UNIT -3

 The Knowledge Infrastructure (KI): A set of measures and facilities

aimed at securing a continuous transfer of knowledge between all
players involved in the construction, operation and use of the
infrastructure. Each of them needs knowledge and expertise to do their
jobs, and they continue to generate new knowledge and expertise

 A set of commonly agreed organisational rules, measures and

conventions that should ensure seamless interaction between
infrastructure users, operators and components, including standards,
access, licences, and quality assurance.

 knowledge infrastructure systems” that produce, curate, and

communicate information. Knowledge infrastructure includes
universities, government agencies, communities, media, and their
associated assets composed of people, knowledge itself, organizational
skill, and a host of shared infrastructure (e.g., transportation and
communication) that undergirds their function.

 The implications of the size, complexity, and operation of knowledge

infrastructure for environmental policy deserve more careful
consideration. Specifically, knowledge infrastructure is costly to maintain
and can be improved through investment. Decisions must be made
regarding managing these costs and investments.

What Is a Knowledge Audit?

A knowledge audit is the first step in any new knowledge management

initiative. It requires investigating the information you have and the way
you are storing and maintaining that information.
 A knowledge audit, however, looks into the strengths and weaknesses of
the information and what it is used for. It answers the following
questions:

 What are your organization’s knowledge needs?

 What resources does your company have, and how are they
managed/stored?
 What are the gaps in your company knowledge?
 How is company information transferred throughout your organization?
 What is preventing knowledge from being shared across your company?

The Benefits of a Knowledge Audit :

 Better understanding the flow of knowledge across the organization—

and where there are areas for improvement
 Identifying knowledge gaps, which will help when prioritizing content
creation
 Identifying untapped knowledge that can be shared with a wider
audience to increase its utility and value.
 Understanding where and how knowledge is being stored, potentially
leading to opportunities to consolidate or centralize repositories.
 Identifying duplicate work—and preventing duplication in the future
 Keeping teams better aligned by establishing a shared view of the
knowledge that exists across the company.

Knowledge Audit Methodology

Clarify Your Objectives

Before you begin your knowledge audit, it’s important to be able to articulate
why you’re doing it and set some objectives. Potential objectives may include:

 Developing an effective knowledge management strategy

 Identifying wants and needs for a knowledge management platform
  Determining where you need to focus knowledge/documentation
development efforts

With those objectives in mind, you’ll have a better idea of the information you
need to collect during the audit.

Assemble Your Audit Team

While you will have a core team overseeing the knowledge audit, insight from
a variety of stakeholders can help you develop a more accurate picture of your
organization’s knowledge. If you’re conducting a company-wide knowledge
audit, make sure to include representatives from any teams that contribute to
and share company knowledge (which should be every team). If you’re
conducting a knowledge audit within your department or team, assemble a
group of 3-4 team members to help you with the next step of the process.

Inventory Existing Knowledge

One of the most critical tasks of the knowledge audit is creating an inventory of
what knowledge exists in your organization (and where it lives). When
preparing for this step, it’s important to think about all types of
knowledge: implicit, tacit, and explicit. You’ll need to look to several different
sources to complete this inventory, potentially including:

 Your company intranet

 Shared drives
 Platforms used for internal department documentation
 Questionnaires and surveys
 Subject matter expert interviews

Examine the Flow of Knowledge

Beyond identifying what knowledge exists within your organization’s people

and systems, you need to know how that information is transferred between
those people and systems. Consider the following questions:

 How are employees primarily accessing information?

 How do employees share information with one another?
 Who is sharing knowledge, and who are they sharing it with?
Identify Obstacles and Knowledge Gaps

As you complete your inventory, you will start to see gaps emerge. Are you
lacking particular training documents? Are you unsure if the PDF you’re looking
at is the “final” version of the latest white paper? Should there be a thorough
process document explaining how to handle prospective customers’ objections
during the sales cycle?

Beyond the obvious gaps, you should also pinpoint opportunities to make your
company’s knowledge sharing process easier and more effective. Consider:

 Are there duplication issues?

 Do too many knowledge assets exist in too many different places?
 Do processes or knowledge exist that people don’t know about?
 Are there people who hoard knowledge that isn’t available to anyone
else?

Knowledge teams:

A “knowledge team” is an informal network of individuals devoted to vetting

ideas which helps the analyst make better geospatial decisions. A knowledge
team is more akin to a debating team than a sympathetic support group. An
effective knowledge team:

 Identifies and shares supporting and contrary information;

 includes subject matter experts to help address key issues;

 develops information that can be used for bench marking analysis, and;

 develops feedback that benefits the analyst problem solving.

