Knowledge management in the company - Performance and control problems

"Knowledge" carries different meaning for different people. Although proper definition of knowledge is a matter of on-going controversy among the philosophers, but its management is viewed in the same manner by everyone.

In today's competitive and developing scenario, knowledge management is considered very important by almost all the companies. A wide variety of practices are used by the organizations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge. All these practices are included in knowledge management. Its successful application can be supported by key performance indicators. KPIs are the metrics that can help organization in defining its objectives and also, measuring them.

KPIs in this regard can be arranged in 4 perspectives: Financial perspective takes into consideration such indicators as % savings in cost, percentage increase in cost of training on KM activities. Knowledge preservation perspective includes KPIs such as steps to modify a document, paper to electronic document ratio, frequency of updates. Indicators such as number of knowledge sharing sessions, % of staff trained in KM activities, and number of collaborative contributions are included in Knowledge creation perspective. Last perspective, i.e. knowledge distribution, includes such KPIs as number of bulletins distributed to the employees, KM briefings and communication sessions facilitated, and number of mentoring & coaching relationships.

Knowledge management is a very important tool that can help organization to beat the very much prevailing competition in the business world. Although, it is a great tool but its successful implementation is very essential to reap maximum benefits out of it. It requires a constant monitoring from its core competencies and strategies to the acquisition of the relevant knowledge by the employees. Failure of this can result in severe implications on the organization. There are a number of factors that need to be considered during knowledge management. Some of thee factors are "what knowledge to be share?', "with whom it should be shared?", "which system to used for sharing?" etc. Once these questions are answered, knowledge management can act in a beneficial way for the organization.

With key performance indicators organization can analyze its progress towards the pre-set goals and can understand the pitfalls, thereby identifying the areas in which it is lacking behind than its companions. For example, it facilitates the management in knowing how many more training sessions are to be provided to employees, what more needs to be done to create and enhance knowledge of the employees. KPIs are of great help in keeping continuous track in the organization so that knowledge is perfectly used and managed.

Thus, it is very important for the organization to properly apply its knowledge to take full advantage. To monitor each and every aspect of knowledge management process and for its successful implementation KPIs can be very helpful.