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KM ASIA 2009 Singapore

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:53:38 -0500

KM ASIA 2009

Theme: Using knowledge management to advance your organisation during times of change

24 - 26 November 2009
Suntec Singapore International
Convention & Exhibition Centre

KM Asia 2009 will reflect specific and topical issues that large organisations are currently facing. The event will feature prominent international keynotes, industry practitioners and MAKE Award winning organisations who will explore opportunities and obstacles in collaboration and networking, social media, sustainability and profitability, and will discuss best practices and innovations in these key areas. You will be exposed to a vast range of experiences and key learning opportunities that will both directly and indirectly illustrate how KM affects and is being affected by current global issues.

International keynotes:

Dave Snowden, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer,
Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Mary Lee Kennedy, Executive Director, Knowledge and
Library Services, Harvard Business School

Marion Georgieff, Chief Knowledge Officer, U.S. Secret Service

David Gurteen, Founder, Gurteen Knowledge

Dr John P. Girard, Associate Professor, Minot State University

Asia Pacific case studies:
Singapore Armed Forces, Ministry of Defence
Asian Development Bank
Eureka Forbes Ltd
Tech Mahindra Ltd
Shell Global Solutions (Malaysia)
Water Corporation

KM Asia 2009 will address a variety of topics at the forefront of current global issues:

Hear knowledge management experts investigate issues such as sustainability and prosperity, enterprise-wide collaboration, social networks and new media, knowledge transfer and continuity
Hear industry case studies from practitioners representing various Asia-Pacific nationsNetwork with KM professionals from all around the world
Network with KM professionals from all around the world
Collaborate and share knowledge during interactive sessions: the reverse brainstorming session and the interactive MAKE panel discussion
Identify and examine information and collaborative tools and their practical application within the business

KM in PETRONAS: Interview with Murni Shariff

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:06:39 -0500

Murni Shariff is a KM Manager attached to Group Technology Solution of PETRONAS, the National Oil Company of Malaysia. She has been working with PETRONAS for more than 18 years in the area of Information Technology, Business Process management and Knowledge Management. KMTALK recently discussed with Murni on the Knowledge Management programs in PETRONAS.

�    Tell us the nature of your company�s business

We are in the Oil and Gas business. PETRONAS is fully owned by the Malaysian Government and have presence in more than 30 countries across the globe. PETRONAS is ranked as the top 100 FORTUNE global company in 2008.

�    When did you begin doing KM?
.
Started to do KM strategically for the entire organization for the past 2 years (2006). Before that PETRONAS have had pockets of KM initiatives at departments/OPUs � however the focus on the past was on content/information management. Now we have moved to more than managing content - more emphasis has put on managing connections, relationship and extracting/transferring the tacit knowledge of our staff

�    What was the main objective, issue or problem you were using KM to address?

1) Ageing workforce - A good percentage of PETRONAS workforce is retiring in the next 5 to 10 years. We need to increase productivity and accelerate growth of our young engineers to bring the organization to greater heights

2) Attrition - our skilled staff are increasingly being �poached� by competitors. We need to retain and grow skill to remain competitive. We need to ensure that relevant knowledge remains in the organization by having the right KM programs in place

3) Our operations are becoming increasingly international. KM will help assimilate plants to operate using the �PETRONAS way� and transmit relevant knowledge assets across borders

�    What is the main focus of KM in your organization? ( i.e. technology, process, people management/culture)

When we first started 2 years back, we put quite an emphasis on technology as we did not have a single unified KM platform for the group (we have disparate databases which makes sharing cumbersome ) . However, like other organizations, we have learned our lessons that technology is easy while changing people�s behavior is hard. Now a big chunk of our efforts are focused on strengthening Communities of Practice (connecting people to people) and changing the behaviors of the staff (culture) via intensive change management programs. We also put substantial efforts into enabling KM habits into work processes and daily activities

�    In brief, what do you do in KM?

In brief, the activities can be classified into the followings :-

1.    Technology - KM system development/support/maintenance, system training & communications, content management and delivery
2.    KM Change Management - Communities of Practice, KM Awareness/education, KM Roadshows, Change Agent Programs, Rewards & Recognition, Top Mgmt Engagement, KM Collaterals, Newsletters, Technical Sharing Sessions, Expert Interview
3.    Enablement activity - KM Strategy development, KM measurement, KM processes


�    What technologies (if any) do you use for KM?

We developed our own KM platform using MS sharepoint. It has quite modest features including discussion forums, document library, yellow pages, CoP Portal, Search Engine that helps facilitate groupwide knowledge sharing and collaboration

�    What KM concepts and techniques did you initiate to assist staff in managing knowledge wisely?