Our knowledge team should be a rich mix of individuals meeting the following:

 Qualities include:
o Individual thinkers, working in sync, with the combined geospatial skills,
technical skills, and domain experience that spans the problem domain.
 o A dynamic, likely conflicted team that expresses alternate perspectives,
but still has energy and purpose that propels it forward in achieving its
purpose.
o Individuals willing and responsible for expressing their perspective.

o The contrast with a group. A group is like a bunch of people on a bus all
heading in the same direction driven by the bus driver. People do not
talk with each other on the bus. They get on and off as they please. The
only commonality is the vehicle.
 Actions of the team:
o demonstrate accountability;

o demonstrate a high order of geospatial awareness;

o involve conflict;

o focus on problem-solving including the geospatial perspective;

o have a formal leader;

o have informal leaders;

o are temporary, and;

o have individual roles that are critical to and subordinate to team goals.
"I" is each of the parts that forms the "we" that pull together to make it
about the bigger "us."
 Images that fit teams include:
o an aircraft carrier, and;

o a surgical team.

Design and development of KM system:

Developing a knowledge management system requires consideration for

organizational culture, compensation systems, analytical models, human
resource skills, and organizational technological capabilities. Other
considerations include factors based on changes in the organization. The
new system must seamlessly integrate with the organization and its
characteristics, as well as its future state
A company can take advantage of existing or potential knowledge by
developing and implementing a knowledge management system specific to the
organization’s conditions. Through the system, the organization can gather and
utilize knowledge to improve human resource development and increase
organizational productivity and performance. In designing and evaluating a
knowledge management system, managers need to identify the organizational
components or functions that can be integrated into the system. Company
managers need a comprehensive understanding of the capabilities of the
organization.

The main criteria for the design and evaluation of a knowledge management
system, such as one developed for a business organization, are the following,
with reference to the characteristics of the organization and their effects on
individual and group performance: (1) organizational culture, (2) compensation
system, (3) perspective or model for analyzing the organization, (4)
technological skills of employees, and (5) technological capabilities of the
organization. These factors are among the most crucial for managers to
consider for improving effectiveness and success in implementing the
knowledge management system.

Organizational Culture’s Effect on Knowledge Management Systems Design

The organization’s culture is a main factor that affects the design and
evaluation of knowledge management systems. Corporate culture is typically
extensive in its influence on the activities and perspectives of workers. The
fulfillment of the major processes of knowledge management, such as
gathering, organizing, refining and disseminating depends on the kind or
amount of support from the organizational culture.

The cultural tendencies of employees in responding to new knowledge affects

how the organization gathers, refines and disseminates knowledge.
Also, organizational behavior and organizational culture influence each other.
Managers need to ensure that the target knowledge aligns with the
organizational culture. It is also necessary that the way knowledge is managed
is acceptable based on the culture and behavior of the organization.

Compensation Systems
A company’s compensation system affects the design and evaluation of
knowledge management systems in the organization. The significance of the
compensation system is based on the motivational influence of compensation.
For example, motivation theory indicates that compensation determines the
way employees perceive their jobs and their work environment. A company
that wants to improve knowledge management capabilities would need to
ensure that its compensation system is sufficient in motivating workers to
support organizational efforts in knowledge management.

A new knowledge management system that comes with an increase in

employees’ responsibilities would also require possible additions or changes in
incentives and basic compensation. In order for the organization’s
management to be effective in designing and evaluating the new knowledge
management system, an appropriate set of metrics must be used. Evaluation
must encompass the new system and other affected areas, such as the
compensation system. The goal is to assess how the compensation system
provides the necessary support for the successful use of the knowledge
management system.

Analytical Perspective or Approach

The perspective or approach used in analyzing the organization and its
knowledge management involves the organizational models that apply to the
organization’s specific condition. Managers should be knowledgeable about
applicable organizational models in order to properly analyze and understand
the organization’s situation. The analysis must include consideration for the
knowledge management practices of the organization.

In addition, in designing and evaluating the knowledge management system,

managers need to consider how the organization has developed. They also
need to determine how the organization can be improved by way of the
knowledge management system. These efforts must be done while keeping in
mind that the needs of the organization may vary, depending on the analytical
model or perspective used.

