Knowledge management involves data mining and some method of operation to pushinformation to users. Some vendors are offering products to help an enterprise inventory and access knowledge resources. IBM's Lotus Discovery Server and K-Station, for example, are products advertised as providing the ability to organize and locate relevant content and expertise required to address specific business tasks and projects. They are said to be able to analyze the relationships between content, people, topics, and activity, and produce a knowledge map report.
In an Information Week article, Jeff Angus and Jeetu Patel describe a four-process view of knowledge management that we have put into a table: This major process... | Includes these activities.... | Gathering | * Data entry * OCR and scanning * Voice input * Pulling information from various sources * Searching for information to include | Organizing | * Cataloging * Indexing * Filtering * Linking | Refining | * Contextualizing * Collaborating * Compacting * Projecting * Mining | Disseminating | * Flow * Sharing * Alert * Push |
A knowledge management plan involves a survey of corporate goals and a close examination of the tools, both traditional and technical, that are required for addressing the needs of the company. The challenge is to select or build software that fits the context of the overall plan and encourage employees to share information.