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Knowledge Management Mistakes
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July 03, 2000 (Computerworld) -- Knowledge is power, especially in the Internet age. That's why companies are trying to figure out precisely what their customers want and how to get it to them before the competition does. Whatever you call it - collaboration, decision support, knowledge management or something else - it's the bedrock that's supporting today's corporate strategies.
Trouble is, many of these costly, information-laden efforts are doomed. Some researchers peg the failure rate of knowledge management projects at 50%. But Daniel Morehead, director of organizational research at British Telecommunications PLC in Reston, Va., says the rate is closer to 70%.
"Most knowledge management projects simply don't hit their stated goals and objectives," Morehead says. "So that 70% doesn't mean they fail totally - it means that they don't accomplish what they set out to do."
Liam Fahey, an adjunct professor at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., says the higher failure rates can be attributed to knowledge management (KM) initiatives that rely too heavily on technology. Just moving data around "may or may not add value to anyone in the enterprise," Fahey asserts. "Until you've affected someone's understanding of their current or future world, it's not knowledge."
Brian Hackett, a program manager at The Conference Board Inc. in New York and the author of a recent report on the topic, says the most successful KM programs focus on building deeper customer relationships and increasing the speed of innovation. He calls this Phase 2 of KM, the first being an emphasis on saving money. London-based BP Amoco PLC and Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford Motor Co. have each saved more than $600 million over the past three years by implementing KM programs, Hackett says.
BP Amoco, for example, saved $50 million in drilling costs at the Schiehallion oil field off the coast of Scotland by leveraging knowledge it had gained from developing prior oil fields.
Here are five KM mistakes and how to avoid them:
Mistake No. 1: The most common error is failing to coordinate efforts between information technology and human resources. Don't fall into the trap of framing the KM effort as either a technology problem or a people problem. It isn't an either/or situation - KM needs both to succeed. Witness the U.S. Postal Service, which wound up with a fairly successful KM program in spite of itself.
The Postal Service's human resources group was starting down the KM path when it discovered that the IT group had already done so - so the two teamed up.
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