Posted by Martyn R Jones on April 19, 2000 at 09:10:09:

In Reply to: Is Knowledge management and ecommerce two sides of a coin? posted by Bjarne Rugelsjøen on April 19, 2000 at 04:51:07:

Hello Bjarne,

My notion of this question, which I haven't seen in many places, is that Knowledge Management and E-Commerce are in some ways synergistic but at a certain level of abstraction are not really the same.

In simplistic terms I would say that E-Commerce belongs to a class of business enabling IT applications that support the client-facing and operational side of the business, E-Commerce is moving operational applications closer to the End-user, but it still remains tied quite closely to the automation of operational processes. E-Commerce is in many ways the evolution of Order Entry, Provisioning and Billing etc. and the infrastructure used to support these types of applications. E-Commerce is highly dependent on IT in order to make it work, and the paradigms that it uses, when deployed well, are familiar and even to some extent traditional trading processes albeit with the aid of a new sales channel.

KM on the other hand is concerned with the delivery of service, the capitalisation of know-how and the support of "innovation" activities, amongst many other things. It doesn't rely almost wholly on IT and it's success depends on people rather than with a special emphasis on technology and smart selling. I'm not surpised that some companies have a difficult time with KM, at the beginning of the 1990's most corporations took a jaundiced view of Data Warehousing, now its an essential in most significant businesses.

E-Commerce is probably seen as more value-adding because there are more household examples of it's success. To demonstrate a E-Commerce solution is fairly easy, to do the same with KM is just a bit harder. One of the problems with KM may be just in the way that its been promoted. KM is an interesting and sometimes intellectually challenging set of concepts, philosophies, issues and problems, which provides highly enquiring minds with enough material to find it fascinating as it is diverse, which leads to attempts to describe what it is and how to implement it. From mmy perspective, and I can't say I've read everything there is to read on KM, I get the impression that most books on the subject are pitched at a level that is too visionary and too intangible for most businesses. Showing that KM is tangible and explaining how nearly all companies can benefit from it is not an easy task, because of the lack of reference material, but, for example, we have worked on a number of KM projects now to be in a position where we are writing a Brief Introduction to KM aimed at the most sceptical of business people.

We know KM works, the question is how to package it, and how to explain it in terms that business understands and in a what that will possibly ensure that business will immediately see advantage and value in KM.

My major concerns about KM are two-fold:

- Too much literature that treats KM as the next best "money for nothing" scam since AI was pulled out of academia and into the arms of hardware and software vendors
- Too many hardware and software vendors selling KM as another application, with big-iron and software but marketing it as "real KM" -- we don't really see whats so "real" about connecting 5000 PCs to a Corporate Server, installing Outlook and calling it KM

A final word, we are in the early stages of KM, and even in terms of E-Portals the market is very dodgy with a lot of fuss being made about electronic broadsheets (E-Portals) with limited Financial or Investment or Gossip content who's paper values are really extrordinary if not concerning. Longer term a lot of these Junk Bond E-Businesses will die out or be bought up and their place taken up with a commercial appreciation of the value of real content sites such as @Brint.

Well I hope that helps,

Regards

Martyn R Jones
Consulting

• Consulting

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Follow Ups:

• Re: Intersections and Distinctions Reilly Atkinson 01:33:14 04/20/00 (1)
  • Re: Intersections and Distinctions Martyn R Jones 06:43:52 04/20/00 (0)

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