Knowledge+Management+Systems

toc =Knowledge Management Systems=

What is Knowledge Management?
A Knowledge Management (KM) System is an IT system that supports the capture, organization, and dissemination of knowledge throughout an organization. (MIS)

As more organizations are moving their business to the World Wide Web, the organizations require more efficient methods to gain and share knowledge within the organization. With better knowledge gathering systems, the organization is able to create better ideas that would help in creating new products or services for the said company. Having created the ideas, organizations will need to be able to distribute the ideas to the right person within the company. Knowledge Management systems allow just that.

**Developers of Knowledge Management Software**
There are many organizations out there that are creating software that support knowledge management. Some of the more well known companies in this field are: [|Adobe] [|eGain] [|IBM] [|Novo Solutions] [|Talisma]

**Relevance to the CCT333**
As users of Wikispaces, instructors and students of CCT333 are familiar with knowledge management systems. Although Wikispaces is not as sophisticated as the systems created by other organizations, it still allows people to share information and disseminate information.

Instructors
For the instructors, the wikispaces are used as a medium to provide and distribute information regarding the course to the students of CCT333.

Students
Using wikispaces, allow students to share information regarding the course. Through this, the students are able to learn not only from the instructors of the course but from each other as well. The amount of information taught within the course is not limited to the amount of information given by the instructor but is now limited by the amount of information shared by each individual student.

=Similar Technologies=

These collaborative systems improve the way teams work with one another. They help individuals combine their knowledge into a single repository and give them the ability to communicate and share a variety of information with one another. = =
 * 1. Integrated Collaboration Environments** (ICE) “is the virtual environment in which virtual teams do their work” (Haag et al, 2006). There are collaborative systems that support this type of environment such as Peer-to-peer (P2P) collaboration software and presence awareness. Without going through a central server, the former allows users to share files and communicate with one another in real time. The latter is a unique software that “determines whether a user is immediately reachable or is in a less- available status” (Haag et al, 2006). Social Network Systems is another example that supports ICE, where it connects people you know to individuals that they know.
 * 2. Business Intelligence (BI) Systems** "are the IT applications and tools that support the business intelligence function within an organization" (Haag et al, 2006).
 * Business Intelligence (BI)** is obtaining as much information about your competitors, customers, business partners and internal operations and combining that to form valuable knowledge for you to make strategic business decisions. Whether is it internal or external, information is the key element that builds business intelligence. The information collected is categorized into specific databases according to customers, products, suppliers and employees to be stored and consistently updated. To manipulate and analyze information, a data warehouse is utilized. In this repository, online analytical processing is a system that processes the data collected from individual databases to form the information that assists business- decision makers. Data mining tools help to query the information in the data warehouse. Databases and data warehouses support BI by gathering crucial data and manipulating it to form the knowledge necessary to make effective decisions. They organize and help manage mounds of information that not only create BI, but it gives the ability to update and modify it consistently, keeping information timely and accurate. As a result, while databases will store information, data warehouses will analyze information creating knowledge.

**Work Cited**
Cummings,M., Donovan,R., Haag, S., McCubbrey, D., Pinsonneault, A. __Management Information Systems for the Information Age__. 3rd Canadian Edition. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2006.

"Customer Support and Knowledge Management Solutions" http://www.novosolutions.com/ 9 Nov. 2006

"Knowledge Management" http://www.egain.com/products/knowledge_management.asp. 9 Nov. 2006.

"Knowledge Management" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management 9 Nov. 2006

"Talisma Knowledgebase" http://www.knowledgebase.net/ 9 Nov. 2006