The Next Evolution of KM: From Service Provider to Enterprise Capability

Build an Ecosystem for Enterprise Knowledge

APQC’s member base reports that rather than being perceived as a technology or support activity, KM is increasingly folded into processes, onboarding, knowledge transfer, content workflows, and continuous improvement efforts. And, in many organizations, role expectations at every level of the enterprise have evolved to incorporate knowledge activities into job descriptions, performance expectations, and existing operational workflows. 

To effectively support this evolution, KM must build an effective knowledge ecosystem, including:

Governance: Create common direction, standards, ownership, and accountability. As KM becomes more distributed across the organization, enterprise governance becomes more, not less, important. An enterprise-focused model depends on many people beyond the KM team to create, maintain, share, and apply knowledge. Without common direction and clear accountability, distributed knowledge efforts can easily become fragmented, inconsistent, or duplicative—the very problems an enterprise approach is intended to solve.

This makes governance a top priority for the new KM operating model. The goal is not to centralize every decision or activity within KM, but to establish consistency so that distributed efforts work together as part of a connected knowledge ecosystem. That means creating clarity around enterprise priorities and standards, decision rights, ownership and stewardship, and accountability for maintaining knowledge across time.

It’s also important to remember that enabling an enterprise capability does not mean owning every part of it. In fact, one sign of a mature KM operating model may be knowing what KM should own, what it should co-own, and what it should influence or enable. Responsibilities should be clear across these areas:

♦ KM

♦ Business leaders, managers, and front-line employees

♦ Experts and knowledge owners

♦ HR and L&D

♦ IT, data, AI, and technology owners 

Some enterprise decisions KM should influence without owning. In other areas, KM’s role is to provide the standards, methods, approaches, and skills that allow the business to manage its own knowledge effectively.

Infrastructure and technology: The technology and infrastructure needed to store, connect, and access knowledge have always been important to KM. Today, however, the stakes are higher. As enterprise search becomes more intelligent and employees increasingly access organizational knowledge through AI-enabled tools, the quality of the underlying knowledge environment directly affects the quality and trustworthiness of what employees receive.

This does not mean KM should own the technology stack. Instead, KM should partner with IT, data, AI, and other technology teams to ensure that technology decisions reflect how knowledge is created, governed, discovered, shared, and used across the enterprise.

KM brings an important perspective to the human and knowledge requirements that technology alone cannot address: What sources should employees and AI trust? Who owns and maintains the knowledge? How should knowledge be organized and connected? How do employees contribute what they know? And how does knowledge get embedded into the flow of work?

Working with its technology partners, KM can help the organization to strengthen these types of capabilities:

♦ Enterprise search, access, and findability

♦ Trusted and authoritative knowledge sources

♦ Knowledge contribution, curation, and reuse

♦ Expertise location and connection

♦ Communities and collaboration

♦ Knowledge access through AI-enabled experiences

The end goal is to create a governed, connected knowledge environment that allows both people and AI to find and use the knowledge they need—and ultimately helps the organization realize greater value from its technology and AI investments.