So I am set to deliver a Information Management Strategy for Ontario Power Generation (OPG) in Toronto for CapGemini and manage a team/project in the 4th Quarter of 2009. I was asked by a colleague, “what’s the difference in a Knowledge Management strategy versus an Information Management Strategy”.
Information Management (IM) is all encompassing…how an organization maximizes the efficiency with which it plans, collects, organizes, uses, controls, stores, disseminates, and disposes of its information, to ensure that the value of that information is identified and exploited to the maximum extent. Information Management projects I have worked on have had me look at Master Data Sources, Metadata Stores & Services, Business Intelligence and DW information stores and cubes, Portal technology (how information is disseminated across the portal), etc. There are NUMEROUS technologies that can comprise the IM stratosphere (e.g. Informatica, Schemalogic, Sharepoint, etc.)
Knowledge Management (KM) can be comprised of numerous focuses and technologies. A multi-disciplined approach to achieving organizational objectives by making best use of knowledge. It involves the design, review and implementation of both social and technological processes to improve the application of knowledge, in the collective interest of stakeholders. Disciplines that are considered within KM are Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Enterprise Search (e.g. Autonomy, Endeca, Google Enterprise Search, Microsoft FAST ESP, Coveo Search, etc.), Collaboration & Communication (e.g. SharePoint, Jive, Confluence, etc.), Content/Document Management & Portal Technologies (e.g. Vignette, SAP KM, Documentum, OpenText, SharePoint…again SPS).
So I hope this helps to explain on a high level some differences within both spaces: IM & KM….
-Trey Jarmond
by Trey Jarmond
Eric D. Brown - Hey TJ –
Just ran across your blog while reading up on Knowledge Management / Information Management.
I am currently working on my Doctorate in Information Systems with a specialization in KM and Decision Support.
I like your descriptions above of both KM and IM but they seem familiar to me. Are these descriptions taken from an article or are they yours? Perhaps they are familiar only because they are so true
Do you have any other documents / research in this area that you’d be able to share?
Thanks in advance.
Trey Jarmond - Eric… send me an email via the contact form so we can talk more directly as it related to the subject.
Trey J.