Knowledge Management and Its Influence on the Records and Information Manager.

Knowledge management's (KM) applicability and utility are wide-ranging. As the functionality of desktop technologies is enhanced to include content management, collaboration, profiling, and so on, KM will begin to play a much more significant role in business processes.

Although improved technological features influence KM's growth and adoption rates, the notion that it is neither a technology nor a function but a set of principles (listed in Figure 1) to which an organization or group of people subscribe is still valid. Thinking of it in any other way will, by default, limit knowledge management's potential. Whether or not an organization has a formal KM program or designated individual(s) responsible for the management of knowledge, these principles can (and should) be adopted.

Figure 1: Principles of Knowledge Management

* Focuses on reuse -- capitalizes on lessons learned and what is known

* Recognizes importance of creating new organizational knowledge

* Promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing,
retrieving, sharing, and evaluating

* Stresses human interaction (not technology) as the focal point of
collection, transfer, and reuse

The idea that managing knowledge contributes to an organization's value becomes more compelling as KM's applicability and scope expand to coincide with developments in KM-related technologies. Records and information managers have an opportunity to participate in this venture and thus become major contributors to their organizations' value-enhancing efforts. The decision is whether RIM managers want to be the process drivers or merely bystanders watching the parade pass by.

Becoming the driver will require courage and commitment. RIM professionals will need to re-architect their role and acquire new skills. Most difficult of all, they will need to incorporate new ways of working and adopt new ways of thinking. At the same time, many of the processes and standards currently followed will still apply. The challenge, of course, will be to recognize when the old ways are no longer appropriate and to summon up the courage to change, replace, or simply stop doing them.

Garnering support may be difficult because not everyone will understand the benefits of KM as well as RIM professionals do, nor will others necessarily recognize that they are the most suitable candidates to lead the charge. RIM professionals must have the boldness to insist and the ability to persuade management that adopting KM principles is absolutely the right thing to do -- and that records and information managers are absolutely the right people to do the job.

This type of radical change is often referred to as "creative destruction" because it requires existing systems to be demolished as new ones are developed and implemented. A transformational leader is needed to move this process forward to successful completion. To paraphrase suggestions made by Dino Kasdagly in his recent presentation to the Twin Cities Chapter of ARMA, transformational success requires the leader to

* create a sense of urgency, confidence, and control

* communicate the objectives repeatedly, regularly, and widely

* publicize and celebrate early victories

* recognize but don't make a fuss about the less successful things

* make allies of the organization's informal leaders

* build a team of people with the ability to drive the transformation

* use rewards to motivate people to embrace the changes

* turn ideas and concepts into action and then act on them (Kasdagly 2001)

What will help RIM professionals to make a decision about their role? Why is KM becoming more commonplace? How is it being used in the 21st century organization? What are the challenges to be faced by those who decide to take the lead in this important endeavor?

Applicability of Knowledge Management

To recognize the many ways that KM contributes, it is important to understand its evolution. Recent interest in KM began in the consulting industry, where valuable employee expertise was scattered around the world and good ideas were developed through client work but never applied again. In response, several major consulting organizations launched KM initiatives as internal projects designed to leverage employee expertise and to share best practices across the organization regardless of time and location. As other organizations -- particularly the consulting firms' clients -- learned of these initiatives, a demand for access to similar solutions began to develop.

Over time, the concept of KM developed into something rich in potential that enhances an organization's overall value by leveraging and expanding intellectual assets. Driven by the demands of an evolving Internet economy and supported by emerging technologies, the scope of KM's applicability has become very broad and innovative.

Impact of the Internet Economy

The overriding requirement for sustained success by any organization is profitability. One could legitimately say that this has always been so, aside from a brief period when "dotcoms" appeared to succeed without making a profit. Even though the objective remains the same, the rules of how the game is played have changed dramatically. Speed, volatility, global competition, and technology characterize the Internet economy.

The Internet's increasing penetration, enabling business to take place wherever, whenever, and between whomever, has changed the number and type of players. Small businesses can make themselves look like big businesses, North American-based companies can make themselves look like Hong Kong-based companies (or vice versa), and they can make early entry into a market that has almost guaranteed competitive advantage. The intermediary's role has changed: One of the Internet economy's major outcomes is the proliferation of companies that never own or touch the goods they sell -- their sole purpose is to connect buyer with seller. New business models have evolved to satisfy the demands of this new business world. A flexible, agile infrastructure and a nimble workforce are now considered absolutely necessary for survival.

