1. What are the benefits of creating KMS (knowledge management system)
2. What are the various components/types within a KMS
3. How to guide employees to create these components in a KMS
1. Benefits of knowledge management systems to the organisation & employees
• For the organization
– KMS tool would enable a uniform/standard platform for capturing experiences of employees.
– Knowledge gained / developed is not regularly documented and hence gets reinvented every time resulting in wastage of time & resources. Hence assets need to be built so that we can reuse and create things in lesser time frame.
– Strong branding both internally and externally for the organization.
– Good training tools for leadership and consulting skills
– Good training tool for new joinees & for induction
– Beneficial for those organization that operate from multiple location & have many clients
• For employees
– Experience of writing professional paper / case study
– Intellectually satisfying
– Visibility and satisfaction of self work being recognized widely
– Satisfaction of sharing experience
2. What are the various components/types within a KMS
i. Case study
ii. Caselet
iii. White paper
iv. Best practice & lessons learnt
v. Success story
vi. Presentation & proposals
i. Case study
a. A Case Study is an illustrated example from work. It is typically used to describe the actual situation/ context, the diverse perspectives around a particular happening/ event/problem.
b. It also describes the various approaches to solve the particular problem, the alternatives that are available, the impact analysis of each of the alternatives, the possibility of acceptance of the proposed solution by multiple stakeholders who own the problem are discussed.
c. In the discussion, the soft aspects of understanding/ exploring a situation also gets expressed.
d. In other words, it is a true story, narrative, with detailed backgrounds such as: problem, approach, methodology, analysis including calculations, drawings, budget, and schedule elements etc
e. An intensive, detailed description and analysis of a single project or program in the context of its environment.
f. A written or recorded, detailed analysis of some targeted stress factor(s), for the purpose of noting success or failure.
ii. Caselet
Case let is a brief case study.
It talks about the customer/ internal context, the scenario with which the employee challenges, the approach / methodology adopted- including new concepts, fresh understanding, innovation that have been brought about and the benefits that given to the customers or internally to the organization
iii. White paper
a. A white paper can be an authoritative report on a major issue whose purpose is to educate the industry / customers about a new framework/ methodology. They espouse the benefits of particular technologies/ frameworks and products.
b. They are often marketing / branding communications and are designed to promote company's frameworks/solutions as it relates to the issue or topic examined and enables the organization to communicate the standard of operation existing in the organization.
c. It may also include any conceptual/ technical solution overviews with a focus on implementation or deployment.
iv. Best practice & lessons learnt
· Best practices are a result of particular way of doing things. This brings out a set of situations where a practice was used on a pilot basis or on a smaller group.
· Once it is established as a best practice, it can be easily replicated across the organization.
· Lessons learnt, talk about how an approach/ methodology failed and in what context.
· Lessons learnt, discuss about risks involved, what employees have done and why things failed. This typically acts as a caution, on “what not to do things”.
v. Success story
– An example of a successful occurrence -- the company has achieved documented successful results.
– The context, the problem, the approach, methodology and the impact of the work is documented in detail.
– This also includes accolades, internal and external awards won and customer appreciations.
– The important thing to remember here is that, what might work for one situation might work or not work in another situation and hence cannot be used as such in a different situation without checking the applicability.
vii. Presentation & proposals
On a regular basis employees from marketing/branding/communication teams make presentations & proposals to multiple audience like customers/campuses/events gathering etc. A common folder to upload the same can serve as reference purpose to all.
3. How to guide employees to create these components/assets in a KMS
HRs should communicate that before employees create the above assets they should think & write the following :
– What am I going to write about- Subject
– For whom is this important – Audience
– What will they look for in my work – Content
– In what way is this useful to them – Differentiators
– What is the best form which will be useful - What type of asset should I contribute
• Caselet
• Case study
• White paper
• Best practice
• Lessons learnt
• Success story
• Guideline document
– Sanitization
• Am I revealing any Customer confidential information in what I am writing. If so, please remove customer confidential information
• Review
• Have I put in what I wanted to write – Content validation- To be done by author
• Is it relevant to a context- Context validation- To be done by reviewer
• Is the language apt and is it easy to read- To be reviewed by internal branding team
• Is the asset ready to be published – To be reviewed by HR KMS team
Finally work along with your in-house automation team to create the common folder in the company's intranet. It would also be a great idea to promote the KMS aggresively by the internal branding team. One year post the launch record the number of responses posted by employees as measure of effectiveness of the tool. Number of visitors & downloads/per day is also an important indicator of the sucess of the KMS tool.
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