Measuring Knowledge Management Initiatives

Alakh Asthana of eClerx Services asks JK Suresh about the current trends in measuring knowledge management and KM maturity. Suresh explains that until a few years back KM was seen as a new initiative that would galvanize operations and provide business benefits -- and since it was relatively new concept, there wasn't much insistence on returns on investment. The last few years have demanded greater predictability from business models -- and the ability of the models to show concrete benefits in good and bad times. As an essential part of the business model in many corporations, even KM has had to produce and showcase tangible benefits.

Suresh then talks about activity tracking of KM and exchange processes -- formal and informal, before coming up with a set of metrics. He emphasises keeping records of certain behaviours and activities that are circled around your KM practice -- like downloads, page navigations, comments, participation et cetera. This data helps analyse and create activity metrics. Activity metrics help identify if KM efforts are navigated in the right direction. A key advantage of these metrics is to help the KM function introspect and identify certain departments where KM usage is low and derive insights about the success or pitfalls of the practice. As an example, Suresh illustrates that at Infosys activity metrics help understand the effectiveness of the KM group in spreading the idea of knowledge management and enabling knowledge exchange between different groups.

The second area that Suresh focuses on is health, performance and business benefits derived of KM activities. Suresh points out that business benefits can be extracted from myriad anecdotal evidences like testimonials from employees, KM success stories with the help of polls, surveys et cetera or quantified approaches like monitoring reuse of knowledge assets that helps in saving time, correlation studies, statistical analysis between awareness, knowledge exchange, and business outcomes, are few mechanisms that enable this.

Suresh concludes the interview by mentioning the difference between correlation and conclusion, and a KM practitioner should avoid the trap of giving complete credit to KM for success of a business outcome, as multiple factors may contribute to it.

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Tags:

• JK Suresh
• measuring knowledge management
• measuring KM
• measuring intangibles
• Alakh Asthana
• Alakh
• eClerx
• eClerx Services
• Infosys
• Infosys KM
• knowledge management
• KM