How to use Knowledge Management Tools effectively?: KM Tool

In the last article - How to use Knowledge Management Tools Effectively?, we saw how a podcast can be an effective KM tool if used within the framework and leveraging the organizational and knowledge of the employees available.

As explained, Knowledge Management (KM) tool is essentially a way to capture the tacit knowledge to disseminate further and to decipher it in a meaningful way at the precise time. A KM tool can help interpret the immense knowledge lying around in the organization as well as in social strata.

A KM portal is a unique platform which should minimize the effort and time spend to look for relevant business information

Now let us see how we use the KM tools on day-to-day basis which have an impact on our end results and also on customer experience. It can have a very positive impact on the bottom line of any organization.

We will see in detail how a KM Portal can be effective KM tool. It can be used for

Finding Knowledge Better
Finding Better Knowledge

There is often misunderstanding between a Knowledge Portal and an Intranet. An intranet is the place where you can get all the HR, IT and Admin related help, such as leaves, travel, employee details, helpdesk, compensation and benefits & so on.

A KM portal on the other hand is a repository of all the structured information regarding business processes, best practices, capabilities & knowledge assets of the organization, expert people and their skills and much more. The KM portal is defined by taxonomy and a folksonomy.

In short KM portal should have every information which is related to the core business of the organization which helps it to move ahead in its goals, save time and increase profits. It can be a part of the organizational intranet. It increases the operational efficiency and at the same time helps sales and marketing functions to add new clients.

Ideal Features of KM Portal

One-stop shop for all relevant business information
It should be able to track, measure and analyze the Knowledge effectiveness
KM Portal should be customizable
User friendly and compatible with other internal applications and tools

Looking up the information on internal KM portal should be an inculcate value - a culture

Apart from the basic features mentioned above, there are some very imperative elements which are a "must haves" for KM portal within an organization. We will also see why they are important.

Security –A KM portal is apparently a collaborative tool and hence should be accessible to all. But at the same time teams should be able to share information content in secured environment within themselves without divulging confidential client information across departments. Hence a secured access as well as secured communities are required depending on the role(s), project, teams and level of an employee.

Personalization – Businesses and organizations are made of people from vibrant backgrounds to perform multiple tasks. Hence every employee has a unique personality, roles to perform, needs and working styles. An ideal KM portal should be able to cater the needs of all on the basis of their preferences. Here the personal profiles are shaped by information fed in by the HR and also through various preferences expressed by the employee themselves. The more active and personalized the profile, the more visibility it gets across the locations within the organisation.

Scalability – This is the most common jargon we hear in the IT, and it does apply to KM portal as well. It simply means how efficiently the system is able to expand its support to an increasing number of users without hampering its performance and its utility to all employees.

Compatibility – Whether the organization has 2000 employees or more than 100,000, it will have multiple tools, Operating Systems (OS), platforms and hardware devices. How well the portal platform gels and aligns with all of them, defines its compatibility.

SharePoint is most common KM platform which is used across organizations, primarily due to the fact that other operating systems are all Microsoft based which are compatible with it.