I suppose the Ask, Learn and Share (technique used by Shell) is pretty generic and applicable to everyone including PETRONAS. We encourage our people to practice the very same in all their doings � especially in project. Lessons Learned / Retrospect are pretty common too in PETRONAS culture.

�    How do you monitor progress?

At the moment, we have established some metrics to measure our KM system utilization and knowledge content. We also monitor our CoP activities/effectiveness via some metric that was internally developed.

�    What challenges or barriers have you faced in implementing KM? How have you overcome them?

Generation factor - varying degree of acceptance from staff from different generations. We tried to use different approach for different age group � elder generation (baby boomers) are more comfortable with personalization approach while the younger generation �Y� are at ease with technology. For Gen �X� staff we use mix approaches.

We also found that average life span for KM staff is quite short i.e about 2 years (teleportation syndrome �term used by Patrick Lambe).   We haven�t found a solution for this as yet, but we are trying our best to soften the impact of people leaving KM jobs by having regular sharing session amongst KM practitioners and transferring the KM skill to as many people as we can in the organization.

�    Any lessons learnt for other companies who are willing to implement KM?

1.    Consider having a central budget for KM initiatives - easier to implement programs. But to get a central budget, you need to get higher management buy-in.
2.    Correct the perception that KM is about managing information/content � it�s much much more than that�
3.    One size doesn�t fit all � different approach work for different people/organization. Just don�t copy a KM model from another organization and try to fit in your culture.

KM in a Malaysian Govt. Research Organization: Interview with Izuzi Marlia

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:26:21 -0400

Izuzi Marlia is currently attached to a leading R&D organization in Malaysia. Her interest in Personal Knowledge Management has brought her to the real-world knowledge management implementation. With 10 years background in academic and research in Creative Process and Knowledge Management, she hopes to merge theory and practice in place. She has published in various conferences in KM and her ongoing PHD research is in Knowledge Transfer for Knowledge-Intensive Process. KMTalk recently spoke to Marlia about KM implementation in her organization.

� Tell us the nature of your company�s business

The organization is a government funded research institution with 600 employees. We do research and development in the area of applied research and ICT. We have highly skilled technology experts around the world working with us and we strive to stimulate Malaysia's economic growth by producing innovative technology platforms, which will be used by the industry to develop products and services to meet market demands.

� When did your company begin doing KM?

The interest in KM has started long time ago as the organization itself is a research institution. A lot of knowledge-intensives activities were introduced among researchers and engineers; however, there was no integrated approach to conduct KM from the organization-wide approach. Back in 2006, the need to invest in KM became visible when a major transition took place in the organization. We realized the importance of knowledge capture and retention to help organizational growth. Still, KM is conducted as many separate initiatives � we have one group whom focusing on research to develop KM tools, another group is concentrating on People capability development and there is a group that focuses on software development capability- on processes and best practices. As we also a service provider for many agencies, we introduced a service management best practice into the picture. But the interface that brings all these initiatives together is the KM Portal- the intranet portal as our main channel of communication to everybody in the organization.

� What was the main objective, issue or problem you were using KM to address?

What I�ve mentioned above sounds overwhelming that we have various initiatives at one time. Each initiative has its own champion, objective and issues to address and be measured at the end of the day as far as the roadmap is concerned. We�re trying to address technology issues and tools for KM, getting the process in place and documented, getting the people developed in people capability development and harnessing the culture of knowledge-aware through all these initiatives, KM Portal and Community of Practice (CoP). On top of that, �Shared Vision Among Team Members�, �Teaming as a Way of Life� and �Culture of Innovation, Creativity and Productivity� are among our core organization�s values that govern everything. The main challenge is to align all these initiatives towards KM at organization�s level.

� What is the main focus of KM in your organization? ( i.e. technology, process, people management/culture)

Our vision is to be a premier applied research centre in frontier technology. To achieve this, the values, culture, people development, technology and knowledge itself need to come side by side. We might not achieve everything in one time but we�re paving the path towards it, step by step.

� In brief, what do you do in KM?

My current roles are developing KM strategy through KM Portal, established CoP strategy and monitor its development, provide an interface and prepare viable platforms for other KM initiatives, integrate personal innovation tools or thinking tools, monitor the core values-KM-culture growth, as well as measuring and monitoring the implementation. We are also taking a bottom-up approach towards organization wide KM where we are preparing our KM platform for embedded technology we�re developing in our research labs.

� What technologies (if any) do you use for KM?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, IBM Rational Clear Quest, Rational Portfolio Managers, SAP and various in-house development and customization applications.

