Why Don't We Do It in the Road Ahead?
—Part 2, Applications Integration
> Knowledge Management (KM)
Jerry Laiserin

Fourth principle of applications integration, according to former Hewlett-Packard CEO, Lew Platt, "if HP only knew what HP knows." In other words, managing the knowledge that already exists inside a firm will make the entire organization work smarter.
A corollary implies that knowing what you know is both a faster and more cost effective strategy than acquiring new knowledge (not dissimilar to the marketing dictum that it is harder to win a new customer than to sell more to an existing customer). Consider the cyclical flow of client/project information within a typical design and/or construction business: personnel record time on projects; a financial management system transforms timesheets into invoices and cost breakdowns; histories of project cost support proposals for future work; the proposal process itself must be tracked and managed; project image examples in graphical form also support proposals via desktop- and web-publishing; libraries of images files, whether from photos or design software, must be searched and sorted; design software generates images and data; design data links to building product selection; product selection, in turn, bridges between design software and specifications; specification software links to programs and databases for codes, contracts and performance criteria; compliance with project documents and criteria is a function of project administration; project admin is dependent on scheduling; and scheduling is one of two key components of project resource management—of which the other key component is time, bringing the information flow full-circle.

The roughly one-third of this information flow that is client-facing spans project resource management, time, financial management, and proposal/marketing management (also known as CRM or customer/client relationship management). This is the segment that is gradually coalescing into professional services automation (PSA). The portion of this information flow that is directly design-related and consultant-facing encompasses everything from image/visualization output to design software, product selection and specification—and is gradually coalescing into building information modeling (BIM). The remainder of the information cycle, from codes and contracts through project admin to scheduling is the area targeted by project extranets or project coordination networks (PCN's). All applications or application clusters (PSA, BIM, PCN) share multiple underlying data points, such as the client/project name and address information that was in the proposal, on the contracts and invoices, as well as in drawing title blocks and project/spec manual pages. Logic dictates that information is best represented just once, implying a centralized database (or coordinated system of synchronized databases) at a firm's core. If collaboration technology provides the means for a firm to share and manage its information interactions with outsiders, then knowledge management technology effectively performs the same functions internally—mediating among applications, databases and the personnel who must apply the firm's data and information to serving clients.

While there are collaboration technologies that complement and enhance internal knowledge management, and there are knowledge management technologies that enrich external collaborations, the inward/outward split foci concept remains a useful basis for understanding the respective roles of knowledge management and collaboration—a theme we will revisit often in coming issues.
JL