plans in advance, run tests, and make sure every employee knows what to do in the event of a data breach. And when it does occur, get the word out right away so that everyone can take the appropriate action.

Employee Productivity and Happiness

First, there is the simple fact that a good knowledge management system makes workers more productive. When an employee doesn’t have to search through mountains of data to find the information he or she needs, this frees up time for other things. In general, the more readily accessible the knowledge is, the more productive the worker will be.

But there are related benefits to go along with this. Employees with effective and easy-to-use knowledge management systems are liable to be happier in their jobs. Let’s face it: Poor knowledge management can cause great frustration among workers who are just trying to complete their daily work. But when they know the company has set up an appropriate knowledge infrastructure, that frustration goes away and they are liable to have more company loyalty.

In this light, it may be useful to point out that even if the time freed up by effective knowledge management doesn’t lead to greater productivity (i.e., because the workers use that time for nonproductive activities), it’s still a good idea to have one in place so that employees have greater job satisfaction.

Fewer Cut Corners

Though we like to think that all members of a company always put in their best work, the simple truth is that this is not always the case. People are wont to cut corners where they think they can get away with it. It’s just human nature. And when a company has no knowledge management system or an inefficient one, it makes it more likely that people within the company will not put in their best work. Rather than digging through the data to find what they need, they are liable to elide that element of their work and move on to something else.

Better customer service

For customers dealing with employees either on the sales front or in post-sale customer service, one of the most frustrating things is dealing with a representative of a company who is apparently not very knowledgeable about the company’s offerings, workings, and policies. When information is freely available to all workers, it projects the appearance that all employees are well trained and up to date on company matters.

Meanwhile, some companies find it useful to give customers access to some aspects of their knowledge management system. Such systems have to be well managed, of course, as a poor presentation can hurt a company’s image, but when done well, this can greatly improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Defining personal knowledge management and making recommendations for its use can be difficult, however, as the word “personal” truly is operative here. A system that works for one person may not work for another, and there are ultimately as many different systems as there are people. Still, it is possible to define some overlying characteristics that most effective personal knowledge management systems should have.

Integration

The best personal knowledge management systems should integrate as many aspects of knowledge as possible. And knowledge doesn’t just include information that must be kept and remembered indefinitely. It also includes fleeting bits of information that you need to know for a little while and then can forget. For example, the system can include to-do lists, appointments, emails and reading material that need to be caught up on, and so on. Integrating such items with permanent information is one of the challenges.

Avoiding overcomplexity

When we start considering all the items that can be integrated together into a personal knowledge management system, it starts to seem rather large and complex. This is one of those cases where there is always a danger that excessive attention to organization will simply add another time-consuming task onto one’s already busy life. That’s why the best personal knowledge systems should be integrated into one’s habits so that they are as user-friendly as possible.

For this reason, the best personal knowledge system you can design for yourself will probably involve the computer that you use most often. In fact, your personal knowledge system may simply comprise a small group of programs and apps that run in the background and require minimal effort to run and maintain.

Flexibility

Another problem with designing a personal knowledge management system is that there is always a risk of it becoming too rigid. It is important to be able to recognize where your system isn’t working and to correct inefficiencies, or else you’ll be tied to yet another time-consuming task. If an element of your system isn’t working, try to have no qualms about simply throwing it out. Continual renewal is part of any good system.

Staying on top of things

With any personal knowledge management system, one thing to remember is that there is no such thing as total automation. Some elements can of course be aided with technology, but good organization requires that the user have a little discipline. For example, when you need to enter an appointment into your system, do it immediately instead of putting it off. These little things may seem cumbersome at times, but good organization always requires at least a little work.

Organized information

Most standard blogging platforms have sophisticated categorization systems that make finding information easy. WordPress, for example, a popular content management system, allows for posts to be categorized as well as tagged, providing two intermeshing systems of categorization that help in grouping posts on similar topics. Meanwhile, posts can also be archived according to month and author, which makes it easy to find them when you need information from a certain time or that was generated by a certain person.

