Knowledge management is the name of a concept in which an enterprise consciously and comprehensively gathers, organizes, shares, and analyzes its knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and people skills. In early 1998, it was believed that few enterprises actually had a comprehensive knowledge management practice (by any name) in operation. Advances in technology and the way we access and share information have changed that; many enterprises now have some kind of knowledge management framework in place.
Knowledge management involves data mining and some method of operation to push information to users. Some vendors are offering products to help an enterprise inventory and access knowledge resources. IBM's Lotus Discovery Server and K-Station, for example, are products advertised as providing the ability to organize and locate relevant content and expertise required to address specific business tasks and projects. They are said to be able to analyze the relationships between content, people, topics, and activity, and produce a knowledge map report.
In an Information Week article, Jeff Angus and Jeetu Patel describe a four-process view of knowledge management that we have put into a table:
| This major process... | Includes these activities.... |
|---|---|
| Gathering |
|
| Organizing |
|
| Refining |
|
| Disseminating |
|
A knowledge management plan involves a survey of corporate goals and a close examination of the tools, both traditional and technical, that are required for addressing the needs of the company. The challenge is to select or build software that fits the context of the overall plan and encourage employees to share information.