At the highest level, there are six key drivers that underpin success in the new business environment, each with a KM element:

1) Managing and leveraging human capital: Capturing, transferring, and reusing what people know is fundamental to maximizing the potential contribution of employees, customers, and suppliers.

2) Achieving operational excellence: Restructuring, reengineering, and improving efficiencies are necessary in today's competitive environment. Capitalizing on lessons learned is a key contributor to eliminating wasted effort.

3) Ensuring that information technology and business strategies and actions are fully aligned: Shared knowledge and collaborative processes are vital elements of business and information technology alignment.

4) Establishing appropriate and valid performance measurement criteria and metrics: As world-renowned management guru Peter Drucker once said, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." Understanding what knowledge assets an organization owns is the first step in realizing the value of its intellectual capital.

5) Designing and implementing fully integrated infrastructures -- process, people, and technology: The glue that holds these three key organization components together is the knowledge generated and consumed in everyday activities.

6) Continuous renewal and innovation: Knowledge innovation, a term created by knowledge-management thought leader Debra Amidon, recognizes that knowledge -- not technology or finances -- is the core component of innovation and that it represents the creation, evolution, exchange, and application of new ideas into marketable goods and services for

* enterprise success

* national economic vitality

* society's advancement (Amidon 2001)

In a recent meeting, when asked what one action he would advise for a successful future, the chief information officer of one large corporation responded, "I would advise CIOs to capitalize fully on their intellectual capital because it is the only non-commodity asset they have left." In this era, smart managers must encourage and support the optimal use of knowledge in order to stimulate innovation, sustain learning, improve performance, and enhance shareholder value.

While the impact of the Internet economy is not yet fully known, one thing is clear: Capitalizing on "e" requires leadership and a workforce with the ability and desire to extract the benefits of technology and work together in a cooperative, collaborative culture. Knowledge that is shared among the members of this workforce is a primary ingredient of success.

Impact of Emerging Technologies

Like many other new (and often revolutionary) ideas, early KM solutions were very much focused on technology. The original concept was developed in a business environment, but the technology vendors quickly recognized the opportunity and designed systems to support the idea. The first KM systems were limited in functionality (i.e., listing document holdings and employee skills and experiences) and gave little consideration to solving real business problems. As with other technology-driven solutions that had no obvious business purpose, the value of these KM solutions was not at all apparent. Without a "carrot," there was little enthusiasm about using these early solutions; consequently, it was difficult for KM to gain momentum.

The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, however, sparked a demand for solutions that would help organizations access and capitalize on the vast quantities of available information. Because confusion reigns on the Internet and the volume of information is overwhelming, people demanded better tools for finding and managing this information. A wide variety of technologies has emerged in response to this demand, but from a RIM perspective, the most significant are the new developments in content management. The typical content management system that emerged at the beginning of 2001 aims to take content from any source in any format through the entire process of acquisition, aggregation, organization, maintenance, security and protection, search, access, and delivery (Feldman 2001).

Most content management systems propose to integrate internal legacy systems, Web-based systems, databases of employee information, external news feeds, and so on to some extent. They also propose to deliver appropriate content to any device from desktops to personal digital assistants (PDAs) or cellular phones. Content providers, such as Factiva, have developed software that builds enterprise information portals that integrate and deliver both internal and external information. Others, including ingenta and Biz360, have added search and text-mining tools to content.

Content protection and security are a major concern. Cheaper digitization technologies, increased bandwidth, and the reach of the Internet have made digital content readily available and easily accessible by a wide audience. Digital rights management (DRM) technologies now provide security and enforce content access and usage rights on downloaded content. Vendors have added layers of security that encapsulate or encrypt content, protecting it from unauthorized or unpaid use. It will be interesting to see what impact the recent Napster decision has on the ability to download other types of information at no cost.

As the need to capitalize on "best brains," regardless of location, becomes even more of an issue, providing content in multiple languages will increase in importance. Today's global economy provides the opportunity for organizations to conduct business anytime, anywhere. As a result, borders are becoming fuzzy and less restrictive to trade. Language should not be allowed to become a barrier. A new breed of content management systems now manages multilingual, localized content, especially for Web sites. Vendors that provide multilingual content management include GlobalSight, Idiom, Uniscape, and SDL.

