THE ROLE OF IT IN SUCCESSFUL 

KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT 
INITIATIVES

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM September 2003/Vol. 46, No. 9

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Importance of IT in Knowledge 
Management
●
Reduces the complexity of Knowledge Management
●
Easier to acquire, store, update, distribute...
●
Integration , sharing of knowledge
●
Advancing 

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Two basic approaches to KM

Knowledge Management

Codification Personalization
explicit , structured tacit, unstructured

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 Role of IT...

Codification Personalization
explicit , structured tacit, unstructured

✔
Store
✔
Personal communication
✔
Retrieve
✔
Meeting etc.
✔
Update
✔
Access people
✔
Share
✔
Achieve knowledge 
transfer

Eg. DBMS,Electronic  Eg. Expert Directories, 
Knowledge Repositories video conferencing tools

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 KM in the Organization

Industries

Product Based Service Based

High Low High Low

Volatility 
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Example
Low­volatility context High­volatility context

●
Hewlett­Packard
●
British Petroleum
Product ●
Microsoft
●
Buckman Laboratories
based ●
Siemens Infineon 
●
Shell
Technologies
●
Xerox

●
 Ernst & Young ●
McKinsey
Service ●
 KPMG ●
Skandia
based ●
 Siemens Business   
  Services

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Product­Based Organizations in
Low­Volatility Context
Product­based  organizations  in  a  low  volatility 
context  usually  do  not  compete  on  the  basis  of 
products  alone.  Instead,  these  organizations  often 
compete on other grounds (for example, services that 
accompany products).

✔
Buckman Laboratories changed its strategy from 
merely  selling  products  to  solving  chemical 
treatment problems for customers. 
✔
BP  and  Shell  recognized  oil  exploration  as  a 
source of competitive advantage because drilling 
is such an expensive undertaking.
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What Type of KM needed...?.

●
Knowledge needed to sustain these diverse bases of 
competition is often tacit.

●
The  organizations  have  mainly  adopted  the 
personalization approach to KM.

●
    IT  to  support  face­to­face  communication  and
Communities  of  Practice  (COP),  which  are  informal 
networks  of  people  who  share  similar  work  roles  and 
common context.

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Buckman Laboratories
●
A global e­communication network (K’Netix) that links 
specialists to field staff.
●
K’Netix has several forums to support COP devoted
   to various business areas (TechForum has about 20
   sections devoted to areas such as pulp and paper, and
   industrial water treatment).
BP
●
Invested $434,000 to develop  Connect, a knowledge yellow      
pages that helps employees locate required expertise.
Shell 
●
Has an Expertise Directory that acts as a clearing house and 
signpost for both knowledge seekers and contributors. 
●
 Shell developed Global Networks, which comprised collaboration 
tools like LiveLink and Microsoft Exchange for communication. 9/16
 Low Volatility High Volatility
Context Context

Expert Directories
Expert Directories
• Expert Directory (Microsoft)
• Connect (British
• Knowledge Map (Siemens
Petroleum)
Infineon Technologies)
• Expertise Directory (Shell)
• Connex (Hewlett­Packard) 
Product­  Direct Exchange
COP
Based • Phone and videoconferencing
• K'Netix (Buckman Lab.)
(Siemens Infineon Technologies)
• Global Networks (Shell)
• People­transfer (Hewlett­
Packard)
Repositories
• Electronic Sales Partners
(Hewlett­Packard)
• Eureka (Xerox)
• Internal Technical Education
(Microsoft)
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 Low Volatility High Volatility
Context Context

Repositories Direct Exchange
• Center for Business • Phone and Videoconferencing
Service­  Knowledge (Ernst & (McKinsey)
Young) • People transfer (McKinsey and
Based
• KWorld (KPMG) Skandia)
• SAP R/3 (Siemens
Business Services)

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Implications for Practice
Low Volatility High Volatility
Context Context

Provide expert directories 
●

• Identify and promote
and collaborative tools for 
strategic communities of
Product­  product development teams
practice
Based • Provide knowledge 
• Provide expert 
repositories for product 
directories
sales teams 
and collaborative tools
• Review of contents in 
• Reward participation in
knowledge repositories by 
strategic communities of
experts
practice
• Reward team for sharing 
of knowledge
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Implications for Practice  Cont.
Low Volatility High Volatility
Context Context

• Create and maintain high  • Build a culture of mutual 
quality knowledge repositories support and interaction
Service­ 
• Provide effective search
Based
capabilities for repositories • Provide communication 
• Reward quality contributions  support for one­to­one 
to knowledge repositories interaction via multiple 
• Reward effective reuse of  media
knowledge from repositories

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 Conclusion
High
Service based in Product based in
Low volatility High volatility

Codification
approach Product based in
Low volatility

Service based in
High volatility
Low
Low Personalization approach High
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 Authors
Atreyi Kankanhalli (atreyi@comp.nus.edu.sg) is a fellow in the
Department of Information Systems at the National University of 
Singapore.

Fransiska Tanudidjaja is an analyst at Accenture, Singapore.
Juliana Sutanto is a graduate student in the Department of
Information Systems at the National University of Singapore.

Bernard C.Y. Tan (btan@comp.nus.edu.sg) is an associate professor 
and head of the the Department of Information Systems at the 
National University of Singapore.

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Thanks

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