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The success of organisations depends as much on their ability to manage knowledge as it does on the other competitive differentiators such as the strength of its brand, the skills of its employees and depth of customer relationships.

When a knowledge management strategy that delivers on specific business objectives is built into the Intranet, it makes an important contribution to realising organisational value.

Knowledge Management is more than the classification of all the documentation that resides on hard drives, Outlook in-boxes and filing cabinets. It includes the strategies and processes of identifying, capturing, creating, surfacing and leveraging knowledge. Knowledge management also includes strategies to foster a culture of information sharing, collaboration and the implementation of tools that make it easier for employees to share what they learn and, in turn, to learn from each other.

In the past, Intranets have been information repositories, that were not appreciated nor used effectively by employees. Corporate Intranets are gaining new prominence in many organisations, and many companies are revisiting the opportunities provided by knowledge management.

As organisations recover from the economic downturn by consolidating their operations, revisiting their product road-maps and positioning themselves as being more customer-centric, they will start looking to their company Intranets as the backbone for delivery on their business objectives and operational strategies.

Organisations are also discovering that investing in a robust, functioning Intranet is a resource intensive endeavour and that they must look for other benefits when making the business case for an enterprise-wide intranet.

KM initiatives are intellectual capital investments and should be aligned with specific, long-term business goals, as part of the Intranet Strategy.

Communities of interest are groups of people within the organisation who have common interests, work functions or strategic objectives. They share their insights, experiences, learning and knowledge amongst each other for mutual benefit. They are typically loosely structured, decentralised, fluid and built on personal relationships. Communities of Interest are perfectly positioned to support knowledge management projects.

Collaborative environments such as enterprise Intranets force employees to be focused, thoughtful and careful in their contributions. Knowing that what is published may potentially be viewed by the whole organisation, or that other users may have the ability to rate the article, forces the participants to be more disciplined in their contributions. The collaborative, real-time feedback environments of a company Intranet encourage self-policing and more strategic information sharing. The downside is that it can also discourage participants from sharing any information whatsoever.

Well-planned Intranets make perfect platforms for knowledge management initiatives. But most Intranets aren’t deliberately planned; they start out as divisional efforts that are leveraged across the whole organisation. Many of these Intranets hold valuable information but are so decentralised and unstructured that they do not support the organisational requirements.

Knowledge management is becoming immensely important in today’s business environment. Teams that share knowledge perform better. By approaching knowledge management in a simple, tactical fashion where the emphasis is placed on the application of knowledge is the key. Identifying the organisation’s priorities, focussing the communities of Interest on these priorities and upgrading the Intranet to be a more of a knowledge platform will help develop a relevant, meaningful and beneficial knowledge management initiatives.