Week 9 : Knowledge Management Systems

On 2 of August 2013 we had our lecture 10 of TKM 1291 Introduction to Knowledge Management . The topic of this lecture was Knowledge Management Systems. Basically as usual , we went through on the learning outcomes firstly. The outcomes that we must know are :

·         To explain the nature of systems thinking

·         To describe knowledge management systems and key drivers

·         To distinguish between the different types of knowledge management systems

·         To discuss how knowledge management systems contribute to the knowledge process

·         To discuss critical issues for successful knowledge management system development and implementation

 

  Madam  have discussed what a system all about is. We can say that a system:

 

·         Has elements.

·         Has relationships between elements; could be causal or feedback loops.

·         Has a limit.

·         Has an environment outside the boundary.

·         Has an input and an output.

Figure 1: General characteristics of a system

 

We can say that there was a high productivity and throughput in 1960s. Nowadays, the business strategy has been enhanced. This is in term of:

·         Enable knowledge capture and exchange

Ø  Openly, freely, readily.

·         Facilitate the acquisition, documentation, transfer, creation and application of knowledge.

·         Ensure greater knowledge functionality.

Ø  Maintain a record of all electronic assets.

Ø  Automatically indexing, and categorization.

Ø  Personal customization.

Figure 2

 

Basically there is a range of supporting technologies in four areas of activity. They are:

·         Business process management.

·         Content management.

·         Web content management.

·         Knowledge applications management.

In the aspects of technical:

·         Smooth the progress of development and construction.

·         Support organization’s business operation.

·         Technologically driven with complex databases and CMS.

·         The examples are: financial management, HR management, records management, CRM.

The strategic used are:

·         Guides and shapes the construction of KMS.

·         Builds commercial strategy.

·         Directly affects KMS.

Ø  Decides who will be able to access.

Ø  Which knowledge has highest priority.

Ø  How knowledge admission should be supported.

 

 

Figure 3

 

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A part from that, we also studied about:

Ø  Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS). EDMS is a union of document processing, imaging and IT. It combines text with digital audio and video.

Ø  Decision Support System (DSS). DSS assists in decision making by combining data, analytical tools and models to support structured and unstructured decisions.

Ø  Group Decision Support System. It is an Interactive system to facilitate solution of unstructured problems working in a group.

Ø  Executive Support Systems (ESS): ESS usually helps senior managers with unstructured problems. The manager can keep away from information overload by filtering organisational data into graphical form.

Ø  Performance Support System (PSS): PSS assists groups or individuals to perform certain tasks and it might include multimedia delivery and use techniques such as expert systems and natural language recognition.

Ø  Workflow Management System (WMS): It allocates documents and other forms of knowledge to be routed among individuals and applications according to predefined processes.

Ø  Customer Relationship Management System (CRM): CRM helps to organize all business and technological processes dealing with the customer.

Finally we can conclude that KMS can significantly improve the knowledge management. Different kind if subsystems contribute a lot to the KMS. Knowledge user receiving is vital to the successful accomplishment of KMS.