Posted by Martyn R Jones on September 01, 2001 at 19:05:08:

In Reply to: Re: The End of Month KM Challenge posted by Scott Allen on September 01, 2001 at 04:13:44:

Hello Scott,

Many thanks for responding to my posting. From your posting I read that you are concerned with:

1. KM and how to accurately predict ROI from (investment in) KM
2. How to use KM to produce consistent and predictable outcomes
3. Framework issues related to KM
4. Metrics issues related to KM
5. The relationship between process management and knowledge management
6. The failure of (KM?) industry
7. The importance of standards with relation to KM

First of all, I hope my interpretation is correct, and if not, then please correct me.

Taking a look at the first issue I would say that this is hugely dependent on what KM is being proposed for. When Knowledge Management is used to support the development, maintenance and re-use of clearly definable and repeatable practice then it is somewhat easier to predict ROI. My feeling is that, for example, when KM is used to ensure that hidden knowledge is used to add-value then predicting ROI starts to become a highly subjective art of probabilities and possibilities which borders on white magic. So, for the second issue, I would venture to suggest that consistent and predictable outcomes can be assisted with KM when predictable and consistent outcomes can be produced and where risk can be controlled to the point that both its occurrence and effect is minimized.

With regards to items three and four, again I would say that certain stricter frameworks and metrics will work for some areas where KM can be applied, but again, this will be for a subset of KM. I find it easier to fit the management of business oriented structured intellectual capital under this umbrella, but this is just a subset of KM in business, and does not take into account the vast area that KM actually covers.

For me, process management and knowledge management do overlap in certain areas of business, but then again, from my perspective, this occurs in some, but not all areas.

On the issue of KM and “KM software” I would say that it is probably too early to really expect any form of ROI predictions from software vendors, and I would suggest that it is not really their place to do so. Many software vendors will not, for example, provide tangible ROI figures for more mundane applications of their software such as data warehousing or ERP. My call on this would be that software support of KM has still to go a long way, just as it took a long time for RDBMS manufacturers to fully understand relational algebra and to provide it in a usable form with the query language of a database engine.

On the issue of KM and standards I would suggest this. If software vendors who badge up their product with the KM label want to decide on some interoperability standards for the industry then this is fine, that they do it under the guise of creating KM standards is at best misleading and at worst, meddling in areas that they know very little or nothing about.

Also, I have a couple of questions that we might like to discuss further, they are:

1. If one could create credible ROI models for some classes of KM problems would this be useful to you?
2. For what classes of KM problems would it be most useful to have ROI models for?
3. What key framework issues do you think will affect KM success/failure?
4. What metrics associated with KM, apart from investment and return, would you like to see developed?
5. Can standards development be limited to software interoperability?
6. How can we prevent a nascent KM software industry from failing? And,
7. what are they (these companies) most likely to fail from short, mid and long-term?

Hope this is okay, Thanks and best regards,

Martyn

Martyn R Jones
Consulting

• KM 23/09/2001

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