September 4, 2000

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Knowledge Management
Keep Your Knowledge In-House

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More on knowledge Management:

Harnessing Corporate Knowledge (8/7/00) Time To Put A Value On Intellectual Assets (7/31/00) Knowledge Management In A Box: The Raven Project (6/19/00)

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A generic knowledge-management tool has customizable templates, databases, and interfaces that can be used for almost any discipline. Most knowledge-management tools are generic because they provide a wide range of sales possibilities.

Generic tools also provide a wider range of customization options, but customization can turn into programming, which gets expensive. Tools such as Autonomy Corp.'s Portal-in-a-Box are simple to customize. Portal-in-a-Box lets companies easily build customized portal sites, but it differs from many similar products in that it automates the ongoing process of categorizing, tagging, and linking.

However, it can be difficult to find an expert who specializes in a particular market such as IT process improvement. Customization is more than just changing the screens or designing a database--the finished product must serve the business needs, even if the business is IT.

A major trend in knowledge-management systems is the move to online knowledge portals. Knowledge portals provide a variety of information on various topics and can be customized to meet a user's individual needs.

For example, Lotus is in the process of releasing its Raven knowledge portal. Raven will provide access to global back-end data sources, both qualitative and quantitative. This means that IT managers can access best-practice libraries and methodology documents in a Lotus Notes database, as well as project metrics from data warehouses, through a browser.

Portals make it easy to access knowledge because of their universal interface--a Web browser. Online portal-style systems let IT organizations access a variety of back-end systems--for example, process-management software and methodology databases.

Knowledge-management tools vary widely in their features and functions. Some products that simply supply workflow or E-mail-based folder-sharing services call themselves knowledge-management tools, which would be an overstatement. Knowledge-management tools should provide collaboration features such as shared databases, E-mail, the ability to attach comments to documents at various levels of a discussion, quantitative and qualitative data access, and document change-management processes. It should also have a browser interface.

The older but still-accurate term groupware is also applicable to knowledge-management tools. Both Lotus Notes and Domino and Novell's GroupWise have groupware features and document databases, and thus meet the classification requirements. Microsoft's Exchange server has most of the features but has a folder architecture instead of a document database architecture.

Autonomy's ActiveKnowledge and Intraspect Software Inc.'s Knowledge Server are middleware or portal products that provide access to various data sources, as well as workflow features. OpenText Corp. has a suite of products, including a collaboration environment, database, portal, and a library-management system.

By comparison, GroupWise and Notes have these features built in instead of in modular packages. Companies evaluating knowledge-management tools must decide how much functionality they need and then buy pieces or an integrated product.

It's important for companies to evaluate knowledge-management tools based on their organization's specific needs. A healthy degree of skepticism is needed when looking at "do-everything" products. Many products have bits and pieces of features, such as Web-publishing capabilities and instant messaging. However, unless the product provides database-based conversation threads and open access to multiple, distributed data sources for information sharing, it's not a true knowledge-management or groupware system.

There are significant benefits to implementing knowledge-management solutions for IT. Repeatable processes, reduced project rework, reduced project cost, and faster time to market are all realistic benefits that can result from using IT knowledge-management systems. Companies generally see the elimination of mistakes and redundancy when a knowledge-management system is implemented.

Charles Trepper is CEO of the Trepper Group, a Minneapolis consulting firm. He can be reached at chtrepper@trepper.com.

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