When you combine these organizational features with search functionality, blogs are actually highly efficient ways to store lots of information. Sure, it is typically not stored in the visually organized way such as what you see on computer hard drives and servers, but it is organized nonetheless.

User-generated knowledge

Blogs can be opened up to an unlimited number of contributors. By giving many individuals credentials in the system and incentivizing them to contribute in ways that are relevant to their areas of expertise, large companies can efficiently generate a huge amount of useful information via a blog.

Internal-external connectivity

If you run a business for which it may be beneficial or useful to share information that can be accessible to the public, a blog is a great way to do this. Just put everything online in the form of blog posts and make it public and crawlable to search-engine spiders, and it becomes accessible to everyone. Of course, having a blog with useful information is also a great way to market a business.

Relevant information

While blog content is typically archived and stored permanently, one of the great things about blogs is that all the newest and most relevant posts are shown first on the main page of the blog. So for companies that need to get new information out to employees, a blog is perfect. And once the information is no longer new, it can then be accessed through the blog’s archive structure.

Backup functionality

One of the downsides about blogs is that servers can go down and systems can crash, with the potential of not just lost access but in some cases lost information. Most blogging platforms allow for backup functionality that gives users the opportunity to download and store backup files containing all the blog’s information. Other platforms have plugins that can be set to automatically back up the information regularly and either store it on a server or email it to someone for them to store. If managed properly, this makes backing up quite simple.

When creating a knowledge management system, there are a few major concerns to keep in mind, including:

• Users: Who will have access to the information stored in the knowledge managements system? Who should not have access?
• Restrictions: Will some users have access to only some of the information? Will anyone have special access to all of the information? Who needs total access, and how can their access be protected?
• External access: Will anyone from organization be given access to the knowledge management system? If so, who and to what extent?
• Consequences: What would be the consequences of a data breach? Could the company get in legal trouble? If so, what safeguards need to be put in place to protect any particularly sensitive information?

Obviously, such concerns are not to be taken lightly, and no knowledge management system that has not addressed these concerns should go live.

The first step is to decide which information should be accessible on the knowledge management system in the first place. For particularly sensitive information, it is important to consider whether it should be placed on servers or into cloud networks that could potentially be hacked. On this point, many companies must be careful to balance accessibility within the company and security concerns. Many companies managers are so enamored with their new knowledge systems that they fail to weigh these concerns and end up making available more information than is necessary.

The next step is to consider who should have access to what information. Obviously, the very sensitive information should be either not stored in knowledge management systems at all or made accessible to only the top people in the organization. Below that, companies must consider whether there will be department-based restrictions, authority-based restrictions, or any other restrictions that would be beneficial to company operations. Of course, some companies that do not handle sensitive information and do not have any intelligence to protect from leaks do not need to give much thought to restrictions.

Once these questions have been properly weighed, it is time to consider what type of authentication system to put in place. There are some novel and highly effective knowledge security resources currently available on the market. Some go well above and beyond the typical username-and-password login interface, using creative tactics designed to keep breaches from happening. Companies that handle lots of sensitive information or that do not want their information shared with competition should consider some of these higher-level authentication methods.

Document-sharing systems

There are currently available a number of popular and versatile services that enable companies and groups of individuals to share and collaborate on documents of all kinds, including word-processing documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, and so on. Google Docs is the most widely used of these services, and though it has some drawbacks, it does offer versions of the Docs suite designed for organizational use. Similar services also offer organizational options.

Wikis

The success of Wikipedia has called attention to the usefulness of crowdsourcing as a tool for gathering and organizing information in the internet age. Wikipedia has no central authority through which all its content must pass but rather relies on people who care about information to vet all the articles, which of course are completely user-generated, and edit them as needed.

Many companies are not large enough to emulate this model on an organizational scale, because after all it does require a great number of contributors to make a Wiki succeed. But larger companies certainly can benefit from a Wiki designed to contain all of the company’s sharable information. The challenge is incentivizing employees to contribute, but there are many tactics for this.

