Knowledge ManagementKristin EberleMonica HamptonCarmen VelasquezBA 471 Management Information SystemsDr. René F. ReitsmaThursday, June 8, 20060Abstract Knowledge management (KM) refers to the ways organizations capture knowledge, know-how, expertise and other intellectual capital, then manage and use the knowledge that they acquire (Wikipedia – Knowledge Management, 2006). This topic is just now making its way into companies such as Nike and HP with the hopes of greater innovation,consistency in best practices, knowledge access across a global organization, and attaining an overall more streamlined organization. This paper will discuss the processes and implications of knowledge management. 1Introduction Knowledge management is sure to become the next new buzzword. This management of data is achieved through Digital Asset Management (DAM) and encompasses choosing what data to gather, how we describe it, storage, and harvesting. The best example of knowledge management is the card catalogue in a library. At first data was stored on library cards - each card containing data about the author, title, subject, year written, and genre. Since the internet this information had been stored on servers containing the same information, just electronically. This paper will address digital asset management, what a digital library is and who uses it, metadata and the Dublin Core, then harvesting data and the software used, but first, it’s necessary to cover why this is an important business topic.In advertising, there are many blunders that companies have made. The followingis an example of one which was told to a group member by the Nike Global Brand Manager at a guest lecture at VCU. When Coca-Cola went global, to increase their market share, their advertising efforts coupled their product exports. In Afghanistan, Coke made a 60 second commercial which was beautifully executed; for 55 seconds of the commercial everything was red and the entire ad was revolved around branding Coke with the color red. After the commercial was shown he asked, “What did Coke forget about when making this commercial?” Following numerous guesses his answer was that Coke had overlooked a very important element of their market research report... Afghanistan did not have color televisions, defeating the entire purpose of their ad. This is a prime example of different departments using separate databases, resulting in companies not knowing what they know. In larger organizations it is easy for research, 2data collections, and ideas to get lost in the clutter, resulting in doing the same job over and over, or as the example above shows – losing out on profits. Digital Asset ManagementKnowledge management is accomplished through the process of Digital Asset Management (DAM), which is a way of archiving and managing the various knowledge assets of an organization. The ROI of DAM is between 8-14:1, with larger organizations often experiencing the highest return. Some of the benefits of DAM are a reduction in labor due to a lack of redundancy in asset creation, the ability to reuse existing assets from previous projects, and a faster turnaround time on projects – all of which increases workflow efficiency.The first step in digital asset management is extensive planning. An organization needs to assess its needs and goals, and budget before implementation. The organization would assemble a team of workers to decide what knowledge is worth archiving and whatfile format would be the most optimal for each piece of data. There would also have to besome training for workers that are going to submit their knowledge and marketing of the system so that it actually gets used.Digital LibrariesThe end result of digital asset management is a Digital Library (DL). A DL serves as an electronic repository for all of the collected knowledge that an organization needs tostore and access. The repository can store everything from textual data to audio and videorecordings. The files can then be retrieved using online networks. There is also a big difference between a DL and a search engine like Google, in that the quality of the 3sources and data in a DL is significantly well managed and therefore far more credible than a search engine that can access any level of data or opinion.Many universities have implemented digital libraries in order to share their campus library items along with extending other forms of academic, research, and cultural resources. There are governmental and nongovernmental libraries as well that offer high quality collections that are accessible to the public. The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) offers an extensive digital library that includes numerous collections for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.Large organizations are also realizing the potential in managing their assets. HP isa big player in DL open source software, contributing money and intellect to the cause. Nike is another organization that is currently implementing a DL to manage its knowledge base.MetadataThe term “metadata” comes from Greek and Latin and is translated as “data aboutdata” (Wikipedia - Metadata, 2006). Metadata is information that will lead to the discovery, access or location of a set of data. It is one of the best ways to logically store information for easy retrieval. Ideally, metadata is used to discover relevant information; however, there are no regulations for the quality of the metadata. There are no incentives for an author (the person who is creating the metadata for the information) to ensure that their metadata is correct, and it can be time consuming to list all of the descriptions of theinformation being stored. For example, if someone at Nike just created a successful marketing plan, they have no personal reasons to create metadata for it because they know what they did, and they have no incentive for putting in more work. Since the 4process is time consuming, many authors chose not to create metadata for their information. The classical example of metadata is the traditional library card catalog. The catalog contains information, data, about the location and content of the book. The data is usually the author, title, publication year, genre, ISBN number, keywords, Dewey decimal call number, and a brief synopsis of the book. To locate a book using the catalog, one would search through the cards using any of the criteria and find a card with the books name.
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