InformationWeek

April 26, 1999

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Sharing Knowledge
The Role Of IT: Subtle Changes Afoot For IT

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Sharing Knowledge

Editor's Note

CIO Panel

Building A Culture

Corporate Portals

The Role Of IT

On the macro level, Internet technology has fundamentally altered business models and business practices. In the IT space, this change in technology has had a dramatic impact on day-to-day work. For technologists, the Internet required changes in the way they created applications, in the way those applications operated, and even where those applications resided. The Internet also changed the way IT supported end users and the type of support those users need.

Contrast this with the impact the Internet has had on the CEO, for whom the Internet is a synonym for faster communications with colleagues, customers, and suppliers via electronic commerce and E-mail. The daily routine of a CEO has not changed radically by the creation or the adoption of Internet technology.

But knowledge management has had the opposite impact--it has fundamentally changed the way that CEOs think about their companies and altered their behavior accordingly, yet it leaves the IT department relatively unchanged.

This isn't to say that knowledge management has had no impact on IT. Knowledge management is changing the way IT people think about their jobs, if not how they actually perform them. This change in thinking is a real opportunity for forward-thinking IT people to move away from transaction processing and functionality and toward business results coming from IT usage.

Knowledge management may not be a radical shift, but the period of its implementation can be a time when some IT people will step forward as business partners with end users.

Knowledge management can't be separated from the business process. Yet the work of knowledge management shouldn't be confused with knowledge work. Knowledge management has to do with the process of acquiring, filtering, cataloging, and distributing information so it can be used and reused. Knowledge work is the business process to which the former is applied. When a company integrates knowledge-management thinking into its work model, the old business processes must change to include knowledge-management process steps.

In considering the previous manufacturing example, the VPs must incorporate the knowledge-management process into their division's existing work model, helping their group understand the importance of contributing and reusing information. By integrating the knowledge-management process into the manufacturing process, the VPs change the way their groups work, creating a knowledge-enabled manufacturing process.

This new process will require reconfiguring the existing technology in new ways. And the groups working with this new knowledge-enabled process will need a new type of IT person to support it--a knowledge infrastructure specialist.

The New IT Professional
A knowledge infrastructure specialist is a new way of looking at an IT professional's core role in the company. The technology infrastructure needed to support the knowledge-enabled process is not different from existing infrastructure, but the way in which that infrastructure is used changes dramatically.

An IT person works with the business units to emphasize actions from IT usage, not transaction processing. As a result, the person's day-to-day tasks of supporting end users, maintaining applications, or organizing operational activities don't change, just the way in which the person understands the impact of those activities.

When an IT professional receives a call from an end user, for example, the process of supporting that caller is the same as before, but the nature of the conversation will be slightly different. If the caller complains of not being able to view data in a certain way, a knowledge infrastructure specialist thinks of the user's ultimate goal--using the information to help solve the technical problem. This change moves the issue from a functionality discussion such as "The system doesn't have the capability to run reports with those criteria," to a business discussion such as "I can help you manipulate the application to achieve your desired end result." This example demonstrates a unified sense of purpose between IT and business users.