Knowledge Sharing Systems (KSS)What is a KSS?A knowledge sharing system (KSS) enables employees of an organization to share their tacit (between the ears) and explicit (what has been codified) knowledge. Most of the KSSs available today integrate the capabilities of a document management system, collaborative system or groupware together with KM mechanisms. Why share knowledge?Continuous innovation and application of new knowledge is the key to survival and sustaining competitive advantage for any business in today’s highly competitive market. Some reasons to share:
The employees in any organization can be viewed as divided in two informal groups. First group generally smaller in size consists of employees who share their knowledge pool with each other, whereas the employees in second group are isolated from others in their own information islands (Figure 1).
The employees need to be motivated to share their tacit and explicit knowledge. If the benefits and profits of sharing knowledge are realized by the individual employees, then the whole organization will start sharing. Some of the benefits and profits of sharing knowledge for employees may include:
Providing appropriate incentives and rewards for sharing knowledge, including knowledge sharing as one of the factors for employee performance appraisal are some ways to motivate employees to share their knowledge. Once knowledge sharing environment is created in the organization, gap between the two existing groups will be filled. The result will be one single group containing all the employees in the organization sharing their knowledge as shown in Figure 2. Thus, knowledge will be able to flow freely in the organization in all directions.
A single KSS tool must be used for facilitating knowledge sharing environment in the organization. Why use a single KSS tool?A single tool can be learned and used easily by employees whereas using several different tools require additional employee training. Knowledge shared by different applications of a single KSS tool stored in a centralized or distributed repository remains in compatible formats whereas different tools may have different formats for storing and retrieving knowledge. Probability of success of a KSS can be increased by incorporating it in the existing organizational IT tools like email, chat, web conferencing, etc – platforms where most of the individual and organizational knowledge is shared. In order to promote knowledge sharing, employees must have access to the required knowledge stored in organizational repositories, at anytime and from anywhere. To give employees access to the organizational knowledge a network needs to be build in the organization where:
Some of the features critical to knowledge sharing in the organization that could provide the Is, Ps and Ss necessary to build the knowledge sharing network discussed above include:
Document management feature supports to develop I, search capability supports to develop S and the rest of the features i.e. instant messaging and presence-awareness, team spaces and workspace builder supports to develop Ps in the organizational network. Several IT tools used in the organization such as MSN Messenger – instant messaging, Webex – web conferencing and Lotus Notes – email, lacks most of the critical features necessary for effective knowledge sharing like presence-awareness, team spaces, document management and search capability. Hence a new sophisticated KSS tool containing critical features necessary for effective knowledge sharing must be purchased and implemented in the organization. What is the suggested KSS tool?There are several KSS tools available in market today such as Copper 2004 from Element, Lotus Team Workplace (QuickPlace) from IBM, and Teximus Expertise from Teximus. Shortlist few KSSs available in the market that could suite your organization’s requirements. Create a comparison chart for available features and technology supported (I, P and S) for all the KSSs under review. Analyze these tools based on implementation and maintenance cost, available features and ease with which these systems can be integrated with the existing IT systems. Calculate return on investments (ROI) and potential impacts of these tools on the organization before narrowing down on the tool of your choice. KSS in general have a quick payback time as low as few months and significantly high ROI in a range of 40-50% and may be as high as 133% (see News Story, “Knowledge management helps Intec be smarter by the hour,” June 23, 2003). Points to remember
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