Posted by Greg Pickett on November 11, 1999 at 05:39:23:

In Reply to: Knowledge Management for the New World of Business posted by Yogesh Malhotra on October 31, 1999 at 15:29:29:

To whom it may concern.

I have only had a brief time to read some of the information posted under Knowledge Management for the New World Of Business, however, I offer the following for your comment.

I agree with Mr Yogesh Malhotra that KM is a new way in which business will utilise information, by effectively providing for all aspects of their business being integrated, which will in turn provide for a better knowledge base for management decision making and ultimately reduce the time taken for these decisions to be made. This in turn should also decrease the time in communicating and implementing these decisions throughout the organisation, hence, efficency may prevail.

My concern with all of the chatter about KM is the ability of the organisation to ensure they have correct information within their KM system to maintain a sound decision making model, and not so much on how the information is routed throughout the network.

During my involvement with the Y2K issue, one organisation identified that they had some 400,000 speadsheets within their global organisation. It was a total shock to the IT department yet alone the senior management.

From my viewpoint the Information Technology age has given us faster and more vibrant information processing (as Denham pointed out), with computer assets growing accordingly to keep pace with the processing of this vast array of information.

It is my opinion, for a company to have an effective KM system it needs to first have a full understanding of what they currently have at their disposal and what they need to have. The computer asset with which they store and retreive this information is also an important aspect of the whole KM system development.

Like the company who had 400,000 spreadsheets that they didnt know existed. What was the cost of the asset to maintain the storage for just this information?

I am only embryonic in the KM area, however, all that I have seen has been in the area of supplying tools for companies to pool their current information and allowing executives and staff access to this information.

The questions still remain in my mind. Is the information we are basing our decisions on correct? If it is not, what is the cost for the organisation making an errant decision?

Like the IT industry and its development and expanision, what is the cost of having a half hearted system which is misunderstood by a vast majority of executives within the corporate arena.

I am not up to date with the current research relating to executives use and knowledge of computers, but from what I have seen in my career, computers are grossly under utilised by senior executives.

The IT industry is in for a real test in the coming few years as executives will request a wider span of information from their desktop, yet where do we find the information? Particularly, about industry benchmarks and/or market information.

On the web they shout! Meantime the marketing executive, his assistant or secretary have spent the past 3 days searching the net for market information about a particular subject. Ending up with 5,000 web addresses and limited information. Alas, the manpower cost of technology.

The web I find interesting and yes there is some very useful information available, however, it is only after searching for a long period of time does one build their own personal Knowledge Base of addresses that will give them the information they seek.

Likewise Microsoft make comment of using the web as part of their digital dashboard system for information gathering.

I only hope that the software engineers become somewhat more market focused when it comes to Knowledge Management and we do not see a waste of computer, financial and human resources within the companies that adopt these systems.

To an executive a computer can be a huge waste of their time. On the other hand it can be an extremely effective tool for them to be successful over and above competitors within the marketplace.

I speak as a computer layman who is an executive. Whilst some view me as a compute wizard, I simply know a little more than they do.

Keep up the good work and I will make a point of visiting on a more regular basis. I have found the information most stimulating.

Keep well
Greg Pickett

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