The Integrator, April 2009:

Knowledge Management (KM) can be used to increase organizational performance by leveraging knowledge to optimize efficiency and effectiveness. The organizational business response to external influences to remain or become more competitive in a market often begins with an enterprise business plan to seek ways to provide products or services better, cheaper, and faster. A good business plan will identify the business drivers to accomplish market objectives. A plan that addresses the sharing, transfer, and leveraging of knowledge to enhance organizational performance and change the culture to improve knowledge transfer can reap the following critical business driver benefits:

• Increased quality and speed of decision-making even within geographic and time zone diverse organizations.
• Increased productivity through reuse of proven methods and processes, leveraging best practices, and avoidance of duplication of effort.
• Better returns on investment (ROI) from time and cost savings.
• Retention of corporate knowledge from people leaving the organization and for infrequently performed processes.
• Improved support services from more responsive user and customer needs providing easily accessible relevant knowledge.
• Increased individual ownership and awareness of organizational goals.
• Improved organizational cohesion through collaboration, shared knowledge, and expertise.
• Replicated gains from improvement methodologies such as Lean/Six Sigma.
• Creation of a Learning Organization, an organization that creates, acquires, transfers, and retains knowledge adapting its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.

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