Workers’ Technological Skills

The technological skills of workers matter when it comes to designing or
evaluating a knowledge management system. These systems usually come
with information technology, especially in an organization that uses
information technologies for many of its business operations. Thus, the design
and assessment of the knowledge management system must consider the
technological knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees suited to using the
system.

Organizational leaders and managers should help workers acquire the

technological skills needed to utilize information technologies that come with
new knowledge management systems. For example, new training programs
and tools can improve employees’ adoption of the new system. Also, it may be
necessary to adjust existing business processes and communication channels.

The Organization’s Technological Capabilities

The technological capabilities of the organization affect the development of
knowledge management systems. Existing information technologies in the
company determine the actual knowledge management system components
that can be integrated. This means that the manager should consider how the
organization’s technological capabilities support the knowledge management
system, in order to appropriately design and evaluate the system.

The resource-based view (RBV) can be used to ensure a proper fit or alignment
between knowledge management and strategy development. Emphasis on the
technological resources of the organization helps in cases where the new
knowledge management system critically depends on such resources. Through
RBV, managers can identify technological resource deficiencies that could
hinder the successful use of the system.

Other Considerations in Knowledge Management Systems Design and

Evaluation
Various factors affect the development of a knowledge management system in
an organization. These factors can be used as criteria for the design or
evaluation of the system. These factors affect other components or aspects of
the organization, as well. Thus, the knowledge management system design
must incorporate variables that represent these other components or
aspects.

The success of knowledge management could also depend on organizational

changes, such as when the organization is in the process of becoming
a learning organization. In these transitions, a suitable vision of the
organization’s future helps in integrating factors and variables into the
knowledge management system, when these factors and variables are yet to
be implemented in the organization. Thus, organizational change must be
considered in the design and evaluation of these systems.

What is a Knowledge Management Tool?

A knowledge management tool is a way to organize the information to help

both the organization and employees access and distribute information among
each other quickly.

This tool helps resolve data silos that frequently occur by performing data
pooling into one collective resource, and the users can quickly find the
information. It’s regularly used to ensure knowledge gaps are avoided for
employees.

Knowledge Management Tools have interactive content creation solutions that

include content management to as a significant priority for both your
customers and employees.

The tool possesses customer self-service options that enhance the customer
experience as the users can smoothly grab the effective solution irrespective of
calling the support representatives.

So, without further ado, let’s look at the best tools for knowledge
management.
 9 Best Knowledge Management Tools Compared

Here, the top learning management systems are compared based on user
rating, USPs, and features. From this comparison, an apt decision on selecting a
knowledge management tool can be made easily. From the table presented
here, an apt decision on selecting a knowledge management tool can be made
easily.

Knowledge
Management Ratings Price Features
Tool

 Fully customized knowledge

base platform
 Customize contact form
 Form categories and sub-
CloudTutorial 4.3/5 $19 – $99 per project/month categories
 Customize HTML/CSS option
 Instant Google-like search
 Add team members

 Custom document
management systems
 End-to-End Bit document
sharing
$8 – customized plans per
Bit.ai 4.6/5 Smart Bit document editor
member/month 

 Digital content management

 Customizable workflow
solutions

HelpJuice 4.4/5 $120 for 4 members/month  Remarkable integrations

– $369 for unlimited
Knowledge
Management Ratings Price Features
Tool

 No configuration needed
 Supports PDFs
 Unbelievably customizable
members/month
 Rational analytics
 Easy authoring and content
formatting

 Maintain multiple versions

of articles
 Supports multiple languages
 Customized homepages
 Robust search capability
$49 – customized plans per  Tags to perform bulk
Document360 4.7/5
project/month operations
 Define the article SEO
settings
 Documentation using
Markdown keyboard
shortcuts

 Third-party integrations
 Customizable branding
$12 – customized plans per API integrations
HelpCrunch 4.7/5 
member/month
 Reporting/analytics
 Alerts/escalation

Atlassian- 4.0/5 $5 – customized plans per  Effective task management

Confluence member/month
Knowledge
Management Ratings Price Features
Tool

 Easy file-sharing
 No separate documentation
processes
 Project management for any
company
 Organize, track, and review
decisions

 Sync with existing software

tools
 Capture information
anywhere on the web

$5 – $20 per  The simple and powerful

Guru 3.0/5 editor
member/month
 Smart organization for
knowledge and content
 Deep insights to track and
improve knowledge

