Knowledge Management and Enterprise Portal Consulting Services

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Knowledge Management Consulting:

Contact: eisai@comcast.net

EIS is one of the first two organizations offering The New Knowledge Management (TNKM) (See also About EIS) as the foundation of its consulting services. TNKM begins with the identification of problems (gaps between desired and actual states that can't be closed because new knowledge must be produced to support the decisions and actions needed to close them). There are three classes of such problems:

problems occurring in business processes;

problems occurring in knowledge processes; and

problems occurring in Knowledge management processes.

Problems occurring in business processes are not solved through Knowledge management solutions, but through knowledge processing. These are not the province of knowledge managers but of knowledge workers. The other two classes of problems, however, are the object of TNKM, and the focus of EIS services. EIS, either alone or, together with its allies offers the following knowledge management services.

Identifying, formulating, and evaluating knowledge processing and knowledge management problems

This is one of EIS's most important services. A failure to solve a business process problem, for example, may not be due to a problem in the organization and structure of an organization's knowledge processes. Instead, it may be due, simply, to a failure to solve a difficult business process problem, even though available knowledge processes are working just fine.

Even if a knowledge processing problem exists, it is not always so clear what the nature of the problem is. For example, the fact that the knowledge needed to support a particular decision is not there may be due to the fact that the knowledge exists, but is not available due to a poorly operating knowledge sharing process, or it may be due to the fact that the process of developing new knowledge claims is not open to most organizational participants and that this has truncated the supply of new knowledge. Or it may be due to problems in the structure of the information acquisition process, problems that can easily be fixed by adopting a new IT solution.

The point, of course, is that how the problem is formulated and diagnosed is very important because it constrains what the "KM solution" to the problem will be. If the wrong problem is formulated and solved, then, in the end, the solution won't work, and KM will fail. Because of its experience in developing the underlying conceptual foundations of TNKM, and specifically in identifying the primary sub-processes and KM activities in the Knowledge Management Process, EIS has special qualifications to identify, formulate and evaluate knowledge processing and knowledge management problems.

EIS uses the technique of the KM problem and Knowledge Process audit to perform its evaluations. The heart of the KM problem and knowledge process audit is a group decision making process based on Delphi, JAD, and Group Value Measurement Techniques of group problem-solving called group Knowledge Management Technique (GKMT). Using the results GKMT, EIS produces an evaluation of the KM-related problems of an organization and presents the business case for going ahead with a more careful evaluation of whether a KM-solution should be developed and implemented.

Developing and Implementing KM Solutions

Once the problem is defined and the business case made, KM solutions must be developed and implemented. EIS's consulting efforts are again shaped by the TNKM perspectives it is developing. Specifically, in concert with our allies, we develop solutions that focus on enhancing knowledge production and integration sub-processes, always with an eye toward the cumulative impact of alternative solutions on the operation of the whole Knowledge Life Cycle (KLC) in the organization we are working with.

That is, we don't deal with one aspect of knowledge processing, such as knowledge sharing alone. Instead, if knowledge sharing is the problem diagnosed earlier, we develop alternative solutions to that problem and evaluate the alternatives both in terms of their impact on knowledge sharing, and their further impact on information acquisition, individual and group learning, formulating new knowledge claims, evaluating and eliminating erroneous knowledge claims, searching and retrieving data, information, and knowledge, broadcasting data, information, and knowledge, and teaching newly produced knowledge.

No other KM consulting organization provides that kind of systems approach to solutions development. In specifying solutions, we also use a comprehensive approach to metrics and KM benefit estimation that is both unique to EIS and a development of our recent work in TNKM framework development.

More Specific KM Services

In the context of developing and implementing KM solutions, EIS and its allies offer the following more specific consulting services:

KM Strategy Development based on the normative Model of the Open Enterprise and the goal of Sustainable Innovation

KM impact and benefit analysis and measurement (This service uses EIS-developed techniques of measurement)

Reformulation and restructuring of KM programs based on the incomplete SECI model (This service uses the EIS/MA developed knowledge conversion framework)

Analysis of the role of culture in KM solutions (This service uses the EIS-developed model of the role of culture in knowledge processing)

Application of the Open Enterprise model to create accelerated sustainable innovation (This service uses the EIS/MA work on the Open Enterprise)

Implementing the IT architectural foundation for evolution towards the knowledge portal (This service is based on the EIS-developed model of the EKP)

Implementing Enterprise Knowledge Portal applications (This service is based on the EIS-developed model of the EKP)

KM product software evaluation ((This service is based on the EIS-developed model of the EKP)

Comprehensive Capital Audit (This service is based on the EIS/MA work on a new taxonomy of forms of capital)

KM Success Metrics development and implementation (This service is based on the EIS/MA work on KM Metrics developmentand the Open Enterprise Template providing a structure for measurement )

White Paper authoring and development (based on EIS's long experience in writing white papers)