Content management must address collections of any kind of content, including text, images, video, and audio, as well as composite structures that include multiple media (and content) -- essentially forming new assets. Vendors such as Artesia, emotion, iKnowledge, and IBM have products that make it easier to manage many types of content in media-intensive applications. Vendors such as Virage and Convera (formerly Excalibur Technologies) search video content based on both textual metadata and the video content itself, while Ereo searches images based purely on image content (Feldman 2001).

From a RIM perspective, it is important to know that many of these technologies annotate documents, images, or video by inserting or creating associative links to related information where no association existed previously. These links can be definitions, translations, purchase information, or related information. Technologies from companies such as Sentius, ThirdVoice, and StickyNetworks can bring new life to old material, making it more widely available and creating a new community of interest around it. This complicates the issue of what exactly constitutes the "official" record.

Are You Ready for the Change?

There is absolutely no question that the world of records and information is changing, but the means of managing records and information are not changing at the same pace. Significant change is facing everyone, regardless of role, position, or level in the organization. Forces that are not in the RIM professional's control are driving the changes they face.

The Internet economy will continue to evolve, and new technologies will continue to develop. An earlier column pointed out the complementary nature of RIM and KM; in fact, the two disciplines are beginning to converge. The RIM professional is in an excellent position to influence the future of KM, but it cannot be emphasized enough that RIM professionals, in many ways, will be the master of their own destinies.

RIM professionals will need to prepare for fundamental changes in responsibilities. As shown in Figure 2, the changes are not always subtle. In some instances these new responsibilities (often additions rather than replacements) are related to the changing value proposition associated with a record. The value of knowledge is immediate -- it is generated at many points during every business process. The knowledge manager understands that knowledge and information (and possibly official records) cannot be separated from the process. Therefore, the manager of knowledge must be an integral member of the business team.

Figure 2: New Responsibilities

CURRENT RESPONSIBILITIES            ADDITIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Organize and manage information     Identify, capture, and provide
containers that are byproducts of   access to units of knowledge that
business processes                  are intrinsic to the business
                                    process

Design and implement structured     Support a single point of access to
classification schemes suited to    data knowledge contained in
storing, retrieving, and            multiple stores both within and
destroying physical entities        outside the organization

Preserve information "containers"   Preserve knowledge according to its
as needed to minimize risk and      potential long-term value
meet outside legal and regulatory
requirements

Focus on retaining the record       Address the need to incorporate
of actions taken and decisions      context as a critical element of
made                                the "record"

Provide information storage and     Proactively and in a collaborative
retrieval support to local          way identify, locate, and source
colleagues by reacting and          virtual knowledge assets for a
responding to requests far          mobile, dispersed team
information

Be internally focused, putting      Be externally focused, putting
emphasis on achieving operational   emphasis on improving product
excellence, achieving               quality service levels, revenue
efficiencies, and minimizing        generation, and competitive
expense                             position

This change is significant. In many organizations RIM is perceived as a back-office function that provides inwardly focused service. The new role is definitely a frontline function that provides a combination of services designed to satisfy the needs of internal staff but always with an external customer-focused view. Necessary for making the transition from today's RIM professional to tomorrow's are

* believing in oneself

* making a commitment to one's own ideas

* keeping focused on the larger goal

* being willing to take a risk

* having the ability to handle the politics

KM: A Core Competency 

The concept of KM has matured from a simple definition of "making the right information available at the right time to the right person" to something that is much richer, with more potential value to the organization. While there is a strong need to find the right information and find it efficiently, perhaps the most important point is that the definition of "information" has changed. There is increasing recognition that the true value of corporate information cannot be exploited unless it is organized and made accessible. It is this that has resulted in KM's acceptance as a core competence.

REFERENCES

Amidon, Debra M. Innovation Strategy for the Knowledge Economy: The Ken Awakening. Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann. 1997.

Feldman, Susan. "Trends and Hot Spots in Content Management." International Data Corporation. March 2001.

Kasdagly, Dino. "Leadership and the Political Forces." Presentation to ARMA International Twin Cities Chapter Spring Seminar, St. Paul, MN. April 2001.

Editor's Note: The companies and products named in this article are provided as examples by the author. Their appearance here does not constitute endoresment by ARMA International.

Jan Duffy is Vice President of Solutions Research with IDC Canada, an information technology research and publishing company. She is a business improvement professional with a special interest in designing total systems -- people, processes, and technology -- to support knowledge work and knowledge workers. Duffy is a frequently published author and presenter on the topic of knowledge management. The author may be contacted at [e-mail]