 Powerful search engine

 User-friendly knowledge
tree structures
 Share organizational
$8 – customized plans per knowledge across all
Sabio 4.8/5 channels
member/month
 Easy personalization and
integrations
 Advanced support with
dedicated SLA
Knowledge
Management Ratings Price Features
Tool

 Desktop, tablet, and mobile

access
 Group chat and 1-to-1
messages
$10 – $100 per SSO
Quip 4.2/5 
member/month
 Enterprise API and
customization
 Custom and advanced live
apps

CloudTutorial

1. CloudTutorial

CloudTutorial

Best FAQ Software

Rating: 4.3/5

Top Features:

o Fully customized knowledge base platform

o Create categories and sub-categories

o Add team members

o Customize HTML/CSS option

 o Customize contact for

o Get in-depth reports

CloudTutorial is a knowledge base software. Its purpose is to help your

customers find answers to their queries with ease. Moreover, it aims to

reduce your customer support ticket by 80%.

You can create your custom domain and do branding with your name. It helps

in importing files in-between categories and provides Auto SSL. It has a

customized contact form that permits you to edit diverse fields in this form as

per your requirements.

With CloudTutorial knowledge management systems, you can offer the best

support experience to your customers. It’s user-friendly and easy to use and

collaborate with your team. Ultimately, it will help your organization improve

its customer relationship.

Bottom line:

CloudTutorial helps you create SEO-friendly knowledge base templates with

unlimited article categories. Being a knowledge management software

 solution, it does not work as a document collaboration platform like Google

docs.

Want To Create An Effective Knowledge Base With Ease?

CloudTutorial helps you create a robust knowledge base that enhances overall
productivity.

Sign Up For Free

 Bit.ai

Bit.ai

Best for Project Management

Rating: 4.2/5
Top Features:

o Accessible to Use Smart Editor

o Support Smart Workspace for Project Management

o Smart Search Function

o Support Organizational Knowledge Management Content Library

o Document Tracking, Password Protection, & Data Security

Bit.ai is a perfect knowledge management tool that helps the team members

in an organization to share, track and manage the organization’s information

in one location. This knowledge of management tool includes a Bit smart

document that allows us to perform project management, brainstorming

functionalities, proposal creation, and knowledge-sharing capabilities to a

great extent.

Bottom line:
 Bit.ai holds a good record when it comes to data creation and sharing in huge

projects. Your team can easily connect and collaborate before making the

required decisions. However, this facilitation comes with a hefty price.

 HelpJuice

HelpJuice

Best for Content Management

Rating: 4.4/5

Top Features:

o Full-Text Search

o Knowledge Base Management

o Self-Service Portal

o Easy Management of your Content

o Effective Platform for Knowledge Sharing

 HelpJuice possesses an impressive customization tool that helps the users or

customers of any industry make a perfect selection of the knowledge-based

platform’s designing perspective. This management tool (knowledge) includes

the styling options that offer user-friendly layouts to the readers or

customers and makes something relevant to get back to the previous

knowledge-based post when required.

Bottom line:

HelpJuice allows the authors to work together with efficient communication

skills on the available new posts and smoothly share page reviews. To opt for

various vital features, you need to pay a huge amount, which is not always

feasible for small-sized projects.

 Document360
Document360

Best for Team Collaboration

Rating: 4.7/5

Top Features:

o Customized Markdown Text Editor

o Supports Discussion Boards

o Categorization Features

o Knowledge Base Management

o Integrations with a Large Number of Database

Document360 is a robust knowledge base tool with impressive subscription

plans as per the organization’s budget and work experience. It is one of the
 responsive knowledge base software. Specifically, the large teams’ best

choice is having impressive collaboration features of the knowledge bases.

Also, it works on both internal and external knowledge base categories for

improving business performance.

Bottom line:

This knowledge management system allows customers or companies to

create thousands of knowledge base sites for various projects. Such

collaborative features come along with the highest subscription charges.

 HelpCrunch

HelpCrunch

Best for Content Management

Rating: 4.7/5

Top Features:

o Manual Change SEO Based Info

o Support Collaboration

o Follows Decision Tree Approach

o Full-Text Search
 HelpCrunch is an efficient and easy-to-use customer service tool that

supports attractive knowledge base functionality. It has an impressive

subscription plan, including the primary, modern, and innovative tool that

makes a smooth process for the customers to use the knowledge base tool

more conveniently.

