Knowledge Management Consulting

While traditional three factors of production Land, Labor and Capital have become easier to handle, in 21st century, a fourth factor is increasingly and fast becoming a hurdle or bottleneck for companies to grow. This is "Knowledge", which is at the heart of much of today’s global economy and managing knowledge has become vital for companies success. Knowledge can be defined as a fluid mix of experience, values, contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.

Consulting     e-Business Strategy Consulting   CRM Implementation Consulting   Knowledge Management Consulting   Technical Consulting   Business Consulting

Knowledge is information in action. Knowledge is what people in an organization know about their customers, products, processes, mistakes, and successes. Unlike the conventional Material assets, which decrease as they are used, Knowledge asset increases with use; Ideas breed new ideas, and shared knowledge stays with the giver while it enriches the receiver.

Types of Knowledge

Explicit knowledge:	It is the visible knowledge available in the form of letters, reports, memos, literatures, etc. Explicit knowledge can be embedded in objects, rules, systems, methods etc. It can be easily codified and stored on-line
Tacit knowledge:	It is highly invisible and confined in the mind of a person. It is hard to formalize and therefore, difficult to communicate to others. It is elusive and collectively held in the brains and experiences of employees

Transformation of knowledge from tacit to explicit form increases its usability and visibility. Capturing the experts Tacit Knowledge that resides within him in the form of Know-how and insights is a very difficult and challenging task.

While tacit and explicit type of knowledge is only a way to dissect the field, in reality the situation is more complicated. The above two categories are so heavily interlinked that such a bipolar map is not easy to draw in practice. 

Knowledge management enables organizations to find new ways to readily share both their explicit knowledge and their tacit knowledge. The knowledge-aware organization is able to react quickly to external demands, leverage internal resources intelligently and anticipate external market directions and course changes. This requires fundamental shifts in corporate direction and leadership, but the potential rewards are significant.

The Essence of Knowledge Management 

Knowledge Management is a process that, continuously and systematically, transfers knowledge from individuals and teams, who generate them, to the brain of the organization for the benefit of the entire organization. It is the systematic, explicit, and deliberate building, renewal, and application of knowledge to maximize an enterprise's knowledge-related effectiveness and returns from its knowledge assets.

The central theme of Knowledge Management is to leverage and reuse knowledge resources that already exist in the organization so that people will seek out best practices rather than reinvent the wheel.

Knowledge Management is:
  

	Capturing, storing, retrieving and distributing tangible Knowledge Assets such as copyrights patents and licenses.
	Gathering, organizing and disseminating intangible knowledge, such as professional know how and expertise, individual insight and experience, creative solutions and the like, brands, technology.
	Creating an interactive learning environment where people readily transfer and share what they know, internalize it and apply it to create new knowledge.
	Continuous innovation and creation of new tidbits that is valuable not only for company but also for associates.