The Effectiveness of Information Retrieval & Knowledge Management Techniques - Literature review Example

Introduction On a daily basis, the modern organization manager uses knowledge to make decisions about improvement, in order to facilitate change through different management approaches, and to organize resources to support heuristic purposes, programs and plans. This can be done most effectively if latest Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management (IRKM) techniques are put into practice. In Leaders Change Handbook, Conger, Spreitzer, and Lawler (1999, p.361), suggests that there is an emerging consensus and advocacy for organizations to be "excellent at knowledge creation and management." The authors write, "…effective organizations need to grow not just as individuals but their own intellectual capital and property and their ability to deploy them effectively". Drucker (1998, p.9) in the Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management has suggested that, information-based organizations require clear, simple common objectives that translate into particular actions". In How Organizations Learn by Anthony DiBella and Edwin Nevis (1998, p.124), the authors suggest that "involved leadership" can be enhanced by benchmarking within the organization; providing coaches; leadership development activities; and conducting studies on processes. The table on next page gives a detailed analysis of various IRKM Solutions provided by various vendors along with their benefits. Type of Solution Product names Vendors Benefits Capture & Gather Searching, Gathering, aggregating, analysing and disseminating information from diverse internal and external information sources. Since all the required and relevant information cannot be gathered from a single source and is usually spread over a number of files and web locations therefore it needs to be searched and consolidated from different business information vendors, websites, enterprise databases and spreadsheets, then distribute visual representations of their research and analysis in the form of easy-to-navigate charts. (Singh 2004) The concept of crawling is also relevant in this type of solution as it uses aggregation of diverse information spread across documents and URLs. Crawler is written specifically for gathering or capturing data by working recursively within various links or URLs. It does this by starting with a single URL and searching for some specific keywords then it replicates itself for all the links found and starts searching on all of them. This way extensive search is carried out in parallel saving precious time and gathering vast amount of valuable information. (Mack, Ravin, & Byrd 2001) 1.Anacubis Desktop. 2.ProFind. 3.RemoteSearch 4.Grand Central Station (GCS) (Mack, Ravin, & Byrd 2001) 1.Anacubis (Anacubis n.d.) 2.Endeca (Endeca n.d.) 3.Magus Research (RemoteSearch n.d.) 4.IBM Enables the visual discovery and analysis of intelligence in both online and enterprise information formats. The solutions are typically used in the areas of competitive intelligence, risk management, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property and market research. Helps knowledge-centric organizations in government, financial services, manufacturing, publishing, business-to-business commerce and retail to maximize the value of their content, catalogue and enterprise information assets. The solutions are used in a wide range of applications including Knowledge Management, e-commerce, customer relationship management (CRM), analytics, directories and portal integration. (Singh 2004) If an organisation has massive amount of in-house information, this product might help it make better use of it. It will definitely help to search it better and allow exploring of avenues in the information that one might didnt know existed. Type of Solution Product names Vendors Benefits Categorization & Document Retrieval Analysing, managing, unifying and utilising information. It uses structured and unstructured information in context, including text, audio and video, and automatically processes them as a set of results for the recipient. It is a knowledge discovery platform that helps organisations to automate their knowledge management and discovery processes. It provides a single, integrated platform that can categorise, organise and deliver enterprise content, regardless of format, language or storage location. It is able to uncover knowledge stored across diverse infrastructures that are of particular interest to companies that have to comply with increasing document management and retrieval regulations (Singh 2004). 1.Autonomy IDOL technology . 2.Solcara Information Manager . 3.RetrievalWare 1.Autonomy(Autonomy n.d.) 2.Solcara (Solcara [n.d.]) 3.Convera (Convera [n.d.]) Provides a core platform for the automatic categorising, tagging, linking, retrieval and profiling of all forms of unstructured information, understanding each piece of information in context and delivering it to the relevant recipient. Unlike keyword-based technologies, it is able to automatically analyse, identify and prioritise the main concepts within any piece of content, enabling customers to automate a range of business-critical tasks (Singh 2004). This solution also provides in-depth reporting and retrieval of information in the context in which it is required. Filtering Filtering is a process by which enormous information contained in various periodicals, news releases, abstracts and reports, which may be acquired from diverse sources, into very few summarized and relevant articles (McCleary 1994). 1.NewsEDGE 2.First! 3.Hover 1. Desktop Data (NewsEdge n.d.). 2. Individual Inc. 3. SandPoint. Corporation. Profiling is done by maintaining user profiles at the front end of the software which makes it more convenient and user-friendly. Users can create their own profiles by just a few clicks and easy navigation. The solution also offers the capability of performing archival searches going back up to many days (McCleary 1994). Type of Solution Product Names Vendors Benefits Personalization Personalization promises a commerce site that will give customers exactly what they want, when they want it. It strives to understand the customers desires and instantly satisfy them. Bottom-line impacts can be significant as well, substantially increasing overall revenue. The portals use what might be called a "customization" model, which allows users to profile individual searches or reports from several different databases or services. The emphasis here is on "Have it your way," with as many sections as possible available for user customization. 1. Core Personalization Technology and Personalization Network. 2. Advisor Solutions Suite. 1. Net Perceptions (Net Perceptions n.d.). 