Bottom line:
With HelpCrunch WYSIWYG text editor’s help, one can quickly create articles

for customer support to become relatively easy. Such features come with a

charge that sometimes seems too expensive for a small-scale project.

 Atlassian-Confluence

Atlassian-Confluence
Best for Forming Internal Knowledge Portal

Rating: 4.0/5

Top Features:

o Supports Templates for Multi-Purpose

o Analytics and Reporting

o Supports Anonymous Access

o Collaboration Tools

Atlassian is the perfect knowledge management software designed explicitly

for project managers that use the Agile method. JIRA is one of the leading

issue tracker software that works behind Atlassian.

It includes an interactive knowledge management software designed

explicitly for an internal knowledge portal, namely ‘Confluence,’ that stores

the information, notes, and plan calendar for the company.

Bottom line:
 Atlassian’s Confluence facilitates you to create internal document

management systems with much ease. However, for collaborating multiple

users into the system, sometimes it gets crashed.

 Guru

Guru

Best for Storing and Retrieving Datal

Rating: 3.0/5

Top Features:

o Regular Reminders for Knowledge Base Updates

o Supports Reporting and Analytics

o Possess Web Application and Browser Extension

o Live Chat Support

 Guru, the best cloud-based knowledge management tool, helps the

company’s data store and retrieves it together from one place. It involves

using Artificial Intelligence (AI) that allows your agents to suggest information

and helps the team avoid searching for data during a service interaction. It is

well-known for its responsiveness as it uses Machine Learning technology to

upgrade the business performance to a great extent.

Bottom line:

Guru helps the business upgrade the daily task and workflow to work as per

the time and function. Sometimes it seems a bit difficult to incorporate all its

vital features into the project management.

 Sabio
Sabio

Best for CRM Support

Rating: 4.8/5

Top Features:

o Easy to Use, Deploy, and Administer

o Ticketing App Integration

o Decision Tree

o Effective API
 Sabio follows an effective knowledge management policy that helps the

organization to deal with constant system updation. It helps the organization

or an employee to store and retrieve the company’s data. This search tool
uses the “Tree” structure that makes it easy for users to search for their

related articles or content in the knowledge base.

Bottom line:

In Sabio, the user experience is robust because the suggestion of the various

contents works as per the available user’s goal. However, while collaborating

on a project, you may sometimes come across various bugs hampering your

workflow.

 Quip
Quip

Best for Content Creation

Rating: 4.2/5

Top Features:

o Event Management

o Group Management

o Discussion Board

o Impressive Content Management

Quip is a robust document tool that helps the organization’s employee or

business create or upload new knowledge base articles with ease. The

spreadsheets, impressive presentations, interactive conversations, and list of

file types upload are possible to ensure all of your company data is available

in one place.

Bottom line:
 Quip plays a vital role in content creation, allowing the team members to

work together using internal chat functionalities. Nevertheless, while working

collectively, this tool gets crashed and team productivity gets hampered.

These were the leading knowledge management tools that help the organization

share knowledge and information to gain insight into knowledge management

practice insights.

Moving ahead, let’s have a quick look at the benefits of using such tools in your

organization.

Benefits of Knowledge Management Tools

The knowledge base platforms are of two forms – stand-alone solutions and all-in-

one customer support solutions. If the organization opts for an all-in-one solution,

just make sure the knowledge base integrates with other channels as per the

organization’s customer support.

The article sharing is possible by accurate support reps where the customers can

quickly find answers. No matter which best practices the organization uses for

knowledge software, the features for such inspiring knowledge management tools

are a mandated thing.

1. Customized Customer Service Interactivity

The service agents can use the readily available customer data to have an

impressive and attractive customer experience. Consider the scenario that

your team uses a CRM database using a guide, so the team member can

easily store the saved data for past customer interactions. Once the customer

reaches your business, information recalling comes into action. It invokes

impressive customer relationships to improve significant customer service

experience.

2. Speedy Support Solutions

The primary purpose of the KM Tools in the organization is to make

information available to all the employees by using a centralized location. It

becomes relatively easy for employees and customers to resolve the issues,

even complex cases quickly.

Only the employee knows the perfect place of the relevant resources, and
customers typically make knowledge base solutions to resolve the complex

roadblocks. Once the team provides a robust and quicker solution, it usually

leads to higher customer satisfaction.

3. Lowered Service Volume

The customer service team can quickly grab the advantage by including a

knowledge base on your organization’s website. The customer problems that

are quite simple and intuitive do not longer need an agent to resolve them.
 Instead, the customers can identify their solutions irrespective of phone

picking or writing an email. Once such simple cases pop out from the support

queue, the service team can ultimately spend extra time on complex and

emergent issues.