Social networking

Many companies have put in place systems that prevent their employees from using social networking services like Facebook and Twitter while they are supposed to be working. But while this impulse is certainly understandable, some companies could actually stand to benefit from plugging into these services and harnessing their employees’ collective social energies to create an instantaneous knowledge management system.

There are many models for creating a workable social-networking-based knowledge management system, and not all of them work for all companies. But when they are well run, they can be astonishingly efficient ways for companies to share information internally and for employees to get fast answers to their questions.

Web portals

Finally, there is the more traditional web-based approach to knowledge management—setting up a website to contain all the company’s sharable information. This approach involves assigning an individual or group of individuals the task of building and maintaining the website, which makes it less efficient for large companies with lots of information to process. But for smaller companies, a web portal with news, communications, and other useful information is a great way to keep the channels open between all levels of the company. And some types of public web portals can also be useful for marketing purposes if they are searchable online.

And because some people are still unfamiliar with how exactly the cloud works, let’s quickly look at the basics. Cloud computing refers to the practice of storing information on the network rather than on local drives. In some cases, cloud networks even allow software to be stored remotely and accessed via an interface (often browser-based) on a computer running elsewhere. Of course, information does have to be stored somewhere, but cloud-based information typically exists across many servers rather than in a single location.

Benefits of cloud-based knowledge management

The main benefit of cloud-based computing is that information and even software can be accessed from virtually any network-enabled device at any location. Whether you are on your PC at work, on your Mac laptop at home, or on your smartphone at the airport, knowledge stored in the cloud can be instantly accessed. This is good for organizations in which many individuals are not tied down to a single location. In fact, it is very conceivable that in the near future a large number of companies will have no central offices at all but instead will consist of individuals scattered around the world all plugged into the cloud.

Another good thing about cloud-based knowledge management systems is that they have redundancy built in. Since the information is typically stored across many servers and computers instead of in one place, one server outage cannot bring the whole network down. This is great news for companies for which even a brief server outage leads to a temporary standstill in productivity or revenue until the problem is fixed.

Also, cloud-based knowledge management in many cases is simply cheaper than the alternatives. Rather than installing hardware and software on every computer that needs access to the network, companies can simply store it all in the cloud and have people access it through a browser or lightweight interface.

Drawbacks of cloud-based knowledge management

There are also some potential concerns inherent to cloud-based knowledge management systems. Most important, it comes with some security risks that can be quite serious for organizations for which security is paramount. Information stored in the cloud can of course be protected through firewalls and authentication requirements, but such measures have never completely stopped hackers in the past. This risk can be lessened, however, by taking advanced measures to hide and protect the most security-sensitive information.

Another drawback is that setting up a cloud-based management system often requires additional tech staff, which can of course be expensive for some companies. Cloud networking is usually quite simple from the user’s perspective, but infrastructurally it can be complicated, and many companies simply don’t have the necessary expertise on staff. Of course, there are cloud-computing consultancy services that can help companies get their systems online, but these can be somewhat expensive as well.

In today’s increasingly technology-driven business world, a knowledge management system is more and more becoming an indispensible part of any competitive company’s organizational infrastructure. Without one, data gets lost or sent to the wrong places, there is no framework for sharing and restricting information, and people end up relying on comparatively sloppy ways of sharing information. Drawers of documents, fax, and even email are rapidly becoming modes of the past. Today, more organized, high-tech solutions are needed, and a few old nondigitial standbys are still useful.

There are many models widely used for knowledge management systems. Because there are many types of organizations with a wide diversity of needs, the world of knowledge management systems has developed into a thriving and creative field with many innovators continually coming up with novel new solutions for information sharing and processing. Let’s look at a few of the more common types of knowledge management systems used in today’s business world.

Document sharing

One of the most widely used types of knowledge management systems includes those that enable multiple people in an organization to share documents such as word processing files and spreadsheets through a network. There are a few major tech companies that provide easily accessible types of document sharing. Google Docs, for instance, is used by many businesses to share and collaborate on documents.

