The Need to Know
No matter what business you’re in, it’s probably changing as a result of knowledge management. A layperson’s primer on the next big thing in ICT
by Caitlin Crawshaw
The impact of knowledge management will be felt in almost every line of business, though, not just information technology. “It actually touches on all aspects of an organization’s value chain,” Ogaranko says. In marketing and sales, knowledge management technologies will increasingly be used to co-develop products and services for customer groups. “From the vantage point of operations, it allows for more geographically distributed teams to operate with a high level of effectiveness and efficiency, and from a supply-chain management perspective, it allows for organizations to also dramatically expand how they interact with suppliers.”
Ogaranko cites Cameron Valves and Measurement, a division of Houston-based Cameron International Corporation specializing in the production of valves for the oilpatch. Because of Internet-based knowledge-management technologies, the company engages in collaborative engineering with partners abroad. From Calgary, the company can easily work with a team in India in charge of stress testing and a Houston team responsible for final testing before the product is built in China. Without leaving home, all the collaborators are able to understand the specifications, customer requirements, materials problems or other issues early on in the process.
Ogaranko has no doubt that knowledge management has the potential to position more Alberta firms as global players, which is particularly advantageous for smaller firms. “I think it certainly presents a smaller business with new types of opportunities than they’ve traditionally faced. And I think all of those are truly global types of opportunities.”
Additionally, by increasing efficiency, knowledge management will continue to counteract Alberta’s labour shortage which, given demographic trends, is likely here to stay. Ogaranko notes that this is part of a well-documented trend, in which IT advances have been linked to big increases in labour productivity. Of course, the formula for success requires more than cutting-edge technology. “It really comes down to how an organization is also articulating its business strategy,” he says. “So, if an organization is very focused on effective business processes, technology can be extremely powerful. And knowledge-management strategies are core to that. And with every business process, every step along the way, information is a byproduct, what many organizations view as a waste.”
Don Kjosness agrees that Alberta companies can use knowledge management to expand their global reach as long as technology is not emphasized over human interaction. Kjosness is chair of the Banff Venture Forum, which connects smaller Alberta businesses with investors, and chairs the province’s ICT Federation. Like most small companies, knowledge management firms struggle with securing angel investments (a step up from “love money” and preceding venture funding). The Banff Venture Forum works to help businesses at this stage, but is only one strategy to solving this problem, Kjosness figures.
Another major impediment to the success of knowledge-management firms is the attraction and retention of high-quality people. Since this branch of ICT is driven by intellectual property, bright, skilled people are desperately needed. “I like technology. I’ve worked in it all my life…. But I’ve never been enamored with technology, in the sense that technology is first, last and always,” says Kjosness. “That doesn’t mean technology isn’t important; it is. But I learned a simple lesson a long, long time ago as a young engineering manager. If you don’t have good people, all the good technology in the world doesn’t do anything for you. Bill Gates had a good line … he said, ‘I have a very simple view of the world. I go out and hire the smartest people and the best people, because then my competition won’t have them.’”
Kjosness is quick to point out that investors aren’t always that interested in technology. Often they don’t know much about software at all. (“That’s not a criticism; it’s a reality,” he says.) Investors are more interested in people. “Investors don’t invest in technology. Investors invest in results. And results are people.”
In Alberta, good people are hard to find. This could be the ICT industry’s biggest hurdle, says Kjossness. “We really need to come to grips with the people issue.” However, he’s heartened by the community’s positive attitude towards education and figures most Albertans understand the need to diversify the province’s economy to ensure prosperity when the natural resources aren’t there to sustain us. The province’s potential, he says, is enormous. Knowledge management can help the province secure a greater global reach with many of its industries – including information technology itself. We can do this if we sort out some of the constraints limiting knowledge management and small business generally. And because of our increasingly global economy, we really ought to.
“We’re in a world economy, that’s a fact. Our competition isn’t the company up the street; our competition is someone in China we don’t even know.”
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