4. Best Fit Text Editor

One of the most effective knowledge management initiatives is to make use

of an impressive text editor. It helps the organization or employee to insert

images, coding functionalities for video samples, and also deal with notes and

tips writing capabilities to a great extent.

5. Business Performance Optimization

The knowledge management solutions help improve the organization’s

efficiency and enhance the business value, irrespective of increasing its

resources.

o Accurate reports to track how the articles operate related to views and
helpfulness are pivotal.

o Typically, the customer aspires to search for the information in their

language. So, the KM tools can quickly translate your knowledge

management platform into various languages.

o The impressive customization options are available in the KM tool to

customize its website with unique brand colors, logo, header images,

CSS, and custom domain.

 o The tool possesses strong SEO settings such that it leads to more

convenience to find in the Google search engine.

 Development of New Innovative Ideas

Keeping all the relevant information in one place makes it relatively easy for

the teams or employee groups to grab the advantages of fetching new ideas

to sort out complex problems.

With the invention of KM tools, the organization’s members get rid of

the silos of understanding the problematic situations in the workplace.
Apart from such problems, using appropriate KM tools offers new

opportunities for enterprises and employees too on a large scale. The

organization grabs a chance to view the bigger picture of the business

planning to make innovative proposals that can benefit its fundamental roles.

Multiple levels make this feature allow the organization to deal with

impressive knowledge articles.

 Create an External Knowledge Base Under
Your Budget
CloudTutorial provides a cost-effective knowledge database for creating articles
within the team.

Sign Up For Free

 Get Rid of Avoiding Repeated Mistakes

In this competitive business life, mistakes are an essential part of every

employee. It’s not mandatory that our team’s decisions are the right ones,
and it is one of the most critical challenges that many businesses face. To
come out from this complex culture, the organization has strong visibility
of what employees perform on the specific task is available quickly.

It’s not hard to see the internal benefits a customer relationship

management system can deliver. Such knowledge management features
provide optimum solutions to organizations to serve better services and
products on a large scale.

What is a Knowledge Management Portal?

A knowledge management portal (or, KM portal) is a digital platform that

houses an organization’s collective knowledge, making it accessible to all team
members and stakeholders as needed.

Put more succinctly, an organization’s knowledge management portal is its

Single Source of Truth. It’s the place for team members and other stakeholders
to go to find documentation regarding:

 Standard operating procedures and workflows

  Software documentation, technical documentation, process
documentation, and other internal documentation related to company
best practices
 Company policies
 Team contact info
 Legal and technical documents

Basically, a knowledge management portal should have any and all information
an employee may need to do their job well.

To be sure, the concept of a knowledge management portal isn’t all that new.
In fact, companies have been using them in some form or another since at
least the 1990s, when the internet went “mainstream”.

Source
But, it’s only recently that teams have begun using knowledge management
portals as more than just mere information repositories. The modern
knowledge management portal is a digital place in which active learning and
exchange of knowledge is almost always occurring.

With that in mind, it should be clear:

Creating a knowledge management portal is crucial to managing your

organization's knowledge in an effort to improve your team’s professional
growth and your business’ prosperity.

Benefits of Creating a Knowledge Management Portal

Let’s take a closer look at some of the more specific benefits of creating a
knowledge management portal.

(A quick note: These benefits apply to all knowledge portals — even the most
basic ones. That is, as long as the information presented within is accurate,
comprehensive, and complete.)

Improved Team Productivity

Creating a knowledge management portal will make your employees more

productive — period.

For one thing, having quick and easy access to vital information will allow them
to work efficiently. Without this Single Source of Truth, though:

 49% of employees have trouble locating necessary files and information

 43% encounter problems when sharing documents and other data
 33% have difficulty finding the most current information and/or files

Having access to proven best practices, demo videos, and other educational
knowledge content will also improve your employees’ effectiveness. As time
goes on, you’ll make even more improvements to this content — making it
even more crucial to your team’s overall efforts.

Improved Customer Engagements

A knowledge management portal can ensure your customer-facing teams find

success in every engagement they have with your audience members.
Your marketing and sales teams, for example, will have instant access to a
variety of info, such as:

 Individual customer profiles and engagement histories

 Product specs and comparisons
 Sales copy, scripts, and promotional offers

With this information in hand, they’ll easily be able to steer their prospects and
customers to their next purchase.