� What KM concepts and techniques did you initiate to assist staff in managing knowledge wisely?

KM Portal provides divisional, departmental, projects and personal sites for knowledge documentation. We introduced standardized metadata to ease the knowledge retrieval, CoP with Forums, Blogs and Wiki to help the knowledge sharing and transfer. We�re planning to integrate innovation tools to assist the knowledge creation. Various knowledge sharing session and dialogue are always in place.

� How do you monitor progress of your KM initiatives?

We introduce champions at every initiative, sites and CoP. Champions will be actively participating to get things going. Each quarter we will issue the progress report and at the end of the year, the audit or measurement will be carried out.

� What challenges or barriers have you faced in implementing KM? How have you overcome them?

The main challenge is to prove that KM will do you good. If people did not see KM benefits their daily work or life, they will not appreciate the need. That�s why, quick wins is a must and needed fast! With lack of resources and technology limitation, we managed to pull out a test bed sites that demonstrate the possible outcome. Slowly we are getting one after another sites created and used. We�re getting the buy-in, slowly but progressing.

� Any lessons learnt for other companies who are willing to implement KM?

KM is more than technology and tools. A lot of grounded works needed at the very foundation levels. Patient is a must. You might not need to implement KM as one big approach throughout; instead small initiatives might be possible as long as the pieces fit the puzzle. Above all, KM is very personal to you, your team and your organization. No size fit all.

KM in the Hospitality Industry: Interview with Cheryl Teh

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:07:25 -0400

Cheryl Teh is currently a KM practitioner at a leading integrated resort in Malaysia. With a background in accounting and marketing, Knowledge Management is a field she was introduced to when she joined an international accounting firm in 1999 to deploy their KM initiatives across the Asia Pacific region. She then decided to gain further public sector KM experience by joining a semi-government agency. To balance the KM experience, in 2007 Cheryl decided to return to the private sector, joining one of the world�s leading integrated resorts. KMTALK has recently met Cheryl to discuss about the KM journey in her company.

� Tell us the nature of your company�s business

The organization is one of the world�s top players in the hospitality and entertainment industry. Their operations span between UK, Malaysia and Singapore.

� When did your company begin doing KM?

They started in 2003 but it was mainly centred around technology with the implementation of an intranet. However, there was no dedicated KM team until 2007.

� What were the main areas to address using KM ?

The main areas were managing records, documenting organizational knowledge and enhancing internal communications.

� What is the main focus of KM in your organization? ( i.e. technology, process, people management/culture)

People and processes are definitely on top of the list. Being in the service industry and in order for our people to perform at an optimum level and deliver a high level of customer service, we need to them to have the information they require almost immediately. In an industry where there is high turnover, KM also helps bring our staff up to speed quickly and we achieve this by having processes documented and disseminated efficiently.

� What is the role of your KM team?

For the KM team, we initiate KM programs depending on requirements and Knowledge gaps identified. We are also responsible for ensuring that information in the Intranet is current as well as educating departments on the importance of practicing KM.

� What technologies do you use for KM?

As expected, in such a large organization, we have many different technologies implemented. It�s difficult to say that one is for KM and another isn�t. We do have a content management system for our intranet, CRM for customer�s information, SAS and SAP. All of them help provide information so that we have it at our fingertips.

� What KM concepts and techniques did you initiate to assist staff in managing knowledge wisely?

Looking at the gaps, some of the initiatives we have run included:

- Retention of Knowledge program where we interview senior staff and encourage them to share case studies of events.
- Revamping the intranet for better internal communication and information dissemination;
- Enhanced policies and procedures for better records management, which also includes physical records and documents; and
- Embedding knowledge �gems� into learning interventions. We get senior staff to attend the training session to share their learnings and/or we also share organization case studies of events and incidents.

As we are a very large organization with many different areas, the different departments use different KM techniques. For example, the After Action Review is used after a customer complaint incident. Communities of Practice (COPs) are used for our Quality circles. Speed Networking is used as internal event ice breakers.

� How do you monitor progress of your KM initiatives?

Unless it�s tied to Sales or an area where KM has a direct impact, most KM initiatives are difficult to monitor. In the service industry, KM may have an indirect impact on service levels which could be measured, like shortened queue times, higher guest satisfaction, etc. We use the Balanced Scorecard to measure these.

In the back office, measurements could be shortened document retrieval time, more efficient processes, etc. We have used Ideas generated and implemented as a measurement for process improvement.

� What challenges or barriers have you faced in implementing KM? How have you overcome them?

