Building Bridges for Knowledge Islands

Do analysts have tools to build and enlarge their knowledge? Each analysts builds its own knowledge base, unique knowledge about business. Let’s call it knowledge island, since it is separated from corporate “information sea”. Big and muddy information sea.

Many analysts = knowledge islands are built in the middle of the information sea. Are they connected with corporate knowledge and top decision makers?

No.

They develop separate sets of knowledge that is in fact very good but it is still separated. It is the knowledge about financial consolidation, financial statements, operating working capital, sales channels, marketing tariff packages, customer behavior. Information solutions that support experts are many, like different customized data mining business performance management, decision support systems management information systems, financial business intelligence and many other pieces of applications.

Experts work in divided information environments, create individual sets of knowledge and share smaller parts (minor parts) of their knowledge. Many knowledge meta data stay with them.

Corporate knowledge management needs to be stuffed with integrated intangible knowledge like for example, customer segment AD acts totally different then other customer segments and they could be new emerging market for new sets of products. It is the knowledge of one marketing analyst. Serious of financial projections of new market from segment AD with new products needs to be compared with other knowledge islands, different experts ideas. Comparative analysis needs to be done on level of financial ratios and financial statements. Choice must be stored in knowledge management system as also both knowledge islands that were compared. Both business cases with details need to be stored in knowledge management systems.

In this way, through transparent comparative analysis of different ideas – knowledge, and through tracking of results it is possible to improve corporate knowledge. Therefore, knowledge islands must be transparently connected toward management reports.