IT’s claim to a serious business strategy is that it delivers a good ROI and builds the organisation. However, these positive features cannot be taken for granted. Apart from excellent support they require commitment of energy to adopt the IT system created and effort to use the information generated.

In systems like Inventory Management the effort to use IT may not be high since the possibilities generated are minimal. The energy to adopt is also minimal cause all workflows are organized, viz., the next step is mapped and the follow-up action defined. The ROI is reliable. This may not be as true of a Supply Chain solution where the management needs to rapidly decide upon the possibilities created else the advantage of automation is diminished. The automation itself is usually effective. In contrast, there is no reliable business process for decision-making. IT relies upon the User to integrate products. This requires Users have a desire to share their knowledge and be sophisticated in the use of technology. Knowledge Management (KM) has developed to motivate and guide the use of technology for converting information or opinion to action.  

The importance of KM derives from the central role of decisions in corporate activity, which gives it a potential benefit to cost ratio many times ERP. However, decision-makers rarely spare the energy to perform integration tasks. The KPMG 2000 KM survey has revealed that only 1% of the companies have succeeded in leveraging knowledge on a continuous basis.

The need is not faster decision making. The McKinsey Quarterly, in a 2001 study of 80 Internet companies, concluded that, "moving fast at the expense of developing a solid business plan and gathering the right resources rarely paid off. Speed gave an advantage to 10 percent of the companies studied, and only if certain conditions were present. When they were not, moving fast provided no discernible advantage or turned out to be costly." The need is to harness IT for a better response to change:

• A means is required to convert information flow to action, instead of struggling with it. Xerox PARC has reported that 65% of the Fortune 500 personnel suffer from 'information overload', viz., proceed as though there is no information.
• Efficient team participation is essential on the issues raised daily. Free knowledge flow among multiple personnel evolves clarity and reduces the time required for reflection.

• Improve the work experience of the Knowledge Worker to promote retention and make contribution easy. Knowledge is the new source of capital established in the last century;
• Raise team ability to conduct processes. Success is promoted by the Unstructured Business Processes (USBP) that conduct innovative problem solving, strategy formulation, control, wise decisions, etc.;

 

• Satisfy particular objectives, e.g., setting of enterprise goals, more experimentation with superior evaluation, preparation for the improbable, managing culture, management-audit operations, etc.
• Exploit individual potential but make success independent of individual heroics.

 

• Concert belief across the enterprise.

The stated activities cover many issues and many processes and are conducted by many to many interactions among distributed and agile team members. The flow of work on an event is unpredictable since the team members are free to decide their interactions. Till the 1970’s paper was adequate to synchronize knowledge work with the pace of change and coordinate action.

The march of IT post 1970 has swamped paper. However, in the absence of a way to organize the chaos of daily knowledge work, IT offers the elements of business communication like email, collaboration, workflow, document management, planning systems, expertise management, etc., expecting the decision-maker to integrate them for performing the Give and Take of the daily knowledge flows. Give and Take emerge as distinct actions conducted at the discretion of the decision-maker. The decision-maker thus becomes vulnerable to the following pitfalls of nature:

-     Seeing what one wants to see;

-     Narrow perception due to mental pre-occupation;

-     Ignorance of precedence or past mistakes;

-     Compromising, even ignoring, Give and Take to the system due to personal priorities.

Simply raising communication speed with email does not help personnel to do more or think faster or see better. The self-organization required to manage knowledge sharing, anxiety, focus, mobility, etc., severely limits the energy of administrators for engaging in quality Give and Take. Turf consciousness and the politics of power also influence the poor adoption of IT for daily knowledge assimilation and application.

Due to IT’s Give and Take limitation, team ability has stagnated over the past hundred years. The absence of personnel during travel, sickness, etc., is still felt. Their quality time has not increased.  At the same time, the demand for decisions has appreciably risen and is rising due to greater rate of change, automation, distribution of teams across space and time, competition, etc.

The science of Knowledge Interaction Management distinguishes between interactions and creates intelligence for their organized conduct. The interface developed monitors all work, past and present, anticipates actions, captures expectations, and fulfils all the Document Management needed for capturing the flow of events on an issue. Specifically, it harnesses IT to offer:

• A means to coordinate, conduct and control all USBP with prompt reports and follow up on work status and accountability;
• Effortless collaboration for free knowledge flow to evolve clarity on the Perspectives, Strategy, Interpretations, Principles, Rules, etc., that govern action on an issue. This directly leverages the competencies in the organization;

• Offline working together with multiple server support to enable distributed team members logon at their convenience to their local server;
• A flexible corporate structure with strong role definitions and smart security protection for the knowledge databases. The assignments and work profiles can be changed with ease. Pending work is auto redistributed;
• A framework that is organic, maps reality, and integrates with the routine work to ensure regular map maintenance.

The smart interface creates a fulfilling work experience that motivates its adoption. Free flow of knowledge instead of distinct Give and Take, and brain-storming in decision-making, where Users work at their convenience, is fostered. The process raises judgment quality, the capacity to take decisions, move in concert and induces a culture to leverage knowledge. All flow of knowledge is captured systematically as a by-product. The founding intelligence has been accepted by the third conference on Intelligent System Design And Application at Tulsa, US.

The interface displaces email over the intranet with ‘smart’ use of IBM’s replication technology. Released from the daily burden of organizing for efficient interactions, administrators can devote more effort to contribution and have the focus and energy for a stronger drive towards progress, not possible with any other business model or means for communication.  Prototypes have delivered remarkable results on the department scale. The ability to motivate adoption has been proven in a government secretariat. In the private sector extraordinary productivity gains were a by-product. Expected Benefit:Cost ratio of the process for Knowledge flows on the enterprise scale is at least 20 times ERP.

A client server platform is adequate for introducing the interaction system and establishing the work culture. It may next be graduated to the intranet to fully replace email. The work culture shall strongly motivate leveraging of internet technology, in particular for Information dissemination and E-learning. Delaying replacement of email shall raise the barrier to change, increase re-engineering, delay capture of the corporate experience and increase the period of "information overload". In brief, the corporate shall be denied the full use of its resources and have to work harder for success.