As with any new and unknown initiatives and programs, staff are normally wary about the objective as they can�t see where KM can add value to their work. They also perceive it as �additional work� added onto their workload.

Being in an organization where it�s very established and most of the �knowledge� are in the heads of staff that have been with the organization a very long time (20-30 years on average), it was difficult to get them to �break down� what they do into documented processes that could be shared and taught to the newer staff. Because the older staff themselves also designed many of the processes, they were reluctant to put these down on paper; they feel that if others know the processes, then they would be dispensable. Sometimes it was also the fact that they didn�t know how to break it down and document them into a workflow diagram or on paper.

Unfortunately we are at the stage where many of our staff are nearing retirement age. At the same time, our mid-level executives, which are mainly Gen Y / Millennia, are becoming increasingly mobile resulting in a high turnover. Because of these factors, a greater importance was placed in ensuring that processes are documented properly to ensure a seamless continuity when staff retire or resign.

To overcome some of the barriers, we need to make sure that KM is seen as being helpful and accommodative to the business environment. For example, instead of getting staff to document processes themselves, we would interview them and then draw out the processes ourselves.

Sometimes we also need to look at the staff. We were dealing with staff which were mainly older with limited computer skills and limited computer access. So, we couldn�t expect them to be as tech-savvy as the younger generation. For example, whilst the younger staff are quite comfortable with technology and expect memos to be communicated electronically, the older staff would still expect written and signed memos.

As KMers, we needed to be sensitive to the types and level of staff we are dealing with and to adjust and tweak our initiatives so that it feels comfortable and natural to them.

� Any lessons learnt for other companies who are willing to implement KM...

a) Organizations need to be fully aware of why they want to implement KM. Many organizations do it these days because it�s the �in� thing to do. KM also comes in many forms and shapes so they need to be very clear on which area of KM they want to implement.

b) Ensure that there is at least 80% if not 100% buy in and backing from senior management as a whole. Often, there may be only 1 or 2 members of senior management who want to implement it but do note that if they leave the organization, organizations may find the their KM program may go out the door too.

c) Choose the correct personalities to run the initiatives. Trying to get staff to change the way they work is not an easy task so organizations need to ensure that those running the programs have personalities that are easy to get along with, with backgrounds and experiences that are credible and respected. Generally, KM practitioners need to be creative about how they approach the topic of KM, to understand the people they are addressing and to pitch the ideas / proposals appropriately so that they can see the value and buy into the ideas. They also need to be a real people person, to be able to build a good rapport with others. Be a good �journalist�, asking well formed questions and able to translate them into well written and documented �gems� that can be shared and imbedded into learnings for others.

d) Don�t try to run many programs at one time. It only serves to confuse people. Aim for 1-2 initiatives every 6-9 months. When KM is new, it is natural for resistance to be high and people are just waiting to see how it will fare. Organizations need to build KM�s credibility so the first two initiatives cannot afford to fail. For the first initiative, choose something that will affect everyone. Personally, I like to take a look at HR-related information / processes as it affects everyone. If you can get it right, you would have a large majority of staff on your side.

The Evolutionary Design of a Community Information Service Knowledge Network

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:16:20 -0400

By Ruzaif Adli Md Daud
Principal Consultant , Sigma Group of Companies

Knowledge Management (KM) and knowledge sharing are important factors that support community lifelong learning. The concept of a Community Information Service (CIS) (Kempson, 2000) is attractive in drawing together people whose work shares similar aspects, and consideration is given here to how technology can be used to develop and support such a community. In this paper, concepts from the Community Information Service literature are used to consider the development of a software environment for people working as a community in the area of lifelong learning. The intention was to design the system in an evolutionary way, using a minimal set of essential elements which would be elaborated according to user feedback. Three key design questions are considered: Who can contribute resources to such a system? What happens to existing practices? How is the community engaged?

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Background
The Penang State Library (PSL) has been serving information to the Penang public communities for 67 years. Information is so essential that it has become part of every human being. All human beings have information need, either individual or collective. Information is that basic need of life, which helps in the proper fulfillment of other needs such as food; shelter etc. for its survival and growth. Hence it can be rightly said that without information, survival and development of any community is not possible. Therefore, it is the basic responsibility of any Public Library to provide information services to communities. In addition, the Public libraries, being the library of communities can play important role in providing effective Community Information Service (CIS).

Given the quantity of information that the PCL has increasing collected in the form of books, magazines, reports, digital materials and papers, computing systems are an obvious support tool to help staff work their way to provide CIS through the resources. PCL is well aware, though, that community does not want only to obtain and read formal documents�they want to know what colleagues are currently thinking, what methods and approaches are currently being used; and they want the opportunity to discuss ideas with colleagues across the boundary. But no one has time to attend workshops or other face-to-face events to facilitate these needs.

