Knowledge Management

3 Pages 692 Words

Introduction
In my line of work I routinely encounter managers who come to me in search of help to find the best approach to managing their resources. Invariably I am asked what the best tool, approach, method is, and you can fill in the blank here. This is what I have labeled the “what’s best” question. In answering this type of question I must determine the requestor’s requirements. Therein lies the answer to the initial question, what do you want to accomplish. The purpose of this paper is to compare two approaches to knowledge management. In so doing, we will examine concept definition and the selected solutions, problems faced and the effectiveness of each method.
Concept Definition and Solutions
The two consulting agencies shared the same concept of knowledge management. Their overall idea was to capture specific organizational knowledge an organize it and make it available to those who need access. The difference between the two projects came in the concept of the delivery system. Step Two Designs delivery concept was to capture the information contained in RTA’s employee’s minds as shown in the following excerpt:1
Much of this work involved converting tacit (undocumented) knowledge to explicit (documented) knowledge, as neither F1 help or the FAQs had previously been created within the RTA. We were lucky to have two of the most knowledgeable people in the RTA to act as subject matter experts, and much of the information came directly out of their heads.

RTA’s newly captured knowledge was then loaded into a standalone database based on an XML-based publishing system. This database was then made available to the Newcastle call center employees. On the other hand, Navigator Systems knowledge delivery method was in the form of a web portal. The Frito-Lay portal basically links various corporate data information systems into a single front-end.
Problems Faced and Effectiveness
Frito-Lay had three ...