The goal of knowledge management is to provide an organization with adequate search engines, interfaces and connections to enable information to be located, manipulated, and converted into coherent, useful formats. Fowler’s article provides interesting examples of how two organizations--Rogers Communications, Inc. and the Ketchum Global Network (KGN)--created networks that enabled their users to search for, locate, and transfer information to others as needed. Rogers Communications focused narrowly on personnel and payroll needs, while KGN addressed a variety of information. In each case, however, the goal was to consolidate, sort, and manipulate corporate knowledge and to make it accessible to everyone who needed it, regardless of location.

For Roger Communications, the starting point was to have all employees enter their hours of work online, thus eliminating paper time-work sheets. By having the data on the network, line managers and administrators could more easily review employee time listings, monitor attendance, process approvals, manage labor costs, and do complex scheduling for shift work.

KGN’s problems were more broad-based, and required a better way to access the knowledge already available on the network. KGN also represented a competitive environment, where knowledge sharing is typically not the norm. In such an environment, knowledge is power, and each organizational unit seeks to hold on to its power. For knowledge management to be successful, these problems needed to be resolved in addition to the right hardware and software being acquired. Most importantly, the committed support of top management and that of all lower echelons was required. Only in this case can knowledge workers gather and process information in accordance with their job functions, and be truly productive.