a knowledge manager’s guide to productive conversations with it

8/3/2019 A Knowledge Managers Guide to Productive Conversations with IT

1/6

Cant We Just Use SharePoint?A Knowledge Managers Guide to Productive Conversations with IT

WHITEPAPER

by Tim Hines, Vice President, Product Management, Consona CRM

harePoint is a registered trademark o Microsot Corporation.


2/6

Its the suggestion that people running a knowledge

management program ear the most. Ater presenting

requirements or a knowledge management (KM) tool to

IT, its almost inevitable that someone at the table looks

thoughtul and says, I think you should use our content

management system, instead.

How can we make the case or our much-needed tool to askeptical IT audience ocused on consolidation? First, lets

see what content management is good orand then lets

explore why knowledge management isnt one o those

things.

Content Management Tools Are Great(Just Not or Knowledge Management)

Gartner describes enterprise content management tools as

an essential part o enterprise inormation architecture, and

enterprise IT departments clearly agree: sotware license and

maintenance revenue or enterprise content managementtools reached $3.5 billion dollars in 2009.1 Chances are, i

youre a knowledge worker, you have access to one or more

content management (CM) systems.

Why Your Organization Probably Already UsesContent ManagementWhile the paperless oce has not arrived, CM systems

have helped enterprises to make great strides in storing,

retrieving, sharing, and managing electronic documents.

Teams used to work together by email, sending attached

les back and orth. While this seems like an easy way to

collaborate, this means that theres no single place to goto nd the most up-to-date set o project documents. As a

result, team members would oten make conicting edits

on diferent versions o the les. And, when new people

joined the team, there was no easy way to get them all the

documents they needed to start work. IT storage experts

also lamented the redundant les on email servers and in

laptop olders all across the network.

Today, widely available CM systems solve these problems

by providing a single place or teams to store, update, and

share content in an organized and ecient manner.

What Content Management DoesContent management systems deliver a handul o

core eatures. While diferent systems implement those

capabilities in diferent ways, these high-level eatures are

common across CM systems.

Contribution. CM systems provide knowledge

workers a way to add content. Generally, this content

is created using a standard oce application that is

separate rom the CM system, such as Microsot Word

or Adobe Acrobat. In more specialized applications,

content comes rom scanned image les or optical

character recognition sotware.

Organization. CM systems allow content to be led in

olders, tagged with metadata, and otherwise made

easier to nd and manage. They also keep a version

history o the document as it evolves.

Approval workows. For documents that need to be

careully controlled, CM systems implement a review

process that ensures the right sign-ofs by the right

individuals or groups.

Search. CMs use search engines to nd content by

matching metadata or keywords in a search string.

Retrieval. Content that has been ound by browsing

or searching can be extracted and opened, typically,

using the desktop application associated with its le

type: Adobe Acrobat Reader or PDF les, Microsot

PowerPoint or PPTX les, and so on.

Cant We Just Use SharePoint? A Knowledge Managers Guide to Productive Conversations with IT

1 Gartner, Magic Quadrant or Enterprise Content Management, Toby Bell, Karen Shegda, Mark Gilbert, Kenneth Chin, 16 November 2010.

Leading Content Management Tools

At most o our customer sites, well nd one or more o

these CM solutions:

Microsoft SharePoint Server

IBM FileNet, along with potentially many otherassociated IBM products

Oracle Universal Content Management

OpenText ECM Suite

Technology companies, in particular, are open to using

open-source content management platorms like

Drupal, which can be extensively customized. And there

are also industry-specic CM solutions or healthcare,

insurance, litigation, and the like, but theyre rarely

suggested as knowledge management platorms.


3/6

Most general-purpose enterprise content management

systems dont really concern themselves with the content,

per se. The content is created and viewed in other

applications; CM-managed metadata is associated with

the le, but not with the content inside the le. The search

engine indexes the text inside the le, but without regard to

the structure or organization o the document. CM systems

treat content the same way that warehouses treat boxes:they put labels on the outside, so they dont have to look

inside.

The act that CM systems are content-agnostic is generally

a very good thingit means that they can manage content

created in any possible tool equally well. This strength turns

into a serious liability, however, when we consider using CM

tools or knowledge management.

Whats Diferent About KM? And

Whats Missing in CM?Given the CM unctionality described above, its not

surprising that the well-meaning IT analyst would suggest

that you use a CM tool or knowledge management (KM).

On the surface, it seems like a good match. As traditionally

dened, KM unctionality includes knowledge capture,

structuring, and retrieval. From a high-level unctional

perspective, this sounds just like the CM capabilities we

noted above.

So, why dont we just use SharePoint? And how do we

convince our IT counterparts who are trying to reduce the

number o tools they support that its worth buying yet

another technology?

The answer is, once you get past the sound bites, KM

and CM are not alike. What KM and CM proessionals

mean when they say words like capture and structure

are very diferent. From our experience with customers

who struggled to implement KM with a CM tool, weve

identied the ve biggest diferencesand areas where CM

technology isnt the right tool or the KM job.