Your service and support teams will also have access to tons of info (e.g.,
product instructions and workflows, frequently asked questions,
troubleshooting data, etc.) to help them better serve the customer.

Again, mix one-part efficiency and one-part effectiveness, and you have a
recipe for a successful customer engagement.

Enhanced Team Alignment

With the entirety of your organizational knowledge all in one place, it becomes
easier for your employees and teams to stay aligned with one another over
time.

On a day-to-day basis, collaborating teams and departments will have access

to up-to-date project information and progress. In turn, all stakeholders will
know what they’re responsible for throughout the completion of the project.

Thinking of the “big picture”, your employees will have open access to your
company’s vision and mission statements and other supporting documentation
at all times. The organization-wide focus on knowledge management will also
serve to keep your team members aligned and moving toward a common
overall goal.

Continuous Improvements to Workflows

We’ve touched on this, but let’s be clear:

With your team’s processes and workflows laid out so clearly, making
meaningful improvements to said processes will become that much easier.

For any given task, your teams will be able to identify:

  What works well (and what doesn’t)
 How certain employees or teams might collaborate to become more
productive
 What employees need to know to truly optimize their efforts (and the
outcome of said efforts)

A “Blank Canvas”

Wiki-style knowledge management platforms sometimes provide very little in

terms of structure and guidance.

As
shown above, you’ll pretty much have a blank slate on which to create
individual knowledge assets — and on which to connect these assets into a
cohesive knowledge management platform.

This...might not be a good thing.

For one thing, it can cause you to take a haphazard approach when creating
knowledge content in the first place. Without any templates to work off of (or
even just to use for inspiration), the content your various teams create will lack
the uniform appearance and structure needed to maximize knowledge
transfer to learners.

Your team also won’t have much guidance when it comes to building a
structured, cohesive web of knowledge, either. While not impossible to create
this structure on your own, it will be just one more thing for your team to do as
you get your knowledge management efforts up and running.

Finally, the presentation of this knowledge is again based solely on your team’s
technical capabilities. If basic, text-based content is all they’re able to create,
that’s all they’ll see when accessing this knowledge in the future.
Poor Knowledge Accessibility

Wiki-style KB portals are also typically pretty feature-bare on the whole —

which can make accessing the right knowledge content difficult at times.

Though basic portal tools will likely have some type of search feature, it
typically won’t be all that sophisticated. In many cases, learners will still need
to wade through a sea of irrelevant search results to find the information
they’re looking for.

Similarly, the tool’s content tagging feature may also be pretty rudimentary.
This, again, can make it difficult for learners to find relevant knowledge
content — especially for those who are just browsing and may not know
exactly what they’re looking for.

A Lack of Collaborative Features

Though more modern wiki-style KB portals do provide more collaborative

features than in days past. It can still be hit-or-miss.

Really, anything short of true real-time remote collaboration is outdated —

and will hold your team back from making much headway in your knowledge
management initiative.

Yes, your individual team members will be able to add, edit, and improve
knowledge content as needed. And they probably have other collaborative
tools at their disposal to use in conjunction with the portal.

Still, it’d be much better to have all of this in one comprehensive tool, no?

Rudimentary Analytics

Improving your knowledge content is a huge part of knowledge management.

Unfortunately, basic KB portals offer just as basic reporting and analytics data
for your team to work with. Typically, you won’t get much info in terms of how
your team uses your knowledge, how it’s impacting their work, or how your
KM initiative has impacted your company’s bottom line.
Data Mining:

In general terms, “Mining” is the process of extraction of some valuable

material from the earth e.g. coal mining, diamond mining, etc. In the context
of computer science, “Data Mining” can be referred to as knowledge mining
from data, knowledge extraction, data/pattern analysis, data archaeology,
and data dredging. It is basically the process carried out for the extraction of
useful information from a bulk of data or data warehouses. One can see that
the term itself is a little confusing. In the case of coal or diamond mining, the
result of the extraction process is coal or diamond. But in the case of Data
Mining, the result of the extraction process is not data!! Instead, data mining
results are the patterns and knowledge that we gain at the end of the
extraction process. In that sense, we can think of Data Mining as a step in the
process of Knowledge Discovery or Knowledge Extraction.