Several issues often arise with this type of knowledge management system. First, companies often must deal with different levels of permission for types of documents and for individual documents. Especially when it comes to larger companies with a large pool of lower-level employees, it is often important to make sure that only individuals with a certain degree of authority can alter and save documents. Fortunately, permissions are usually pretty easy to set up, but such top-down organizational structures do have downsides. For one, when lower-level employees are blocked and don’t feel their ideas or contributions are welcome, it can hurt morale.

Another issue that arises with document sharing is how to handle collaboration. When multiple people are working together on a document, it is easy for things to get confused, especially when two or more people try to edit a document at the same time. Meanwhile, edit tracking can quickly drown the document in markup. These, too, have relatively simple solutions, however, and most of the top document sharing platforms have built-in solutions.

Another issue with document sharing is the way a shared directory of documents can quickly become chaotic. With directories, subdirectories, overlapping documents, and multiple versions of the same thing, such systems often require someone to keep things organized.

Community knowledge databases

There is a reason why Wikipedia, despite its flaws, has grown into not just one of the most trafficked sites online but also a go-to source for basic information about practically anything. The fact that it makes virtually everyone in the world a potential contributor and editor gives it unprecedented potential. And indeed, it’s living up to this potential with nearly 4 million articles now live on the English site, a good portion of which actually contain reliable information. Such a large information cache has never been possible in the history of the world.

Seeing the success of Wikipedia and similar projects, many organizations are seeking to replicate that success, albeit on a much smaller scale. Many companies have established large Wikis for customer reference, and while these can be helpful, there is usually little incentive for anyone to voluntarily contribute. As a result, many such Wikis languish and provide poor customer service. Much more effective are internal Wikis for use within large companies. Many companies are secretive about these projects, but it’s well known that many of the largest corporations in the world have user-generated communal knowledge databases, and they can be great resources for employees.

Of course, it can be difficult to get people within an organization to set time aside to share their knowledge on the centralized knowledge database. That’s why many companies incentivize this work. Although no immediate benefits of doing so may be apparent, the knowledge database inevitably becomes more useful as it grows. It’s helpful, for example, for orienting new employees who are unfamiliar with company procedures. And it can be great for employees whose jobs involve complex and manifold procedures that are difficult to remember. In this sense, it’s a sort of flexible, digitized policies and procedures manual.

Expert-run systems

While vast libraries of information can be built through community systems like the ones described above, some companies desire a more centralized approach, with one or more individuals compiling information and putting it into an accessible form for all the members of the organization to use according to their needs. The obvious disadvantage of expert-run systems is that they require a great deal of work on the part of the experts who run them. But the advantage is that all users know the information is reliable because it has been vetted by a knowledge authority.

Companies that have expert-run knowledge management systems typically must have the resources to be able to a support a staff of multiple individuals tasked with doing nothing but running the knowledge system. For this reason, organizations usually try to minimize this aspect of their business during lean times. This raises all sorts of issues when company employees perceive that work that should rightly be left to the experts is now being asked of workers whose jobs and expertise lie elsewhere.

Hybrid knowledge management systems

To achieve a balance between community-generated knowledge systems and expert-run systems, many companies have sought hybrid models. In such systems, all members of the community are asked or encouraged to share their knowledge freely through the central system—which can take any number of forms—where it is moderated by an expert. It’s similar to the typical setup at a major newspaper, where journalists and other contributors are given assignments or submit their own ideas for stories, and all stories must pass through the editor before going to publication. The editor has the power to approve pieces or send them back for revision, and he or she can make appropriate changes.

In a hybrid knowledge system, an individual or a small team of people serves in the editorial role, acting as a sort of hub through which all the knowledge must pass before becoming accessible to all. The main advantage of this system is that all knowledge is vetted and polished before it goes live for others to access. The main disadvantages are that it can be a little clunky and that it can cause tensions that may lead to some employees becoming disengaged from the process.

