Business Need

The knowledge base of a firm's employees is one of its most valuable assets. Yet, for most of us, strolling into a colleague's office is no longer a reliable strategy for 'knowledge management.' Across time zones and geographies, today's knowledge workers need instant access to a wide variety of information that can help them more effectively conduct their day-to-day activities, collaborate with their teams, and pursue new business. With stretched resources and demanding goals, companies need solutions that maximize the value of key assets - their people's time and the expertise they bring to the business.

Knowledge Management refers to systems that store and retrieve qualitative information. Common examples include:

	A document management system that provides indexed access to key business documents, such as marketing fact sheets or proposals
	An "expertise finder" that provides information on who in an organization is an expert in certain areas
	A project review system that includes a variety of information on a company's client projects, including processes, results, staffing and lessons learned.

The benefits from knowledge management systems are widespread, ranging from cost savings on staff time to improved employee morale. Some of the specific benefits your company can achieve include:

	Improved customer service by reducing response time to inquiries
	Increased sales due to faster turnaround on proposals
	Heightened innovation through the flow of ideas
	Enhanced productivity by minimizing 'reinventing the wheel'
	Accelerated time to market of products and services
	Enterprise-wide learning opportunities
	Leveraged expertise during periods of downsizing or rapid growth
	More productive and effective partner relations

With stretched resources and demanding goals, companies need solutions that maximize the value of key assets - their people's time and the expertise they bring to the business.

Knowledge Management Solutions from KMA

Information Retrieval
Many knowledge workers at one time or another need information created by others within their organization. One key requirement of a knowledge management system is the ability to help people locate the 'expertise' they need - both the experts who can assist them with a problem, and the documents that are relevant to that problem.

Who led the Utilities project? What were the results? What tools or methods were used to complete it? When employees can find answers to questions like these, quickly and easily, they are better equipped to turn companies' past successes into ongoing results.

The most powerful and complex systems provide easy search and navigation functions among information elements like clients, projects, documents and people. For example, you could start with a client, then find core information about all the projects worked on with that client (e.g., start and end-dates, key deliverables), find all the people who worked on the projects, and all the documents produced by the client team.

Collaboration
Organizations frequently employ teams to work together on projects. Even when working from disparate offices, their collaborative efforts typically require sharing of documents, like Microsoft Word files, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations. Knowledge management systems can play a new and exciting role in facilitating collaboration by managing the team members' 'works-in-process.'

A virtual project room stores all the latest documents and allows team members (and only team members) to review those documents, edit them and check them back in. Team members can also subscribe to documents, receiving e-mail notification when the document has been checked in or out. This solves the problem of team members working on different versions of a document inadvertently, risking lost revisions, confusion, and wasted time.

Portals
Although portals are not necessarily a part of a knowledge management system, many knowledge management systems, including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server have a portal capability. Portals facilitate knowledge management. For example, collaboration solutions can use a team portal as the repository for storing team documents, document management solutions often embed their search capability in a portal, and the delivery method for business intelligence dashboards and scorecards is frequently a portal.

KMA specializes in the development and deployment of knowledge management solutions. When your company engages in a project with us, we work with your team throughout the implementation process - from the definition of business requirements through the development of a fully tested system. We are business analysts, project managers, application developers, integrators, teachers and partners, and we are dedicated to delivering client satisfaction and success.

KMA Benefits

	Business Understanding and Experience: Our teams approach projects with a clear focus on business objectives and bring years of experience across business disciplines of sales, marketing, operations and finance to every client engagement. When building a knowledge management solution, categorizing new information and managing keywords are critical tasks. KMA can assess your company's business requirements and determine how your knowledge assets can best be organized, stored, posted and retrieved by your users
	Deep Expertise in Microsoft Tools: Our technical professionals are continually trained on the latest Microsoft software and tools that support knowledge management, such as Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. You can be sure that your new IT solutions will leverage the most advanced technologies on the market today.
	Proven Methodology: KMA engages clients in a rigorous five-stage development cycle that ensures timely deployments and quality results. Clients are provided with a Working Prototype early in the process enabling them to confirm all aspects of their knowledge management system, including functionality, data presentation and user interface design.