If you are sitting in a room with windows right now, take a few minutes to look outside, admire the view. Then consider the structure you are in. It is probably a building of some kind, either residential or office, that is made up of brick, mortar and plaster (basically).
Can you imagine how unstable that structure would be if no mortar was used to bind the bricks together. It would be even more unstable if you used bricks of different sizes or made of different materials. What if knowledge were like the bricks used to build? You would want to build your business on information or knowledge that is in a common place and format. This knowledge source should be complete, correct and easily referenced. Nobody wants to make business decisions on shaky information.
With well managed "bricks" (knowledge management) it is possible to build a solid, stable knowledge base and put windows in place, giving you a view of your business and the market.
But how many organisations are operating in a shaky, closed little box? Recent studies from international research firm IDC reveals that a whopping 20% of all data in organisations is of insufficient quality as a result of wrong entries caused by data capture error, incompatible formats, or missing entries. According to IDC analysts, the lack of knowledge management and the resultant problem of poor information quality in organisations is considered to be one of the most pressing problems facing companies today.
Knowledge management is about managing an organisation`s intellectual assets so that available information and knowledge can be consistently delivered on demand.
Data integration and data cleansing processes are the core requirements for effective knowledge management, ensuring your "bricks" provide the maximum value possible to your business.
Besides the storage of company contracts, quotes and sales order type documents, there is a need to incorporate a company`s transactional and customer data. This data is normally hidden away in enterprise resource planning and home-grown financial systems.
Data integration involves taking data from these systems, consolidating it and making it available to the organisation. During this process the collection of metadata is critical in building the linkage between the document type data and the system type data. Metadata is much like the mortar that holds the bricks together in a building.
With well managed "bricks" (knowledge management) it is possible to build a solid, stable knowledge base.
Julian Field, MD, CenterField Software
Data cleansing and matching ensure that all an organisation`s data is correct. Take customer information, for example. Most often all information about a specific customer is contained in one field. Data cleansing breaks this field up into small components and then ensures the data in each component is accurate. If there are numerous entries for the same client, then the information is combined and one complete entry is presented to the user.
To illustrate: your average scrapyard dealer has moved into the wonderful age of the Internet. He now conducts a good portion of his business via e-mail, with potential clients sending him pictures of the vehicle they want to sell him for scrap. All these images and e-mails are stored in accordance with the law. More importantly, they are stored because they are intellectual assets, and they add to his knowledge about his business. But how does he access this information, in a meaningful format, after it has been stored?
Using data integration and data cleansing, simple data that describes a stored image is linked to the correct image. Data cleansing ensures the information contained in the description - like customer name, contact details, vehicle type, registration number, and value of the vehicle - is correct. Should the scrapyard owner need to refer back to a particular transaction, it is now easy for him to find what he is looking for because the data associated with that information is clean and accurately linked.
For a long time companies have been trying to make sense of all the information they have accumulated and to make it easily accessible to the relevant people in the organisation. Efficient access to information can make a big difference to employees` productivity and ultimately the company`s profitability.
Data integration and data cleansing within knowledge management enable an organisation, or a one-man operation, to gain quick and easy access to information that can bring value to the business.
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