What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management is a multidisciplinary managerial approach that brings together all the initiatives, methods and techniques for perceiving, identifying, analyzing, organizing, memorizing, sharing the knowledge of the members of an organization – the knowledge created by the company itself (marketing, research and development) or externally acquired (economic intelligence) – in order to achieve a set objective.

We are overwhelmed with information. Companies, scientists or even individuals are now forced to apply a strategy in the processing and transmission of information in everyday activities: voting, working, looking for a job, winning markets, etc. Knowledge Management is a multidisciplinary strategic approach aimed at achieving the objective set through optimal use of knowledge. It is necessary in knowledge management to distinguish between data, information and knowledge considered as components that lead to decision-making, and action.

In the field of the company or more generally of an organization, knowledge management serves to capitalize on the knowledge accumulated in the organization. This capitalization generally takes the form of methods of assistance in the dissemination and organization of documents. Thus, knowledge management in an organization takes the form of document management to preserve internal documents and to target and capitalize on external documents that may be considered useful.

However, with the arrival of the Web, globalized services and the concepts of the Semantic Web, knowledge management now deals not only with documents but also with data within internal documents or external documents via the Web or external services via the Internet (through their APIs).). Faced with the amount of data available and potentially interesting for the company, the knowledge management domain also encompasses all the tools and research work that are intended to simplify the reuse of this data within organizations as well as with social media platforms or Big Data technologies, etc.

Knowledge management draws on different disciplines such as organizational theory, cognitive science, social sciences, information and communication sciences, and computer science.

Skills, trades, knowledge, know-how and patents constitute a wealth in an organization. The organization must know how to make this intangible capital grow. In addition, the management of this capital makes it possible to improve the performance of an organization through the motivation of staff whose knowledge is thus valued. Experts are thus encouraged to develop a culture of sharing that facilitates the capacity for innovation within the organization.

This knowledge management will also improve decision-making by reducing subjectivity and the time to make this decision. In addition, the provision of IT resources makes it possible to “trace” all the reasons for a decision and thus facilitates feedback to improve subsequent decisions.