Knowledge Management is one of the modern topics in the growing business world. It is the process of creating, structuring, sharing, using, and managing the knowledge, information, and experience within an organization. The main purpose of knowledge management is to improve the efficiency of organizational activities and preserve the knowledge within the business organization. The concept of knowledge management is used to achieve organizational objectives by making the best possible use of knowledge available.
Training and development programs and on-the-job training are the most commonly used methods of knowledge gaining in an organization. This knowledge gain consists of a cycle of creating, sharing, structuring, and auditioning knowledge in order to enhance and maximize knowledge effectiveness.
There are 04 main components of knowledge management.
01. People
This is considered the most important component of knowledge management. Human capital is identified as the initial foundation for the success of any business and the most important asset any organization could have. Therefore, knowledge management and the improvement of employees are highly important for business organizations. Apart from that, knowledge requires thinking, planning and execution. It is a process that can only be done through human involvement.
People are considered as the main knowledge holders and the ones with the responsibility of boosting knowledge management. This makes the plan of encouraging the employee efforts, encouraging involvement in the internal business activities, and motivation to share the knowledge takes an important role in the knowledge management process of an organization.
It is identified that all the important decisions, programs, and processes are designed, planned, and executed based on the manual thinking of human capital. Since they are capable of thinking, analyzing, being flexible, and making decisions based on various scenarios, even the companies that use the highest technologies use human capital for important decision making.
02. Process
The knowledge obtained and gathered by the human capital of an organization does not flow automatically. There should be a way of distributing and communicating the collected knowledge. It is important for the organization to have a process to gain, understand and share the acquired knowledge.
The most commonly used knowledge management process is to obtain, gather, analyze, and share knowledge. These steps ensure knowledge gain as well as sharing the knowledge to make informed decisions in an organization.
03. Technology
In the modern business world, technology is considered another mandatory source for obtaining and sharing knowledge. Technology increases the speed of knowledge acquiring as well as speeds the process of sharing the knowledge. With the ability to store a large amount of data, sort and provide the most relevant data for the retriever and the speed of sharing the data with other parties is highly important for the business to survive in the fast-changing business environment and to achieve competitive advantages.
Apart from that, technology helps to reduce the cost of knowledge management such as obtaining costs, maintaining costs, and the costs of knowledge sharing. It also acts as a way of creating the whole knowledge management process easier for the employees by making the data available with just one click away.
In the modern business world, no one can think about sharing knowledge without having to think about using technology. Globalization has created a new concept of globalized knowledge obtaining and sharing through technology use.
04. Strategy
Every plan or program needs a strategy. Since the business organizations are operating to achieve a specific goal. Knowledge management should be used in a way that can be helpful in achieving the set goal. For that purpose, it is mandatory to have a strategy that aligns the knowledge used with the goal attainment of the business.