destinationKM.com :: Evolving Synergies
by Madanmohan Rao
...The disciplines of business intelligence (focused on structured data) and knowledge management (focused on unstructured data as well as human teams and communities) can powerfully leverage mutual synergies.
Business intelligence (BI) has addressed the processes, technologies and strategies for cleaning up transactional and operational data, analysing patterns in this data, discovering and extracting performance-oriented nuggets, reporting this information to a wide range of managers, and taking appropriate business action. Knowledge management (KM) addresses the cultures, tools and capacities for creating and harnessing knowledge stocks and flows in employee communities and their often "unstructured" communication (eg. emails) and documentation (eg. presentations).
The two fields complement each other well, and at higher strategy levels they can actually be planned and rolled out in tandem, particularly in larger organisations with high transactive flow and pace of evolution. BI tools can be deployed without KM practices -- as in many banks, and KM initiatives can be launched in organisations without BI implementations -- as in public relations firms, of course...
Mentioned in this article:
National Computer Systems Pte Ltd, Tata International, Frost & Sullivan, Airtel, SingTel, Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd, Hummingbird Ltd, Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals Inc, LG Electronics, Red Pill Solutions, Open Text, and NexLabs.
For more on the intersection of knowledge management and business intelligence, google it!
K-Collector