In response to this situation, in December 2005, members of PSL, assisted by two consultants formed a team to develop a Community Information Service Knowledge Network (CIS Knowledge Network). The title was intended to be ambiguous�the software system itself was a network, as were the groups of people it was intended to support. The goals were to expand social interaction, decreased transaction cost, increase information exchange, increase knowledge of community, increased access to quality information, ability to identify/share trusted information. The CIS Knowledge Network team realised that if the system were to be accepted, they would have to stay as responsive and flexible as possible in order to convince users that their needs were paramount, rather than the needs of either the system itself, or the management concerns of PSL.

2.0 COMMUNITY INFORMATON SERVICE (CIS)

Community Information (CI) is the combination of two terms i.e. Community and Information. The term � Information� is used to identify many concepts; hence it is extremely difficult to define it precisely. Normally, information is a message, communicated by a communicator to a receiver. It is the product of human action in mind, which may be abstract or concrete. Therefore it is the raw material that is used in knowing, making decisions, taking actions, thinking and learning. Reid (1977) defines information as �a process rather than as material. Data only becomes information by the act of imparting it.� Information can be regarded as data, which can be transmitted between individuals, and each individual can make use of it in whatever form he/she wants. When information becomes publicly recorded, it becomes objective knowledge available to all. Community is a body of people in the same locality or a body of people leading a common life or a group of people having common rights or a group of people having a common possession or enjoyment.

Giggey (1988) defines community as �a group of people who have something common. This can be their age, education, religion, interest, political affiliation, activities, work, possession or a combination of two or more of these.� Similarly Usherwood (1977) defines community in a comprehensive way that �any geographical community or neighborhood will be made up of a number of communities definable by race, social class, or income group, employment, leisure interest, religion and so on, each with its own informal information network that has grown up without the help of librarians or any other information advice workers.� Thus community in general indicates towards a group of people having common interests. However, neither they can be assumed nor they can be created to legitimate a political programme or to support a plan for action. In the context of librarianship, it is a group of people with shared meaning and shared communication.

Community Information (CI) is the information for the survival and growth of the community or it is that information which is required by the member of the community to make effective use of the available resources around them. In this context Kempson (1986) has rightly defined CI as �information of self-reliance and self-determination�. Thus CI is that information which helps to solve their day to day problems related to survival such as health, education, housing, legal protection, sound economic development, political rights etc and also to participate in social, political, cultural, legal and economic progress of the society either individually or collectively. The information services through which community information (CI) is provided to communities is called Community Information Service (CIS).

Download the full paper here...

Enabling KM in Large Decentralized Organizations:A Case Study of an Institution of Higher Learning

Sun, 11 May 2008 09:23:46 -0400

By Atreyi Kankanhalli, Assistant Professor,
Dept. of Information Systems, National University of Singapore

The Background and Purpose of the KM Effort

The target institution of higher learning (IHL) is a leading university in the Asia- Pacific region. It has more than 23,000 undergraduate and 9,000 graduate students from over 90 countries. It also employs around 3,000 academic and research staff and 3,500 general and administrative staff to support its teaching, research, and administrative functions. Other than cross-faculty collaborations, the university also works closely with more than 100 external teaching and research institutes and centers world-wide.

The importance of knowledge as a critical resource in the IHL is reflected in its vision and mission. In carrying out its teaching and research functions, large volumes of multi-disciplinary expertise and administrative knowledge relevant to different communities are generated at both university-wide and faculty levels. The key challenge was to consolidate documents, knowledge, and information scattered across various faculties, departments, staff, and students. Therefore the purpose of the KM initiative was to retain and improve access to knowledge resources residing at dispersed locations, facilitate collaboration, and leverage on various knowledge assets within the university to improve operational efficiency and organizational effectiveness.

What the IHL Did

In response to the above challenges, the plan for a KM initiative started in 2001. Various KM technologies such as the Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), Enterprise Portal, Web Content Management System (WCMS), and Collaboration Management System (CMS) were implemented in 2002 to 2003. To further exploit existing knowledge to improve strategic decision-making, a universitywide business warehousing system was commissioned in 2006.

The Computer Centre (CC), which is responsible for building the university�s IT infrastructure and deploying campus-wide IT services, played a leading role in the adoption of KM-related tools and practices by incorporating them into the university�s IT infrastructure and making them available to various faculties. Each faculty is supported by its own IT unit, which caters to the specific IT needs of the faculty. The CC worked with different faculties to implement and promote adoption of KM tools and practices. However, the faculties also customized or used their own systems as needed e.g., some used open source software for their specific needs to reduce costs. This resulted in different KM capabilities across faculties.

