Chris Macrae, 03-Oct-04 @ 09:34AM

km or networking

I wonder if this thread would have gone to a different conversational place if its title had been small companies also need networking. In my opinion, its open networking capabilities of KM that small companies use to thrive.

Whilst large companies might also benefit from such skils , its interesting to catalogue which big KM intentionally do or do not foster trust and other core learning flows of open networking. Uktimately we are looking at the differences between revolving round power alone and making progress that brings widesppread benefits for humanit. Fortunately the SME seldom has a choice if it is to evolve. Sadly the most common globalisation strategies so far deployed have led large companies to believe in communications and other areas that they do have a choice of proiting from responsibility and transparency or irresponsibility and opaque measyrement/governance systems. Because so many companies believe that numerical standards are the only quarterly attention-grabbiong needed to align corporate mindfulness, all other knowledge sharing and relationship behaviours can get easily overtrumped by blind power in global organisational systems and their partnering (systems*systems).

As the leadership & intangibles research units of the EU http://www.euintangibles.net have consistently argued since the millenium and the start of vision 2010, without a second and transparent measurement system to direct intangibles, the conditioning of all KM is unhealthy. In big corporates because everyone gets caught up in the measurement smog; in SMEs as soon as big corps invest in them or target them as competitors. At a Knowledge City level, bloggers have started to rehearse what types of meetings and networks can be convened across the city to attract leaders towards wanting their organsiations to benchmark themselves out of this system mess- London does this here http://whynotlondon.blogspot.com/; if you would like to to co-blog your city's network for responsibility , please mail me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk

Rajeev Chelikkattil, 03-Oct-04 @ 01:50AM

SMEs need KM

I do agree that KM initiate are very important for small level enterprises too. Some of the SMEs are practicing in very minimum level like implementing a Document management repository or Backup solutions.
Why SMEs are not seriously considering KM?
Recently I have come across some research papers on 'collaborative work' shows that collaborative climate or knowledge sharing culture in SMEs are far more less than big enterprises. The research concludes with some valuable analysis, The Managers or supervisors of Big Enterprises are highly qualified and competitive than the SMEs, which help the companies to do better KM initiatives. Another reason could be rich resource of Enterprises and its capacity to dedicate KM personnel for the KM initiative.

James Dellow, 27-Jun-03 @ 11:24AM

Awareness is the first step

I looked at Ann's article earlier in the year and it was very influential in my "experiment" to introduce some people from SME's to the idea of KM. If you search the forum you'll find my posting on Personal Knowledge Management (also see http://www.thinkingshift.com/page.php?key=22

I think its important to add that the involvement of SME's in KM takes place in at least four areas:

- within individual SME's
- between SME's
- supporting organisations (eg government, associations, clubs etc)
- service providers to SME's that have a knowledge component (eg consultants)

Its should be possible to provide guidance about KM (and services) from any of these perspectives. For example I was recently reading about the growing use of intranets by franchise-based organisations to share information etc.

The real challenge appears to be in moving from doing KM activities without knowing it to making them aware of KM. My Personal Knowledge "Mountain" idea was supposed to be a stepping stone to awareness.

I agree that there needs to tangible outcomes and ROI. However, that's no different from what individual managers in large companies want :-)

Helen Baxter, 26-Jun-03 @ 06:01AM

Jane Williamson said:

"I think SME's who already effectively use KM practices albeit under the umbrella of operating effectively can teach larger firm lessons in how to harness knowledge and work cooperatively with their staff for maximum return and knowledge sharing."

I completely agree. I've mainly worked for SMEs and in the one corporate role I've had I was astonished at the lack of collaboration or co-operation. You just can't get away with that sort of political behaviour in smaller organisations.

Frithjof Weber, 24-Jun-03 @ 09:17AM

Still much to do...

Dear Clinton,

I think your time is perfectly right. And will still be for a long time as there is so much to do...

I can 'confirm your mission': We ran a theme here on KnowledgeBoard about "Do I need KM in SMEs" in January 2003. One of the findings was that many SMEs still have serious shortcomings in their document management approaches.

Good luck with your company.

Frithjof Weber
BIBA

Clinton Swan, 16-Jun-03 @ 06:43AM

DM & KM vendor experience

Hi all,

I work with a company that produces document & knowledge management software - Anuva - priced and developed specifically for SME's. Of course as such I couldn't agree more about the need for KM in SME's - after all, it's what we've based our business plan around!

Having only gone to commercial launch in March '03 we perhaps in some ways reflect a growing awareness of KM generally by SME's. Certainly from the government and media here there has been quite a bit of talk of the 'knowledge economy', although not a lot in terms of coverage of knowledge management to support this concept.