Mentor-student knowledge sharing

When it comes to jobs that are complex or have a steep learning curve, new arrivals into an organization often feel in over their heads and do not get off to a good start. If not managed correctly, these situations can have bad results down the road. One way to subvert this problem and to make sure new employees gain all the knowledge they need is to set up a mentor-mentee system in which newcomers are formally attached to a veteran and encouraged to go to that person for all questions.

An added benefit of this type of system is that it can foster a sense of community within an organization. Conflicts between veterans and newcomers are common sources of tension inside organizations, and the mentor-mentee system sets up a spirit of cooperation right off the bat. The only disadvantage of this system is that the mentee’s experience with it can only be as strong as the mentor’s commitment to the process. When a newcomer gets paired with a veteran who doesn’t believe in the process or simply doesn’t have the motivation to participate, the system is worthless.

Another important characteristic of a good mentor-student system is that it should be long term. It’s not merely a training program that lasts a few days or weeks and then wraps up. The mentor-student relationship continues as long as both individuals are still with the company. Interactions between the two typically start off frequent and eventually taper off as the student becomes more comfortable. Even after that, however, the mentee always knows where to go if he or she needs some knowledge or wisdom about company operations.

Fostering ideas

Google famously allows its employees to devote 20 percent of the work week (or one full day per week) to working on special projects of their own devising. The only catch is that employees must be open about what they’re working on, and the project officially falls under the Google umbrella. Many of Google’s now-popular products and services developed this way.

While this type of policy may seem somewhat outside the concept of knowledge sharing, what’s relevant here is its openness. When Google employees develop interesting new technologies in their special projects, Google can then harness those technologies toward other large-scale projects. And when you have a company full of innovative people like Google has, it turns the organization into a virtual think tank, with everyone bouncing around ideas and feeding off each other in incredibly productive ways.

In other words, when people are given free rein to pursue projects they are passionate about, it assists in the development of knowledge that can be shared in the company. And perhaps equally important is the fact that this type of policy helps create happy employees. Of course, it is inevitable that many of these small projects falling under the Google umbrella will not succeed, but Google’s overall strategy of trying everything and sticking with what works has obviously done well for it so far. Other organizations should consider adopting similar models.

Social computing

In a large company, it is simply not practical for everyone to spend inordinate amounts of time chatting with coworkers. Social networking technologies make employee interactions quicker and more efficient, however. Consider a social network such as Twitter, and imagine that everyone within a company is following a company-related hashtag on the side of their computer screens. If someone has a question or needs a piece of data, all he or she has to do is post a quick tweet, and within seconds the answers will come in.

Of course, most companies don’t actually use Twitter or other mainstream social networks, but many are beginning to implement similar systems that enable companywide, instantaneous sharing of knowledge. The disadvantage of this type of system, of course, is that the interactions can be a little messy. Plus, the knowledge tends to fall out of the conversation stream as quickly as it arrives. So social networking systems are not solutions for gathering knowledge and giving everyone access to it, but one can certainly imagine hybrid models that harvest knowledge from the collective social brain and put it into permanent and accessible formats.

AI-based knowledge sharing

Artificial intelligence is still a futuristic technology in many people’s eyes, but innovators around the world have made great strides in recent years. Computer learning, for instance, has come a long way in a short period. To once again use Google as an example, over the last few years Google has gradually phased into its search algorithm elements that could fairly be described as artificial intelligence. Its machines follow user behavior and determine which search results please people and which do not. And since this is an ongoing process, the algorithm is no longer set in stone, but rather automatically updates on a continuous basis.

Of course, AI technologies are still far outside the realm of what most companies can implement, but watch for new developments in the coming years. Before long, AI-driven technologies will be serving as hubs for information processing and sharing within companies and organizations of all varieties and sizes.

The human mind may be the most complex of all things but it also has its limits. Not everybody is born a genius and can remember what they have read and learned all the time. This is why humans have come up with a storage system like the knowledge management system that can store data and can be retrieved any time that it is needed. Just imagine if you are always researching. You cannot simply rely on the internet for data that you need for your work because too many information on the internet is not reliable. You may have to look at several websites, and this can take up too much of your time, before you actually find the data that you have been looking for. Whereas having a system in place, you can get information and you do not have to doubt because it is accurate.