Nowadays, data mining is used in almost all places where a large amount of
data is stored and processed. For example, banks typically use ‘data mining’
to find out their prospective customers who could be interested in credit
cards, personal loans, or insurance as well. Since banks have the transaction
details and detailed profiles of their customers, they analyze all this data and
try to find out patterns that help them predict that certain customers could
be interested in personal loans, etc.
The whole process of Data Mining consists of three main phases:
1. Data Pre-processing – Data cleaning, integration, selection, and
transformation takes place
2. Data Extraction – Occurrence of exact data mining
3. Data Evaluation and Presentation – Analyzing and presenting results
Real-life examples of Data Mining
Market Basket Analysis: It is a technique that gives the careful study of
purchases done by a customer in a supermarket. The concept is basically
applied to identify the items that are bought together by a customer. Say, if a
person buys bread, what are the chances that he/she will also purchase
butter. This analysis helps in promoting offers and deals by the companies.
The same is done with the help of data mining.
Protein Folding: It is a technique that carefully studies the biological cells and
predicts the protein interactions and functionality within biological cells.
Applications of this research include determining causes and possible cures
for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cancer caused by Protein misfolding.
Fraud Detection: Nowadays, in this land of cell phones, we can use data
mining to analyze cell phone activities for comparing suspicious phone
activity. This can help us to detects calls made on cloned phones. Similarly,
with credit cards, comparing purchases with historical purchases can detect
activity with stolen cards.

How does data mining work?

 1. Understand the problem – or at least the area of inquiry. The business
decision-maker, who should be in the driver’s seat for this data mining
off-road adventure, needs a general understanding of the domain they
will be working in – the types of internal and external data that are to be
a part of this exploration. It is assumed that they have intimate
knowledge of the business and the functional areas involved.
2. Data gathering. Start with your internal systems and databases. Link
them through their data models and various relational tools or gather
the data together into a data warehouse. This includes any data from
external sources that are part of your operations, like field sales and/or
service data, IoT, or social media data. Seek out and acquire the rights to
external data including demographics, economic data, and market
intelligence, such as industry trends and financial benchmarks from
trade associations and governments. Bring them into the tool kit’s
purview (bring them into your data warehouse or link them to data
mining environment).
3. Data preparation and understanding. Use your business’ subject matter
experts to help define, categorize, and organize the data. This part of the
process is sometimes called data wrangling or munging. Some of the
data may need cleaning or “cleansing” to remove duplication,
inconsistencies, incomplete records, or outdated formats. Data
preparation and cleansing may be an ongoing task as new projects or
data from new fields of inquiry become of interest
4. User training. You wouldn’t give your teenager the keys to the family
Ferrari without having them go through driver’s education, on-the-road
training, and some supervised practice with a licensed driver – so be
sure to provide formal training to your future data miners as well as
some supervised practice as they start to get familiar with these
powerful tools. Continuing education is also a good idea once they have
mastered the basics and can move on to more advanced techniques.

Data mining techniques

Association
Another interesting goal is association – linking two seemingly unrelated
events or activities. A classic story from the early days of analytics and data
mining, perhaps fictitious, has a convenience store chain discovering a
correlation between sales of beer and diapers. Speculating that harried new
fathers who run out late in the evening to get diapers may grab a couple of six-
packs while they are there. The stores position the beer and diapers in close
proximity and increase beer sales as a result.

Clustering
This approach is aimed at grouping data by similarities rather than pre-defined
assumptions. For example, when you mine your customer sales information
combined with external consumer credit and demographic data, you may
discover that your most profitable customers are from midsize cities.

Much of the time, data mining is pursued in support of prediction or

forecasting. The better you understand patterns and behaviors, the better job
you can do of forecasting future actions related to causations or correlations.

Regression
One of the mathematical techniques offered in data mining tool kits,
regression analysis predicts a number based on historic patterns projected into
the future. Various other pattern detection and tracking algorithms provide
flexible tools to help users better understand the data and the behavior it
represents.

These are just a few of the techniques and tools available in data mining tool
kits. The choice of tool or technique is somewhat automated in that the
techniques will be applied according to how the question is posed. In earlier
times, data mining was referred to as “slicing and dicing” the database, but the
practice is more sophisticated now and terms like association, clustering, and
regression are commonplace.

infrastructure, devices and components. Social infrastructure, on the other

hand, includes culture, structure, and human resources [33] . As such, it can be
noted that KM infrastructure provides the infrastructural environment, both IT
and non-IT that supports knowledge management activities [14] [34] - [36] .
Furthermore, organizations should strive to develop infrastcure