Manage Knowledge for Business Value

Knowledge is a strategic source of competitive advantage for any company wishing to thrive in the new millenium. However, managing and leveraging this ultimate resource is a hard and complicated task. Know-Net cuts through confusing theory and hype to provide companies with practical advice and tools on how to tap their most vital asset.

Know-Net cuts through confusing theory and hype to provide companies with practical advice and tools on how to tap their most vital asset

Know-Net is the first total solution for knowledge management.

Know-Net is built around a knowledge-networking approach that is a unique fusion of the knowledge-as-a-product (content) and knowledge-as-a-process (context) perspectives to knowledge management. Our approach covers the full web of leadership, processes, structures and tools, that enable building a knowledge-based organisation.

We offer a modular, phased method that guides companies wishing to undertake the journey towards managing knowledge for business advantage. Our method facilitates the mobilisation, planning, design, deployment and measurement of concrete knowledge management initiatives.

The Know-Net tool, a fully scaleable intranet-based knowledge management software system, is tightly integrated to our approach and method. The tool supports knowledge workers and knowledge system administrators alike and integrates state-of-the-art content management, collaboration and communication facilities with advanced search and retrieval facilities.

Know-Net has been successfully trial-tested in three user companies: a financial services firm; a chartered surveyors company; and a management consultancy.

The Know-Net software tools, consulting methodologies and techniques have been developed by the Know-Net Consortium (see about us) within a research and development project partially funded by the participating companies, the European Commission (Esprit research project EP28928) and the Swiss BBW.

Why do we need to manage knowledge?

The task of developing and applying knowledge management as a new discipline is a challenging endeavour. This new discipline must successfully respond to the diverse needs of knowledge based organisations in a timely fashion. Know-Net responds to the needs of companies, in their effort to excel and innovate, by providing a consistent, phased approach - backed up by a number of well articulated methods and tools.

As we approach the dawn of the 21st century we are entering into an era where the traditional pillars of economic power - capital, land, materials and labour - are no longer the main determinants of business success; instead the future will be essentially determined by our ability to wisely use knowledge, a precious global resource that is the embodiment of human intellectual capital and technology.

Most companies today are primarily run largely on the basis of insights gained from the successes of the manufacturing-based capital-intensive industrial economy of the past. These companies have fallen or are rapidly falling out of alignment with the evolutionary direction of the future as the economy transitions from the industrial economy to one that is rapidly becoming an intellectual capital- and technology-based global knowledge economy.

Some organisations have already grasped the message of knowledge management, understood the essence of managing a company's knowledge assets and have implemented highly beneficial initiatives. For some the payback is of the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. These organisations are in the vanguard. For the rest, the question now is what they should do in order to exploit their knowledge potential.

The challenge is to seek fundamental insights to help organisations nurture, harvest and manage the immense potential of their knowledge assets, to create new maps and measures and reinvent themselves in order to innovate and excel in the context of the knowledge economy.

How can Know-Net help you?

Know-Net's objective is to help companies define, develop, implement and evaluate internal world-class knowledge management capabilities that will enable them to deliver real business value.

From a business perspective value can be generated by developing competencies in one (or more) of four business areas:

• customer relationships; when a company's business proposition is tightly linked to delivering products and services that are customised to the customers' needs, what is needed is the identification of cross-selling opportunities and the development of customer relationship processes.
  • Know-Net can, for example, help by ensuring that appropriate processes, structures and systems are in place for safeguarding and sharing customer-related knowledge company-wide.
• product innovation; when new product development and time-to-market new products and services is critical, or when the company's research and development department plays a crucial role in generating value, what is needed is strong collaboration across functional departments to compress time-to-market for next-generation products.
  • Know-Net can, for example, help by designing and developing collaborative processes and systems which ensure that knowledge created from product ideas, designs and market analyses is retained and shared.
• operational excellence; when emphasis is placed on the efficient execution of high-volume repetitive operational tasks, from manufacturing to logistics to storage, what is needed is streamlined business processes and cost containment strategies.
  • Know-Net can, for example, help by developing processes, systems and structures that organise process-specific best practice strategies and ensure their company-wide implementation.
• employee capability; retaining, refining and further developing the skills and competencies of employees at the individual and team levels is critical for companies, across industrial sectors. However, personal and team development capabilities should be consistently and concretely linked to organisation-wide policies and business strategies.
  • Know-Net can, for example, help by developing learning and training plans, processes and systems that increase human performance around measurable business objectives and are integrated into work processes.