This system will not only give you the data that you need but will also give your topics that are related to your search. The information is being managed by this system which means that all knowledge that are closely related to one another are grouped and this makes it easy for the user. Business owners nowadays opt to have this because it makes their lives easier and also that of their employees. There are many things that you can store in this knowledge management system. You will have to consider first what kind of data you need to share with the company or organization. The ontology/taxonomy based system allows you to summarize the terms in all your documents which is very convenient for everybody. You may also share charts and network maps with the people working in your company. This is one of the many great functions of the system.

If you have a better understanding of how the knowledge management system works, you will find that it can great affect the performance of your employees. It saves them a lot of time and effort and they can do many other things all in one day. They will be more productive and happier with their job. Before you go ahead and try this, it is advisable that you talk to a professional so you can have a clearer understanding.

A Knowledge Management System is usually defined as the creation of data stores, improving its access and distribution and even communication through means of collaboration, boosting the background and using that information as a possible asset for the organization or company.  KMS’s are valuable for organizations, because these grant organizations an advantageous position within competitive grounds, and effective workflow through use, reuse, and distribution of information within the workplace.  This also improves responsiveness, efficiency, competency, and innovation within the workplace.  Gathered data should be managed properly in order to cope with information overload, technological advances, competition, increased professional specialization, capitalization of the organization’s knowledge, and workforce mobility and turnovers.

Below are what can be considered a Knowledge Management System:

• Any AI based technologies that utilized a customized representation plan to show the problem domain.
• Specialized social computing tools, which can be used for a more natural approach to creating KM systems.
• Document based technology, or technology that allows the creation, management, and distribution of finished documents, e.g., Internet shared databases and Lotus Notes.
• Ontology or Taxonomy founded systems, comparable to document-based systems, although these are organized by a terminological system, or ontology, that is able to sum up the text such as this: Author, Subject and Organization, among other things, related to DAML and other XML based ontologies.
• Providing system maps of an organization that show the communication flow between individuals and entities.

Although KMS’s are based on information, it can also be applied outside the informational aspect of any organization. KMS’s are information systems that can be built upon, or make use of other information sources. KMS’s can exhibit these characteristics:

• Processes – They are created to improve and support data intensive functions, projects, or tasks of, for example, the creation, identification, acquisition, organization, structuring, visualization, distribution, storage, maintenance, revision, evolution, access, retrieval and application of information, or the facts life-cycle.
• Context – From another standpoint, KM systems view information as significantly organized information, collected and placed in a background of application and creation.
• Purpose – They should have a certain KM objective, such as partnership, or sharing good practices, etc.
• Instruments – Make use of KM equipment, for instance, creating, distributing and acquiring modifiable experience elements, creation of corporate information directories, taxonomies/ontologies, expertise locators,
• Participants – Users can take the role of involved, active participants in networks of KMS fostered communities, though not particularly common.  KMS systems are held to promote what is acquired on a collective basis, and that dissemination of facts lead to its continuous evolution, reorganization, and application in various backgrounds, by different users, from different experiences and bases.

The KMS provides integrated resources to satisfy the needs for KM amenities for different user networks, i.e. active data users, in knowledge intensive business procedures, all throughout the entire cycle.  KMS can be used for a variety of cooperative, collaborative, hierarchical, and adhocratic communities, online organizations, societies, and other online networks, managing media content; interactions, activities, work flow reasons; projects; departments, networks, works, roles, benefits, participants, and active users to create and extract new information, and to improve, leverage, and shift in new results of information that provide new services that use new interfaces and formats and different channels of communication.   The KM tools greatly help the purpose of Knowledge Management Systems by creation, acquisition, packaging, and use of information.  Some of these include mailing and search-retrieval systems that accomplish certain tasks and objectives within the organization.