Jinfo for knowledge management
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

Are you optimising your knowledge management practices? How can aligning information services and IT create more effective knowledge management? Jinfo's director of research, Robin Neidorf, reports.

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Is value "leaking" out of your organisation through less-than-optimal knowledge management practices? Chances are, the answer is "yes". And you're in good company - as an industry we have yet to crack the nut of truly effective knowledge management systems that capture and circulate as much value as possible for workers and decision-makers throughout an organisation.

The questions we at Jinfo hear most often that point to the current evolution of knowledge management are these:

• "Why is it so hard (or so much harder) to get a view into our internal information compared with external information?"
  
  
• "We're facing another implementation of technology to 'solve' our knowledge management problem; what can we do to make this go-around more effective than the many we've been through in the past?"
  
  
• "Now that we're moving towards a digital workplace, how do we optimise our systems and processes to make knowledge more visible?"

These are not new questions. The details of context may be new, but in many ways, we're still trying to answer the same questions about knowledge management as we were 20 years ago or more.

Jinfo's perspective is that the failure to advance is due in large part to imbalanced knowledge systems in many organisations. Solutions lean too heavily on technology and ignore the quality of underlying information and the user behaviour required to maintain a functional system, or else they lean too heavily on human interactions and fail to optimise technology to support knowledge goals.

Get the fundamentals right

In our view, it comes down to the fundamentals of information expertise: understanding information sources, being capable of leveraging related technology, and finding creative ways to discuss and measure actual value.

A good starting point for advancing the cause of effective knowledge management comes through strategic alignment between information services and the IT department, since smart technology is inevitably part of the solution. Our Research Focus earlier this year on "Strategic alignment between IS and IT" offers a wealth of research-based insights, examples and recommendations for working more closely and effectively with your colleagues in IT.

The "Insights and Actions" report from this Research Focus is included in your Jinfo Subscription. If you don't yet have Jinfo, you can request a free copy of the report here.

In some organisations, KM is an independent function; in others, it's an integrated part of information services. But in very few of the organisations Jinfo works with is there a high-level strategic overview on KM. Without this strategic view, we seem to be doomed to revisit the same questions year after year, and reinventing the same incomplete solutions to the underlying challenges.

Recent Subscription Content of particular interest to our customers involved with knowledge management: 

Articles

• Gaining Influence With Those Who Own Technology Expertise
• How KM and IT Can Get Along
• Delivering the Right Employee Experience Through User-Centred Design
• What Does the Digital Workplace Mean for Working With IT? Views From Thought Leaders
• Managing Your Intranet, with the IT Department and Others
• The KM Guide - Your Helping Hand through the Content Maze
• A Whole New World of Information Overload
• Houston We Have a Problem - the Challenge of Knowledge Management
• Where is Social Collaboration Heading?
• Getting Wired in the Workplace
• Making Internal Information Visible Using Enterprise Content Management

Reports

• Market landscape - enquiry management and helpdesk systems

Webinars - recordings available to view for anyone with a Jinfo Subscription

• The State of the Industry for Content Platforms
• IS and IT Make Sense of the "Digital Workplace"

Upcoming research and events

The Research Focus, "Content and Technology for Current Awareness" runs from July-September and encompasses three months of research, reports, webinars and Community sessions examining the challenging area of comprehensive and effective current awareness provision.

Webinars:

• 19th July: The State of the Industry for Content Platforms
• 13th September: Understanding the Full Scope of Sources for Current Awareness

Community session:

• 21st September: Skills Crossover for Current Awareness and Data Analytics, online teleconference

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