At the Working Knowledge conference, Kelly Cimmino from Price Waterhouse Coopers discussed how PWC is using an internal managed service to deliver KM services to PWC business units. I’ve written about this before and it was great to see that others had similar ideas and have been able to successfully implement it.
Offering KM as a service (KMaS anyone?) would allow companies to track time, expenses, output and assign business value to knowledge management. For example, your local librarian is essentially a KMaS model. In fact corporate librarians and knowledge managers are one and the same. See Michael Stephens interview with Boeing Librarians.
Some argue that Web 2.0 has reduced the need for librarians and other ‘organizers’ of information. I disagree, I think there is always a need for someone to pre-digest, qualify, sort, sift and organize information produced in a corporate environment. Certainly technology can augment and increase the value of your KM team and make it easier for your employees to consume the information produced by your corporation.
Gian,
My question would be whether the service level agreement includes a certain level of participation. The way we’ve thought about the technology stewardship role, for example, includes enough involvement in a community to know how its members are using technology on a day to day basis. Would it be difficult to convince a penny-pinching unit that a sustained level of involvement is not a luxury?
Hi John,
Yes I think in order to be effective and understand the knowledge needs of the community the SLA would have to allow for some participation.
I think the initial conversation and convincing would be difficult, but hopefully over time the value becomes obvious and the issue becomes how to leverage the individual(s).