A significant investment in employee and management training may be required if a KM program is to succeed. Knowledge Management works best when employees and management willingly and regularly contribute to the pool of corporate knowledge. However, willingness without training in process and the use of the technology for storing and retrieving corporate knowledge typically results in costly errors and inefficiency. Most companies with successful KM programs have employee and management training programs in place. For example, a customer service representative who deals with customers via the telephone has to know how to access the list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) on specific topics and how to enter new questions into the system so that the questions and their answers can be made available to others customer service reps.
Realistic implementation times for developing a workable KM system range from a few months to years, depending on the complexity of the processes that must be analyzed, the size of the company, the number of employees, and the managers involved. Even in the most technologically challenging KM implementation, the pace of corporate cultural change, not the availability of resources or technology, is the rate-limiting step.
In designing a KM system, it’s generally easier to start from scratch. It isn’t surprising that the dream of most knowledge officers is to have a new venture built from scorched earth with no history and no legacy data. However, the reality is that most KM programs are implemented in existing companies with established processes for handling orders, deciding on best practices, and dealing with customer support issues. As such, these processes and attitudes will have to be folded into the new KM process. In other words, the KM program should complement the existing business and strengthen existing processes—not turn the company inside out, resulting in processes optimized for Knowledge Management, and no employees to execute them. Whether Knowledge Management makes sense for a particular business application depends on the business, the corporate culture, and budgetary limitations.
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