As such, one almost gets the impression that while the idea of 'knowledge management' and related has been accepted into mainstream language it has at the same time taken on an almost esoteric quality to the general public in terms of both what it 'actually is' and actually taking steps towards implementing it.

In general terms my feeling is that a large portion of the SME market here is still very much at 'education' stage - although less so within legal firms (once again generalising!). I get the distinct impression that this is a situation that is much the same in most places. (comments?)

We do the majority of our 'promotion' via direct mail & subsequent follow up at this stage and find that one of the biggest issues with companies that are perhaps not initially predisposed to consider document & knowledge management is to get them to become aware of their institutional knowledge and information stores, and the value therein.

That said - we've had a lot of encouraging feedback & interest so far so it could be that we're here at 'the right time'

Cheers
Clinton
www.anuvacorp.com

Jane Williamson, 12-May-03 @ 01:08AM

Consultants are the problem for SME uptake

I agree with the previous posts. SME's are often practicing KM but not under any formal title. However, lack of KM management can often result in severe problem for small firms more than the loss of key staff in large firms due to the criticality of each member in a small group environment.
Consultants by making complex things complicated (and thereby justifying their fees)and the overlapping of KM and other disciplines has made it too imprecis for a small firm to know what it would expect from KM consulting. What is needed is a way to simplify the complexity of KM and relate it clearly to opportunity maximisation and therefore profit before many SME's will venture into this realm. It requires a new way of thinking to mobilise the SME knowledge sector and this is still largely untapped.
I think SME's who already effectively use KM practices albeit under the umbrella of operating effectively can teach larger firm lessons in how to harness knowledge and work cooperatively with their staff for maximum return and knowledge sharing.

'Segun Odujebe, 03-Oct-02 @ 17:32PM

Waiting for the Mass Implementation

Hello Ann,

I will like to take this from a personal perspective.

Your article on 'Small Companies Also Need KM' is instructive and it underpins the importance of focusing on this niche market. I will like to focus on the following issues:

The scenario you described can be likened to the evolution in the computing industry. Initially there were the IBMs and their mainframes, not caring for the computing need of the little companies and individuals without console access. Then came some guys like Intel, Microsoft, Apple et al who recognized there is a need for individualized(aka personal) computers. These PCs became a veritable tool for 'persons' in SMEs especially with the appearance of the client-server paradigm.
The same can be said of KM. Every vendor and developer is focusing on the big implementation not on the opportunity that lies in the SMEs or even at a personal level.

The scramble for the big implementation may be due to the fact that the production cost of such KM 'biggies'. A paradigm for scaling down according to need or even modularisation may utilized instead. This may eventually bring down cost while bringing KM into the mass market. Which is where it ought to be.

I'm an African and i know the cost imperatives of acquiring technology relative to needs and wants. which is why i have for some 2 years now been looking at open source initiatives in this area. They are few but I have found some promising ones. In Africa issues of relative corporate comparison come into play. What is considered an SME in Europe or America may actually be a blue chip in Nigeria. So we even have to look at those small KM tools.

My final word. Watch out for the movement of KM into the main stream. This will happen after the big guys have borne the R & D cost and have able to justify a positive ROI. Then mass implementation in the mass market will commence.

This is actually the real opportunity.

Frithjof Weber, 23-Aug-02 @ 08:38AM

KM = Risk Management. SMEs take risk -> No KM ?????

Dear Joel,

Reading your story, the following thoughts come to my mind:

KM is a risk management approach for the risk of knowledge loss involved with a leaving employee. It does not reduce the risk that someone is leaving, but it reduces the effect.

However, this risk may be far away (or may seem to be...) and the entrepreneur is ready to take it or to neglect it. Then he will not take a KM approach against it.

And a ROI calculation does not really help in this!!

So promoting KM would mean highlighting the risk. However, it also clear that the enterprise is faced with many more (not KM related) risks and a balance of the relevant approaches must be found. Some risk will remain and day-to-day business is calling...

Kind Regards

Frithjof Weber
BIBA

Joel Van Hoolandt, 19-Aug-02 @ 10:44AM

Yes, SME's are interested within KM !

