Knowledge management software
Encyclopedia
Knowledge management software (KM Software) is a subset of Enterprise content management
Enterprise content management
Enterprise Content Management is a formalized means of organizing and storing an organization's documents, and other content, that relate to the organization's processes...

 software and which contains a range of software that specializes in the way information is collected, stored and/or accessed. The concept of knowledge management
Knowledge management
Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...

 is based on a range of practices used by an individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...

, a business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

, or a large corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...

 to identify, create, represent and redistribute information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...

 for a range of purposes. Software that enables an information practice or range of practices at any part of the processes of information management can be deemed to be called information management
Information management
Information management is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in, or a right to that information...

 software. A subset of information management software that emphasizes an approach to build knowledge out of information that is managed or contained is often called knowledge management
Knowledge management
Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...

 software.

KM Software in most cases provides a means for individuals, small groups or mid-sized businesses to innovate, build new knowledge in the group, and/or improve customer experience. Knowledge management
Knowledge management
Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...

 tools (software) includes a range of about 1,500 or more different approaches to collect and contain information to then build knowledge that can be searched through specialised search tools including concept building tools and or visual search tools that present information in a connected manager not originally conceptualised by those collecting or maintaining the information database.

Range of Knowledge Management Software

KM Software ranges from small software packages for an individual to use, such as brainstorming
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which a group tries to find a solution for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members...

 software, to highly specialised enterprise software
Business intelligence
Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....

 suitable for use by hundreds of employees. Often KM Software provides a key resource for employees working in customer service
Customer service
Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.According to Turban et al. , “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer...

 or telephone support industries, or sectors of large corporations.

KM software, in general, enables the combination of unstructured information sources, such as individual word processed documents and/or .pdf formats
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....

, email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

, graphic illustrations
Graphics
Graphics are visual presentations on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to brand, inform, illustrate, or entertain. Examples are photographs, drawings, Line Art, graphs, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings,or...

, unstructured notes
Memorandum
A memorandum is from the Latin verbal phrase memorandum est, the gerundive form of the verb memoro, "to mention, call to mind, recount, relate", which means "It must be remembered ..."...

, website links
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...

, invoice
Invoice
An invoice or bill is a commercial document issued by a seller to the buyer, indicating the products, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services the seller has provided the buyer. An invoice indicates the buyer must pay the seller, according to the payment terms...

s, and other information bearing collections, such as a simple thought, through to a combination of millions of interactions from a website, and through that combination enables the seeker to obtain knowledge that otherwise would not have been discovered.

Groupware

In Europe through the 1990s, KM Software was almost synonymous with groupware and groupware in this context is most popularly IBM's Lotus Notes. However, as Internet connections deliver faster Internet, such as through broadband, many On-demand or Software as a Service
Software as a Service
Software as a service , sometimes referred to as "on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.SaaS has become a common...

 products have evolved and are now leading suppliers of KM software (such as PHPKB).

Visual Search

One of the departures from the almost standard keyword search approach
Keyword (Internet search)
An index term, subject term, subject heading, or descriptor, in information retrieval, is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document. Index terms make up a controlled vocabulary for use in bibliographic records. They are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the...

 are those group of companies developing visual search techniques
Visual search
Visual search is a type of perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object or feature among other objects or features . Visual search can take place either with or without eye movements...

. A common visual search approach is the tree traversal where a folder is opened and inside the display of that folder are further sub-folders. This tree traversal approach relies on the naming of folders to provide a rich enough indication as to what is contained in the next folder or level of folders.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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