What is KM?
According to Wikipedia, KM is “a major component of an organisation’s Intangible Assets. Knowledge Management is a range of strategies and practices to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable the meaningful use of people’s insights and experiences in an organisation. KM seeks to maximise the value of its people’s insights and experiences by cultivating the two common forms of knowledge: explicit knowledge (written knowledge) and tacit knowledge (hidden personal learning)”
So what does SharePoint have to do with KM?
Most experts view is that KM is more about people and process than about technology. It’s fundamentally about bringing the right information to the right people at the right time. SharePoint has evolved as a platform and technology enabler for effective KM solutions.
Foundation IT understands SharePoint and where KM fits from a business perspective. We have significant depth of skills in the areas of information management, architecture and business analysis. Many organisations strive to deliver relevant data in a fast and efficient way. Leveraging that data and re-using it as part of normal work processes maximises efficiency and productivity. The challenge, however, for most organisations is with the execution.
Foundation IT helps customers build KM platforms that balance freedom with structure. An effective KM system must make it as simple as possible for a knowledge worker to contribute documents to SharePoint. As SharePoint grows, there is a tendency to use the site and document library or folder hierarchy to maintain the structure and organisation of the underlying content. This places a heavy burden on the end user to understand the hierarchy and put the new document in the correct place. It also undermines the fundamental value of the KM capabilities of SharePoint.