IT Debate:Portals & knowledge management

Gartner once again displays a stunning grasp of the obvious, adds the FUD factor (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), and creates an issue where there is none. Knowledge Management is concerned with what people do, how they know what to do, and how theycan get better information to improve what they do. A portal is a collection of resources or services accessible through a common interface. A portal is merely a tool for the knowledge worker, who must understand how people make decisions and translate those rules into programmable algorithms, creating an aggregation of contextually relevant resources and services which are of utility to the organization's competitive advantage. Examine what your people do. Determine how they know what to do. Provide them with the resources and services to get at better information to improve what they do. That's KM. Throwing together a collection of links and calling it a portal and saying it's knowledge management is ludicrous.

The portal is the conduit to sources of data that is used for Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management is the monitoring of data as events occur (Knowledge Base or Expert Systems and their rules); the storing of data of interest (Data Warehouse - for data trends and events); and the use of this data for business intelligence or decision support.

According to gartner, I demand that Knowledge Management is the best application than portal, because KM as more strength than portal. Hence the new technology always develop under the need off business strategy I rather choose KM to manage my business strategy.

The basic question posed by Gartner is easy because any business that implements knowledge management will by default have the capability to implement enterprise portal and vice versa. Being able to evaluate implementation at this level minimizes risk.

We are planning to review our business? strategic objectives, translate them into business rules and identify functions and applications needed. This will lead to identifying the technologies, training and investment required to implement business needs in a realistic time schedule.

When considering how my company can use either or both knowledge management and/or enterprise portal business, the question is asked: Where would they fit and do we need them and if not when will we? We need an understanding or the business reasons for installing the technology. The biggest question is can we NOT afford to do it compared to how much does it cost by itself.

Another important question is to measure data growth for the next five years. This will help time the eventuality of knowledge management being used as a strategic weapon. In fact, this situation begs the question of installing a CRM and/or ERP systems or leap-frogging and installing an enterprise portal as an advance toward knowledge management. This will be an important step because these major systems are in competition and need to be understood so there are no information gaps or unproductive overlap.

We believe that CRM, ERP and Knowledge Management Information System will test the strengths and weaknesses of each and if duplicity and cumbersome processing negate synergy, then the entire plan needs to be evaluated.

The danger is that the easiest or most technologically expedient approach and implementation will be taken without understanding the impact to the business model. This must be avoided under all circumstances.

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