Lessons Learned

Overcoming the human barrier to knowledge sharing was the major problem faced. For sharing general knowledge such as financial or HR policies, this problem did not surface. However, for more proprietary knowledge, e.g., programming in the developer�s corner, some developers were less willing to share because of ownership concerns as well as additional effort involved. Overcoming such hurdles involved persuasion from higher management mainly in the form of informing staff about the benefits of the system. Also reinforcement of encouragement for knowledge sharing on a regular basis was found useful. Another hurdle was to facilitate non IT savvy users to utilize the KM tools. Basic training and helpdesk support was useful for this purpose.

There are still several unresolved issues. Particularly in an university context, academics consider themselves quite autonomous in their work. They do not like to be told to what to do e.g., to use a particular system/ format to share their knowledge. Currently academics share knowledge within their research groups through seminars, emails, meetings, and other individual mechanisms. Therefore, a future plan is to develop platforms for academic knowledge sharing. Another agenda item is to develop a knowledge taxonomy for the university.
Impact and Benefits

KM is found to benefit the organization in many aspects such as providing ease of access to content, knowledge continuity, and consistency. Having an enterprise wide portal was found beneficial in several ways e.g., whenever there is staff turnover. Also, a new employee can be quickly oriented by showing them the repository where they can find most of the content they need. Through the EDMS, existing documents e.g., previous tenders, can be reused to shorten the time to develop a new tender. The system was thus able to reduce paper flow, allow easy search and access, permit document reuse, and improve operational efficiency. In this way, specific systems used their own operational measures to assess the benefits of KM.

Also, different faculties and departments have found differing KM benefits depending on the system, culture, and type of knowledge shared. As mentioned before, different faculties often developed their own systems to cater to their specific needs, e.g., the School of Architecture manages images of area and building maps and drawings, while the Faculty of Law focuses more on administering and providing access to legal knowledge repositories. Therefore this case provides insights into how KM can be implemented in a large organization with fairly autonomous and disparate sub units.

Author Information

Atreyi Kankanhalli is Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Systems at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She obtained her B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, her M.S. from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York , and her Ph.D. from NUS. She had visiting stints at the Haas Business School, University of California Berkeley and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Prior to joining NUS, she has considerable experience in industrial R & D. She has consulted for several organizations including World Bank.

Her research interests include knowledge management, IT-enabled organizational forms, and IT in public sector. Dr. Kankanhalli's work has appeared in premium journals such as the MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, International Journal of Human computer Studies, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, and Decision Support Systems. Her research has been presented at leading conferences including the ICIS, Academy of Management Meeting, HICSS, and WITS. She has served or is serving on several conference committees such as ICIS, PACIS, GDW, and ICKM and serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Knowledge Management and Journal of Global Information Management.

Dr. Kankanhalli was awarded the President's Graduate Fellowship, Dean's Graduate Award, and Infocomm Development Authority Gold Medal at NUS. She is also the winner of the ACM-SIGMIS ICIS 2003 Best Doctoral Dissertation award and runnerup for the MISQ Reviewer of the Year award.

KNOWLEDGELINK- KM System in Higher Learning Institutions (HLIS) in Malaysia

Fri, 02 May 2008 10:17:37 -0400

By Chua Lee Yang & Maizatul Akmar Ismail
Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology,
University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur

ABSTRACT
Knowledge Management (KM) is certainly challenging and important concept in Higher Learning Institutions (HLIS) to improve the quality of knowledge sharing and archive knowledge assets based on the available explicit and tacit knowledge. This paper begins with an introduction of KM which provides an overview of KM and types of knowledge that can be acquired through various resources.

Then, follow by discussion and analysis of surveys and interviews based on the KM System (KMS) implementation in two well-known Malaysia universities named Multimedia University (MMU) and University of Putra Malaysia (UPM). Next, this paper proposed a KMS named �KnowledgeLink� to be applied in HLIS in which, it was derived through the ideas and comparisons of features based on the existing KMS. �KnowledgeLink� is a web-based system which is implemented using ASP.Net, JavaScript and MySQL database with powerful web server named Internet Information Services (IIS). On top of that, �KnowledgeLink� is also further explained with the illustration of use case diagram as well as the screen shots of the system. Lastly, this paper concludes with future work to improve and enhance �KnowledgeLink�

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The rapid growth of data and technologies has triggered the transformation of data to useful information, known as knowledge. Knowledge is power and it is identified as crucial assets in many sectors especially in HLIS. Many people are aware of the importance of knowledge and ways to acquire, recognize, capture, retrieve, use, measure, manage and collaborate the knowledge, so that the knowledge can be shared without losing it.

