Top Headlines Object Management Group Wilshire Conferences205 MetaData Management - Book Creating a Knowledge Management Strategy If you were asked, "What is your companys most valuable asset?" how would you respond? Believe it or not, one of a companys most valuable assets is the collective knowledge of its employees. This collection is generally a fragmented conglomeration of documents, databases and deliberations that span tens of thousands of man-hours. With such a medley of data, its easy for companies to overlook its value or to dismiss it as purely unmanageable. But that doesn't have to be the case. The knowledge of any company can be mangaged; that is, identified, categorized, stored and retrieved; so that employees and managers can capitalize on it. Technology, in particular, gives companies the ability to share information in ways never before possible. An effective knowledge management strategy prevents companies from duplicating efforts, ignoring mistakes and prolonging work processes. Bottom line, it gives companies the edge they need to stay ahead of the competition. Let's take a look at four key steps involved in the creation of a knowledge management strategy. Step 1: Analyze the Business Every business has its own personality. By studying the mannerisms and idiosyncrasies of your fellow entrepreneurs, employees, colleagues and vendors, you begin to understand how people in your "world" communicate. This is important because communication is, in essence, an exchange of knowledge. Unless you understand how this exchange occurs or, more important, how and when it doesn't occur, you will never be able to create a strategy to improve upon it. A good knowledge management strategy uses failures to awaken those who would otherwise overlook its importance. As a small business owner, don't overlook the importance of management "buy-in" at this stage. Step 2: Identifying Your Knowledge "Buckets" Once you have an idea how your company exchanges knowledge, you need to figure out the type of knowledge that exists. As mentioned in the introduction, most companies maintain such a wide spectrum of information it is many times interpreted as being unmanageable. What makes information unmanageable is not its abundance, but its diversity. The fact is if properly organized, a company that maintains two million documents can be just as manageable as one with two hundred. This is possible by categorizing information into what I like to refer to as knowledge "buckets". These buckets represent subject areas that are important to your company based upon how you share knowledge (i.e. communicate). However, make sure to give this a lot of thought before moving on. It is easy to throw together all or your Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and Access databases into their own buckets, but it usually isn,t the most efficient way to organize the information. Creating "Client", "HR", or "Marketing" buckets are usually more appropriate. Step 3: Creating a Metadata Repository The key to any knowledge management strategy is the creation of metadata. The accepted definition of metadata as "data about data" can mislead, especially management, into thinking that it is less important than it really is. For metadata is to knowledge management as search engines are to the Internet. The Internet is as popular as it is today because of search engines like Yahoo, InfoSeek, and newcomer Google. Without them, the Internet would simply be another information "black hole" that everyone knew was available, but no one wanted to use. In it,s most usable form metadata lies in a database (or searchable repository) and defines in specific detail the contents of your aforementioned knowledge buckets. Make sure to focus your efforts on how the repository is to be maintained. Your metadata should not be so complex that it becomes a burden on the business. Step 4: It is all in the Presentation The last component of any knowledge management strategy is the presentation layer. Metadata alone cannot provide users with the intelligence necessary to make sound business decisions. By providing an interface that presents relationships between metadata elements, users are given the power to find information on their own. As a result, decisions are made faster and more efficiently. The most flexible medium for this sort of presentation seems to be the ever-popular web browser, but make sure to select an environment that meets your companies needs. Although the aforementioned steps are key to the development of any strategy, they may not work for every situation. I encourage you to do your homework and find out what is right for your business. It is definitely worth the effort! Scott Thompson Consultant G.A. Sullivan, Kansas