Nuggets, not novelsKnowledge isnt just content. It s actionable inormation:

inormation needed to make a decision, the resolution to a

problem, or the answer to a question. Its a nugget o know-how. Knowledge objects stored in a KM system are about

one thing, and theyre structured to meet a specic need.

Documentsthe ocus o enterprise CM systemsarent

knowledge. Sure, there may be answers to questions buried

inside, but their scope is generally much larger than that.

Theyre not designed or a specic purpose.

For example, lets assume someone is having a problem with

a specic eature in a complex piece o test equipment. She

could download the 233-page manual (properly stored and

managed in a CM application), and rummage through it to

try to nd her answer. But isnt it a better experience or her

to put a very specic query in a search box, and receive just

the inormation she needs to be successul?

Good knowledge is captured in a tool that keeps it structured,

concise, and about one thing. Microsot Word, and other tools

used to author content managed by CM systems, are set up

or creating documents, not capturing knowledgetheyre

not a good t or knowledge management. KM practitioners

must have a simple, ecient workbench or capturing the

essence o knowledge needed or a specic purpose .

Structure MattersKnowledge management best practices such as Knowledge-

Centered Support (KCSsm) speciy that knowledge must be

structured or reuse, separating the problem or question

being asked, rom the environment in which it occurs, romthe underlying cause, the actual resolution or answer, and

other topics.2 In efect, knowledge capture becomes a case

o lling out a orm that species both whats to be done,

and under what conditions to do it.

KM systems also need to support rich mediaimages,

useul ormatting, attachments, and even video. But they

need to start with the structure.

The tools that are typically used in an oce environment to

author documents managed by a CM system arent designed

or this kind o structure. Its not practical or busy knowledge

workers to open up templates in a word processor and trynot to break the ormatting: they need an easy, streamlined

way to enter the inormation they need to share, with enough

deault ormatting behavior that they can enter just the bare

acts and end up with a proessional-looking document. KM

practitioners need a simple, structured environment or

capturing and improving knowledge.

People dont know the answers theyre looking orSearching inside a CM system is a relatively simple matter.

Typically, users know what theyre looking or, and they just

need to enter the right parameters to nd it. For example,

i youre looking or the project plan or your knowledge

management initiative, its usually enough to go to your

project page or older and look or a Microsot Project le

with a plausible name. Or, if youre looking for the current

manual or the Gizmotron 380, you can look or les o type

Documentation tagged to product Gizmotron 380, and

quickly get the le you need.


2 The Consortium or Service Innovation, The KCS Practices Guide, Version 5.0, Melissa George, David Kay, Greg Oxton, David Thorp, 2011, available at

http://serviceinnovation.org/included/docs/kcs_practicesguide.pd


4/6

Knowledge is diferent. I someone has a problem, or

question, he doesnt yet have the answerthats why hes

looking or knowledge. He may not even know what pieces

o his question or situation are relevant: which symptoms

are important clues, and which are red herrings. He needs

help, and other than a vaguely ormed question, he doesnt

know what to tell the search engine.

I he were talking with another, more expert person, they

would have a dialog, and by asking the right questions,

the expert would quickly hone in on the relevant parts o

the situation in order to deliver the right answer. Inormed

dialogs work; keyword search doesnt.

Content management systems also search only the content

they manage. But relevant knowledge can be anywhere

in the enterprise: in a knowledgebase, in a content

management system, or elsewhere. Just searching inside the

CM system can overlook important inormation.

Knowledge management must also search not only theknowledge it directly manages, but also inormation in many

orms and places throughout the enterprise.

Keyword search is ne or content management, but it doesnt

work or knowledge management. I the user knew the

keywords to nd her solution, she probably wouldnt need to

search or it in the rst place.

Knowledge management systems need to lead users through

the process o nding the inormation they need by guiding

them through the search process, suggesting alternative

actors and search terms. Like a dialog with an expert, a

knowledge management system must elicit inormationbased on the users initial question and the knowledge in

the knowledgebase.

Knowledge must be integrated into the workowA CM system is a little bit like a ling cabinet: you take les

out o it, use them or a while, then put them back so you

can get to them later i needed. It enables the work to get

done, but its not part o doing the work.

Knowledge management, in contrast, is the work. As

the KCS Practices Guide says, Knowledge management

isnt something we do in addition to solving problems

it becomes the way we solve problems. Accordingly, KM

systems need to be tied in to the workow o our hands-on

jobs.

Its especially important to capture knowledge in real time,

rather than waiting or later, because so oten later never

comes. And, i you dont integrate knowledge capture into

the workow, its hard to remember both the customers

words (our internal editors tend to substitute the words we

would have used) and the specic steps we took to resolve

the issue.

Knowledge management systems must make it easy or sta

to capture, reuse, and improve knowledge as they are working

on cases. Users should be able to do case documentation and

knowledge management at the same time, as theyre helping

the customer, without needing to enter the same inormation

twice, and without copy and paste. The KM system should be

actively integrated into the other tools (especially CRM or

incident management) used by staf members.

Motivating people is an ongoing efort (Measures)People deploying CM systems dont tend to need to think

very much about adoption or culture change. The logic

or using CM is airly clear, and its possible to adopt CMone workgroup at a timeCM isnt an all-or-nothing

proposition.