Tiwana (2000) has categorized two major types of knowledge:

a. Explicit Knowledge: It is the knowledge that can be expressed in words and numbers, and easily be communicated and shared in the form of hard data, scientific formulae, codified procedures, or universal principles (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Choo, 2003) such as outputs of Research and Development (R&D) teams, strategic information about customers, suppliers, products and competitors. Besides, the explicit knowledge can also be accumulated through reports that consist of �know-what� knowledge.

b. Tacit Knowledge: It is the knowledge that can be expressed through people�s minds via their views and experiences, which cannot be recorded easily (Tiwana, 2000). Tacit knowledge can also be conveyed through �face-to-face� and �hands-on� methods by focusing on �know-how� knowledge to others that includes competencies and knowledge resources of human capital within the organization.

Elizabeth (2001) believed that workers who are lacking in adequate education and training rely on common sense and intuition or tacit knowledge. While the ability to acquire and manage tacit knowledge is deemed to be the key to managerial success, however it is also found that the tacit knowledge can be lost through employee outsourcing, organization downsizing, job termination and retirement. As a result, most organizations are trying to retain their employees or capture and store their knowledge for future reference.

There are many definitions for KM. It can be known as �a process where organizations have formulated ways in the attempt to recognize and archive knowledge assets within the organization that are derived from the employees of various departments or faculties and in some cases, even from other organizations that share the similar area of interests or specialization� (Joseph, 2001). Besides, knowledge can also be defined as �the process of transforming information and intellectual assets into enduring value. It also connects people with the knowledge that they need to take action, when they need it� (Jillinda et. al., 2000).

In business and management perspective, Gray (2000) has argued that KM is an audit of intellectual assets that highlights unique sources, critical functions and potential bottlenecks, which hinder knowledge flows to the point of use. It protects intellectual assets from decay, seeks opportunities to enhance decisions, services and products through adding intelligence, increasing value and providing flexibility. Moreover, Holsapple and Joshi (1999) has highlighted that, KM is also concern with making the right knowledge available to the right processor such as human or computer, at the right time in the right presentations for the right cost. According to Hansen et al. (1999), Koehn and Abecker (1997), the two main strategies for KM that have been employed by early adopters of principals are:

a. The process-centered approach emphasizes on communication process and enforces person-to-person contacts, which help in knowledge sharing and communication.

b. The product-centered approach which describes the knowledge documents, knowledge creation, storage and re-use.

In general, knowledge is developed and transferred through process-centered approach, while the content of KM can be transformed into different forms such as documents and digital forms via the product-centered approach.

Ian (2000) stated that �The business of universities is all about knowledge and the HLIS such as universities have been the site of knowledge production, storage, dissemination and authorization�. This shows that the HLIs are no longer just places for learning and studying, but also to contribute knowledge. Therefore, management of knowledge and intellectual capital is necessary to retain the available knowledge.

In this research, it studies on how KM can be implemented in HLIS with the assistance of the proposed web-based system known as �KnowledgeLink� which is implemented to support KM in HLIS.

Click here to download the full article...

Writers' e-mail:

jessie_cly@yahoo.com, maizatul@um.edu.my

KM Malaysia Newsletter- May 2008

Thu, 01 May 2008 01:07:00 -0400

Knowledge Management Malaysia Newsletter- 1st issue was published in May 2008. Click Read More....for the newsletter.

Issue No. 01 :: May 2008

According to independent research firm AMI-Partners, SMEs in Malaysia are on track to spend up to US$4.6 billion (RM21.93 billion) on ICT in 2008, up roughly by 11 percent over 2007. Issue is- how much of that investment goes to KM technologies and processes. Many SMEs might not even realize the value of KM. As the global KM solutions cost really high, local solutions and training can boost the adoption of KM in the Malaysian SMEs.

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Quick Facts !!!

Workers who spend time on social networking web sites such as Facebook could be costing UK firms over US $250 million a day, a study has calculated. According to employment law firm Peninsula, 233 million hours are lost every month as a result of employees wasting time on social networking.

Editor

Naguib Chowdhury

On The Use of A Diagnostic Tool For Knowledge Audits

The research reported in this paper outlines the construction and utilisation of a diagnostic tool for performing what we call a material knowledge audit in an enterprise of medium complexity. The tool was developed by adapting some of the more applicable techniques suggested in the literature by practitioners ...

read more

An interview with Patrick Lambe

KMTALK recently managed to get hold of renowned KM practitioners Patrick Lambe and Edgar Tan from the Straits Knowledge, Singapore. During the enlightening interview Patrick spoke about the development of KM in Asian region as compared to the West. According to Patrick ...

