InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

Shell is establishing "knowledge communities" of employees with common interests. A group of safety and reliability engineers at 11 refineries across the United States, for example, shares information on best practices that help participants do their jobs more efficiently. Although the group does rely on an intranet to communicate, the engineers hold periodic face-to-face meetings to build the personal relationships that are critical to making the collaboration work. "It goes back to the issue of trust," Beaty says, noting that engineers won't adopt each other's successful practices if they don't have confidence in each other.

Indeed, successful knowledge-management programs include computing, content, and community, says Charnell Havens, chief knowledge officer for PricewaterhouseCoopers' financial advisory services operation. Her experience, which includes a stint as chief knowledge officer at EDS, is that 80% to 90% of all technology-focused knowledge-management efforts fail "because of a lack of attention to the people."

So why do some companies have a technologically myopic view of knowledge management? Some practitioners blame vendors of software and networking technologies that have relabeled their products "knowledge-management solutions." Today, makers of everything from E-mail systems to document-management software to search engines wave the knowledge-management banner.

That leads to failure, given that there is no such thing as a do-it-all knowledge-management product, technology managers say. "There is no solution that meets all our needs. They don't exist," says Hallmark's Brailsford, who uses everything from E-mail to a corporate intranet to aid in his company's efforts.

Myth No. 4: Knowledge management is the same as data warehousing.
The content of a data warehouse is certainly a component of any company's organizational knowledge, but it's called a "data" warehouse because it contains data--not knowledge. Managers with experience in knowledge-management processes say the key is how the content is used. "Knowledge is how you take information and transform it into action," says John Old, an information management director at Texaco Inc.

Still, data warehousing is critical for knowledge management. Storing data, documents, E-mail, and other forms of information can be the cornerstone of a knowledge-management program.

Sears, Roebuck & Co., which is in the early stages of its knowledge-management efforts, is building a customer data warehouse with demographic information on 97 million households. But the project is expected to improve marketing and sales efforts by involving workers outside of marketing and sales operations--such as the repairman who notices that a homeowner whose dishwasher he's repairing is a sales prospect for a new refrigerator.

Data mining can also be key to knowledge-management efforts. Texaco's Old says that by uncovering patterns and relationships within large data sets, users can better understand information--a necessary dimension of knowledge management.

Myth No. 5: Getting employees to share their knowledge is extremely difficult.
In a business world in which knowledge is power, it's assumed that no one will willingly give up his or her knowledge. The truth is, people are often willing to share what they know. "We have found that employees are willing to contribute their knowledge and most-successful practices," says Shell's Beaty.

As with most myths, however, there is a grain of truth to this one. While employees may not deliberately hoard their knowledge, convincing them to make the time to participate in and contribute to a knowledge-management system or community can be a challenge. "It's when you ask people to add to their work burden without a quid pro quo that they resent it," the Institute for Knowledge Management's Prusak says.

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Photo of Beaty by Reid Horn
Photo of Holtshouse by Catrina Genovese