Dear all,
As previous board member of a 3D scanning services company, based in Belgium (5 persons), I faced some interesting problems due to a non-KM practice among our people. One of our key engineers left the company after having got his (expensive) trainings, taking with him the transformation and the image processing information the company had.
No strategy had been deployed in order to avoid this situation and I must admit today (as being consultant within KM) that I failed convincing the board of adopting it and accept to invest some money in the field.
My conclusion of this short story (because the impact of the “leaving knowledge” has been important: the company has been paralyzed for several months) is that:
·The definition of what KM is isn’t clear for the moment. A lot of entrepreneurs and other SME members are, as previously already said, busy with their activities and focusing on their annual targets.
·KM isn’t convincing for the moment because the ROI parameters. A business owner NEED to have a concrete description of what KM can do for his business and what he can expect from his investment. I’m personally convinced that a financial return has to be proposed to the business owner in a short-term period but no persuasive ratio has been found till today.
·Cash management and cash-flow management are two important priorities for small business owners and they can’t allow them to invest within a “strategy” (with by the way, no added-value within the annual accounts, which is one additional reason for investing in a more tangible account…) that can’t be a proven success.
·An important confusion exists in the representation of what KM is. Perhaps it should be clearer in the KM community that Knowledge Management is people and process oriented and not a pure technological solution.
·On the other hand, Small companies are more reactive and quicker on decision and adaptation that large corporations; this tremendous advantage can be one of the most important factor for promoting and testing knowledge management solutions among them.
·If one important characteristic of the owned businesses (or a SOHO – Small office/Home office) is the people centered (generally around ideas of one or two people) structure, it’s crucial to convince those people to practice some Knowledge Management. But the major problem a consultant will face here is the intellectual protection an entrepreneur will do (even unconsciously). And this phenomenon is natural because someone who has to work hard on a project (or around it) will defend and expect some return on his efforts.
For all those reasons, I’m really convinced that Knowledge managers could do something for the Small and Medium Enterprises, but not before having found and resolved some problems I described here above.

Ton Zijlstra, 16-May-02 @ 14:35PM

Odd one out?

Hi there,

I'm working as a knowledge manager in a small company (35 ppl) in Enschede, Netherlands.

I've been reading KnowledgeBoard for some time now. Our company, on my initiative, created the time and budget for KM in June 2001. Now after one year, we're in the stage that we have all but formulated a coherent view on what KM could do for us, and are starting to implement that view. During the last year we have not been idle of course. Apart from getting myself informed on KM, requiring a lot reading, doing some university courses, and looking for connections between KM and our ongoing quality management and information management projects. Also we took time to start building a network of other KM-professionals so that I can be taught by others, while teaching my company.

We tried to tackle the ROI question early on. First of all we relabeled some information management projects I was already doing "KM-projects" where ROI is easily calculated. Apart from that we are already selling what we only just learned ourselves about KM, mainly to other SME's in more or less the same branch. About 25% of my time consists of billable hours. That plus minimal effect approximations (soon to be slowly replaced by more concrete metrics) is how we calculate the ROI, where the Investment is creating the job of K-manager, mainly.

It shows that most SME's we talk to do recognize the fact that their knowledge is their key asset, but wouldn't know where to start. When explained that we view KM not from a technological point (which is what most SME's envision: big computers storing all their knowledge), but from a organisational point, where people are the most important, they start seeing ways of implementing KM. Small companies often pride themselves on being people-centered. That pride can be a startingpoint and trigger for KM in my opinion. That's how I 'sold' my idea of creating the job of K-manager to my MD in the first place.

By the way, we also set a date by which time KM should be implemented in our company. The goal is to make KM a natural way of doing things in our company. I'm just the one leading the project to get there, not the one 'doing knowledge'.

I think that small companies have a few advantages when introducing KM.
For one, it's easy to intervene in all aspects of the company. Second, it's possible to know everyone in the company, and get face to face with all employees which goes a long way in getting your message sold. Third the hands-on level and the strategic level easily meet, which makes the feedback loop very short and effective.

But all said, as a small company with KM high on its agenda, we sadly enough still seem to be the odd one out.

Kind regards,

Ton Zijlstra

Paul Spence, 01-May-02 @ 06:41AM

SMEs need to see ROI too.

Firstly, I doubt that non-response on this forum means that small and medium enterprises (SME) are not interested, it just means they don't read this forum. However, companies like mine are striving to champion the cause of KM for SMEs, but like the corporates they want demonstrated return on investment, so that is what we at GeniusNet are researching right now. A voice in the KM wilderness on the other side of the world...I hope not.
Unlike corporates,SMEs can't afford a six-figure price tag though, so keep it simple.
www.genius.net.nz

Ian M Smith, 26-Apr-02 @ 13:24PM

Are small companies interested?

Ann is right, small companies do need KM. However, the lack of comments here suggests thay are not taking an interest in the subject.
Part of the problem may be that they are too busy with day to day matters. This is the paradox.To progress, they need to make time to address this crucial strategic issue.

All the more reason why those engaged in KM should make the effort to show small companies why KM is relevant to them.