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	POST HIGHLIGHTS
		Transforming for the Knowledge-based Economy through the practice of KM
		The secret behind IKEA lies in KM !
		After Action Review : A Checklist

Knowledge Management TO-DO Task Matrix

Stephen Covey in his book, 7 habits of highly effective people, wrote about how to effectively manage time using the four quadrant TODO model. I believe that the same 4 quadrant matrix can be applied to any KM projects. A little change in the parameters- instead of �due time�, I am using completion time here. Four Quadrant of this KM TO-DO task Matrix is developed to identify which KM tasks we should do first and give priority to... read more

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On The Use of A Diagnostic Tool For Knowledge Audits

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:42:12 -0400

By Ravi Sharma & Naguib Chowdhury

Abstract
The research reported in this paper outlines the construction and utilisation of a diagnostic tool for performing what we call a material knowledge audit in an enterprise of medium complexity. The tool was developed by adapting some of the more applicable techniques suggested in the literature by practitioners. It was then put on trial in five organisations � a library, an IT consulting firm, a research institute, a telecommunications service provider, and a media agency � which were involved in knowledge intensive business activities. The appendices list the three main components of such a field trial-ed diagnostic instrument.

Our investigations revealed the dearth of such diagnostic tools as well as the need to continually refine knowledge audit techniques so that the practice evolves from an art into a science.

1. Overview Of Knowledge Audits

Knowledge, as compared to information, in the modern organization has elements of variety and is incongruous and heterogeneous in nature. In academic research as well as trade forums, the understanding of what constitutes knowledge is often debated because of the multidimensionality associated with it (cf. Feldman & Sherman 2001). Only when the knowledge is captured and organised into proper formats, can it be made accessible and put to further use. In effect, capturing knowledge is of little use if it is not organised in such a way that it can be understood, indexed, accessed easily, cross-referenced, searched, linked, and generally manipulated for maximum benefit of all members of an enterprise. Hence the capture, storage, transfer and exploitation of knowledge plays a critical role throughout the knowledge cycle and the cost of not retrieving it is indeed high (Gantz 2007). Indeed the capability of an organisation to create new knowledge, disseminate it throughout the organisation and embody it in its products, services and systems is defined by Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) as an essential aspect of knowledge management (KM).

But as Peter Drucker famously said: �We cannot manage what we do not know how to measure!� A Knowledge Audit (K-Audit) is hence a systematic examination and evaluation of organizational knowledge health, which looks at whether knowledge is exploited when needed. More specifically, it is an analysis of the organization�s knowledge needs, existing knowledge assets or resources, knowledge flows, future knowledge needs, knowledge gaps, and finally, the behavior of people in sharing and creating knowledge. In one way, a knowledge audit can reveal an organization�s knowledge strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and risks (Cheung et al. 2007; Hylton 2002; Liebowitz et al. 2000; Schikkard & Toit 2004). A K-Audit, typically, also includes an examination of organization�s strategy, leadership, collaborative, learning culture, technology infrastructure in its various knowledge processes.

Click here to read more....

Transforming for the Knowledge-based Economy through the practice of KM

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:38:57 -0400

By Moi Kok Wah, JT Frank Academy

Global Pillars of Competition
Globally, organizations compete on one of the three pillars of competition: operational excellence, customer responsiveness and innovation intensity. Organizations in manufacturing and high-risk industries, for instance, strive to excel in operational excellence. They operate under conditions where customer requirements are very clear and they differentiate themselves by focusing on efficiency and effectiveness of operations.

Relentless drive toward higher productivity, cost effectiveness and operational precision is common to industries such as manufacturing, oil & gas, aviation, medical centers etc. Therefore, common measurements include number of lessons learned, number of best practices instituted and generally focusing on the reduction of mistakes made.

However, if you operate in any customer-centric industry such as tourism, call centre outsourcing, financial services or even in the public sector, then you will want to excel in customer responsiveness. In such industries, the focus is on understanding, meeting or even exceeding immediate and near term customer expectations. Sometimes, the internal operations may not be exactly the most efficient but yet such organizations can be successful as they know that customer delight makes or breaks their businesses. Typical measures of success in such cases will be around the number of Q&A (questions and answers) created, or the number of complaints received and solutions provided as well as generally on the speed and quality of response to customer requests.

Click here to download the full paper