Technical issues required in the development of Knowledge Management are given below:
1. The KM system needs to support both informal or highly unstructured and formal or highly structured content including informal content such as video content, audio recordings, scribbles, conversations, doodles on notepads, etc. This implies that a data warehouse can be a part of a KM system only as a source of structured data that is input to the complex collaborative filtering mechanisms of the KM system.
2. Since a data warehouse primarily focuses on clean, structured, and organized data, the size of a data warehouse is always large. Raw data, often in its native form, is stored in these warehouses resulting in the requirement of high storage capacities. As against this, a KM system might have storage system sizes ranging from very small to extremely large. As support for multimedia content grows, storage needs also increase linearly. However, a KM system never has raw data stored in it. Everything present within the knowledge-base is processed data or information or higher. This results in low storage requirements.
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3. The content focus of a KM system is on highly filtered information and on knowledge as against the scrubbed, raw, clear, and organized data in case of a warehouse. Because of the complex nature of retrieval and classification requests that a KM system must be able to handle, performance requirements and computing power needed for a KM system are much higher than those’ of a data warehouse. At the same time, if multimedia is digitally supported, processors need to be able to handle the additional processing burden of graphic renditions as well.
4. A live network is imperative for a KM system that is drawing from resources available throughout the entire enterprise and beyond, from the internet, and the collaborative extended enterprise including the organizational intranet.
5. Performance demands on KM systems are often higher than on basic intranets, both in terms of network bandwidth requirements and processing power demands. While processing power is rarely the problem, network bandwidth often is. A typical intranet often has a broader base and a more open face to the outside world such as the firm’s major customers and partners. This is usually not the case with critical KM systems a company uses to gain a competitive edge and to leverage business processes across an extended enterprise and the firm’s value chain.
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6. A typical KM system performs individual content customization unlike mass customization on which a typical intranet depends. However, the intranet provides one of the best choices for the KM system front end. Knowledge network is not limited by its reach and the extent, to which it can be used to communicate, but rather by the extent to which it supports reciprocity. The ability to support a multidirectional, complex mechanism for negotiation is required to enable this reciprocity. Users of a KM system will contribute only if they feel they are gaining something valued by them in reciprocation. This idea is very different from the primarily publishing-oriented model that intranets commonly follow.
7. Groupware products such as Lotus Notes are often mistaken for KM systems. The common perception is that any groupware system constitutes an ultimate KM solution. The focus on the differentiation between groupware and KM systems is built around the following characteristics:
a. .Content and Focus
b. .Knowledge generation and archival
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c. .Sources
d. .Relationship between knowledge generated from activities of an organization.
8. Although project management tools allow for the capture of formal structured knowledge, a system needs to support some from an informal knowledge as well to “capture” at least some portion of tacit knowledge. To transfer tacit knowledge from individuals to a repository, one needs to support some form of community based electronic discussion. A key feature that would differentiate a KM support tool from a project management tool is the organizational memory store (a part of the organizational knowledge base) which is the ability to capture and retrieve unmodified or tacit knowledge that can be slow and costly to transfer.
9.Tacit knowledge, like all other types of knowledge, can become outdated, hence invalid; therefore, it is critical to ensure the applicability of tacit knowledge to current situations. The maintainability aspect, for this reason, is not significant only for explicit and formalized knowledge but also for tacit knowledge. This requires provision for providing support for partial capture of such knowledge, using an IT tool, thereby Organizational Knowledge Management Architecture and Implementation ensuring its currency and relevance. Knowledge must be treated as a driver for technology choice, not vice versa.