Theres not much to measure or manage about CM.

Certainly, there are technical details about disk space and

perormance that IT proessionals need to consider, but

mostly CM is a utility: its there i people choose to use it.

Sometimes theres some efort to standardize taxonomies

cross-enterprise, but its rare that signicant attention is

given to change management.

For knowledge management, the primary obstacle

to success is getting a critical mass o people to use itconsistently throughout their workday. Unless knowledge

is consistently used, it wont be improved by its users, and

people will be reluctant to take the time to contribute

knowledge. With insucient or outdated knowledge,

people will lose condence and will be less likely to use the

knowledge. So unless people are actively using the system,

its easy or the whole initiative to go of the rails.

Measures are a key enabler o change. They provide

eedback to the workers, so they can know how theyre

doing relative to colleagues and relative to expectations.

Coaches and managers can also see who needs extra help

and encouragement, and managers get the data they need

to include knowledge management in annual perormance

reviewsan essential step to making sure that the team

knows that knowledge is part o the job.



5/6

Content management tools are not set up to deliver the

measures that the KM program manager needs: create

rates, reuse rates, create:reuse ratios, knowledge liecycle,

participation rates, citations, estimated contact defection, and

others dened in the KCS Practices Guide and other knowledge

management best practices. Without integration with CRM

or incident management, CM packages simply cannot

deliver the measures needed to assess and improve teammember perormance: they dont have access to the data.

In short, CM and KM are diferent tools or diferent jobs,

despite supercial similarities, and attempting to implement

KM with a CM tool is doomed to ailure.

A Final Note: Dont Take This

Tempting Ofer rom IT

Our content management platorm is reallycustomizable. We can make it do any o the things

youre asking or over time.

This is the most insidious move that IT can make: i you

agree to use their CM platorm, theyll agree to make it do

what you need. How could you say no to such a generous

ofer?

By the way, theyre right: with sucient sotware

development resources and deep KM process expertise,

an IT organization can, in efect, build an efective KM

application on top o a CM platorm. But are they really likely

to do so? And i they were to do so, could they maintain it?

As you can see rom the discussion in this paper so ar, thegap between CM and KM is widear wider than the IT

person making this well-intentioned ofer likely appreciates.

At Consona, we know what it takes to build an industrial

strength KM applicationIT had better have double-

digits o sotware engineers and some very gited business

analysts who know KM best practices available or the

project.

And, once the system is built, it has to be maintained. As

operating systems, browsers, databases, CRM applications,

single sign-on systems, and other pieces o the IT

inrastructure change, so too must the KM application.

Will engineering still have resources to devote to keeping

it up-to-date? Do you want to bet your organizations

inrastructure on an IT departments willingness to support

you intensively, three years rom now, ater priorities haveall shited? Weve seen too many homegrown systems that

have become increasingly inefective over time because

there was no budget or appetite to maintain then, even

though they were (in theory) mission critical. Dont let this

happen to you!

The best way to help both yoursel and your IT counterpart

i this issue comes up is to make sure he or she understands

what it really takes to deploy an integrated knowledge

management system. In addition to this paper, sources

that list critical KM requirements are the KCS VeriedSel-

Assessment3 and Collective Wisdom4.

ConclusionCM is supercially similar to KM, and since every enterprise

has CM systems available, its understandable and

reasonable that IT would recommend using the existing too

rather than buying and maintaining another one.

Were hopeul that this paper gives you the talking points

you need to convince IT that CM wont work or a KM

initiative, andas with any taskshow them why its

important to invest in the right tool or the job.


Available at http://serviceinnovation.org/included/docs/kcs_veried_v4_sel_assessment_worksheets.xls.zip

Collective Wisdom: Transorming Support with Knowledge, Francoise Tourniaire and David Kay, HDI 2006


6/6

About Tim Hines,

Vice President, Product Management, Consona CRM

Tim Hines joined Consona in 2006 and serves as vice president

o product management or Consona CRM. In this role, Hines

guides the product roadmap and unctionality across all o

Consona CRMs product lines.

Hines has been involved in the CRM industry since 1995. Hebegan his career at AOL as a tech support representative. He was

a user and eventually manager o Vantive, Witness and TCS. Hines

also worked in Andersen Consultings CRM internal practice,

where he ocused on Remedy. Ater leading implementation

eorts with marketing automation vendors, he joined the Onyx

product management team in 2002.

Hines holds a bachelors o business administration in

information technology from the University of Phoenix and

a Master o Science degree in inormation technology rom

American Intercontinental University (AIU). He is currently

working on a Ph.D. in inormation technology.

Learn MoreConsona CRM

crm.consona.com

2011 Consona Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

About Consona

With a comprehensive set o solutions

spanning sel-service, customer

management, chat, communities and

proactive, just-in-time marketing and

supportall ueled by a patented, best-o-

breed knowledge management platorm andbacked by advanced analyticsConsonas

KCS Veriedv4 tools are the choice or

integrated, multi-channel customer service

and support. The only CRM vendor ocused

entirely on service and support, Consona

helps the Global 2000 control costs while

providing a superior customer experience.

Consona

Problem:Solved!