Answer
The enterprise knowledge management scheme depends on a few simple principles and traits:
- The first principle of enterprise knowledge management is that there is no “natural” view of data. Each and every data object is generated in a manner that is autonomous of the eventual use of that data. To generate data objects, standard definitions of them must be formed and adhered to. In the same way that relational databases must normalize data— remove redundant data and replication of objects—so as to be efficient and avoid maintenance confusion and errors, so too does enterprise knowledge management rely on normalized knowledge for smooth operation and ease of management.
- Enterprise knowledge management needs open architectures and standard protocols. The individual applications that will maintain enterprise knowledge management all through the organization must be able to converse with each other, which is why applications with proprietary data stores have no position in enterprise knowledge management.
- Enterprise knowledge management must incorporate internal and external data. The restrictions of corporate knowledge go beyond internal knowledge. The knowledge shared by suppliers, distributors, and clients in their transactions with us is significant company data that must, along with internal data, be managed. Additionally, every company requires access to analyst reports, aggressive information, macroeconomic information, and much more. While we typically have some control over the format of internal data, we normally have much less control over external data. This is why standards like XML tags will in the upcoming days be critical.
- The enterprise knowledge management effort must embrace all electronic corporate communications; intranets, extranets, and public Web sites must all sketch from the same data resources. The traditional view of intranets, extranets, and Websites is that they represent diverse repositories or networks. They were considered of as exclusive entities with little in common beyond their shared infrastructure. But this view is incorrect. To generate separate repositories of data for each of these entities is redundant and unnecessary. There is plenty of data that can and should be shared across these sites: project data, phone numbers, news, etc. It’s the data that should be labelled as public or private, confidential or non-confidential, not the network.
- Ultimately, and most significantly, enterprise knowledge management must cross functional boundaries inside the organization. Businesses are managed into functional groups (IT, HR, Sales, Research) to make management simpler. Don’t make the error of trying to make your corporate knowledge fit into the same inflexible structure. Corporate organizational structures occur to make it simpler to organize people, not knowledge. There is no reason that your corporate knowledge and your people should share the similar organization chart. Once you appreciate the different uses for your corporate data, the structure of the data mapping should fall into position.