2. Blaze (Blaze n.d.). Offers a predictive and preference-based personalization solution as a Windows NT/Solaris software application, with specific modules for personalized recommendations, e-mail campaigns, call center, cross-selling, and analysis/reporting Its tools use advanced algorithms and models that take into account users behavioural patterns so as to predict what a particular customer might want to see or buy. Provides sophisticated rules-based capabilities to cater to certain demographic attributes as the user explores the site. Rules-based tools enable I-merchants to demographically pinpoint groups of users. Data warehousing Data warehousing is the process by which an organization sets up and maintains a central repository for significant portions of its transaction processing or program management data, which can be selectively extracted and organized for analytic applications, user queries and report generation. The concept has gained credibility as the method for organizing and processing information in a way that supports decision-making. Data warehouse is a centralized, integrated repository of information, which means data is cleaned up, merged and redesigned (Restivo 1999). 1. SQL Server 7. 2. Oracle’s 9i database. 1. Microsoft. 2. Oracle and Sun Microsystems. Allows organizations to distil the vast amounts of data stored in information systems into forecasts that support business imperatives. Data warehousing provides a unique opportunity to review or adjust business processes across the whole organization and effect change where necessary since the operational systems can be decoupled from the reporting systems, and it provides the imperative for the right data to be sourced and captured. With regard to technical benefits, the greatest disparity exists between what is expected and achieved in the area of data standardization--which reflects the difficulty people have had in cleaning and loading their data (Wixom & Watson 2001). Type of Solution Product names Vendors Benefits Data mining Data mining is one way to dig down and analyze vast amounts of data. Data mining is also a way to uncover patterns or trends in the data that a business has collected in a data mart, which is a subset of a data warehouse. This brings us to the analogy of mining for precious metals, where people go prospecting to see if the geology supports the possibility of there being gold in them there hills. The likelihood of striking it rich at the first attempt is remote and the mining or prospecting software is more likely to produce a great deal of waste to go with the occasional nugget. However, for large organizations where data volumes are in the trillions of bytes, the discovery of the occasional nugget can be of immense value (Kittler et al. 1999). 1. Oracle’s 9i database. 2. DB2 database. 3. Microsoft API. 1. Oracle and Sun Microsystems. 2. IBM. 3. Microsoft. Data mining serves a higher end, giving the user a business advantage. By analyzing customers behaviour, a business can gain insight into what products and services customers want and what price theyll pay. The benefits of Data mining have already started to appear in retail, finance, security, medicine, and insurance industries. Many of these applications were custom built as expert systems. Today, a subset of such systems can be built automatically using data-mining technology to derive rules from contextual historical data. This has opened up new vistas of modelling heretofore deemed impractical because of the volumes of data involved and the transient nature of the models, especially in retail (Kittler et al. 1999). Taxonomy This solution works by classifying items within subject domains. Taxonomy can be applied to hierarchical systems that use controlled vocabularies and thesauri, but they are not always based on the accepted standards used in a traditional library setting. (Cote 2005). 1.Hard Hat Linux (Dankwardt & Reilly 2000). 2. Autonomy. 1. MontaVista. 2. Autonomy. The primary advantage of a taxonomy are its multifaceted subject headings. These have the added bonus of reflecting connections and processes in a semantic structure, or ontology, allowing for potentially wider consultation and application of knowledge objects it is especially effective in helping with todays information access difficulties. It is helpful in portraying abstract concepts and reflecting the various forms knowledge can take, whether tangible or intangible. It does not necessarily use pre-existing classification schemes and are often based on a synthesis derived from user need and language (Cote 2005). Type of Solution Product Names Vendors Benefits Unstructured information management (UIM) It is a software system that analyzes large volumes of unstructured information in order to discover, organize, and deliver relevant knowledge to the end user (Ferrucci & Lally 2004). 1. IBMs Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA). 1. IBM. UIM helps using of a variety of technologies including statistical and rule-based natural language processing (NLP), information retrieval, machine learning, ontologies, and automated reasoning. UIM may refer to structured sources to help resolve the semantics of the unstructured content (Ferrucci & Lally 2004). Conclusion Information Retrieval & Knowledge Management concepts encourage the searching, downloading and accessing information resources to organizational stakeholders. Admittedly, both organizational learning (OL) and Information Retrieval & Knowledge Management systems are very new to the horizons of modern management. It is up to the organization to adopt the right methodologies and software tools that best address their demands for storage and reusability of past project experiences. In general, IRKM tries to organize and make available important know-how, wherever and whenever it is needed (Becerra-Fernandez, 1998). Based on the IRKM Life Cycle models Nissen (2000) and on a study of the IRKM systems underway at many organizations Becerra-Fernandez (1999) a framework for classification of IRKM systems emerges. Application of this framework would only enhance site-based management and decentralized administration in school settings. The framework includes the following: Systems that formalize information and knowledge: Refers to IRKM systems that intend preserve the knowledge of experts to share it with others. As such, these systems aim to elicit and catalogue the tacit knowledge of experts, and serve to transfer their knowledge. Systems that organize and distribute information and knowledge: These types of IRKM systems are also known as knowledge repositories. Knowledge repositories comprise the majority of the IRKM systems currently in place. Under the auspices of IRKM, tools historically used for singular unrelated purposes are integrated to address the corporate memory problem. People-Finder Systems (also called knowledge yellow pages) are a special type of knowledge repository that points to experts, those that have the knowledge within the organization. Systems that apply knowledge & information: Refers to systems that assist in solving problems. Organizations with significant intellectual capital require eliciting and capturing knowledge for reuse in solving new problems as well as recurring old problems. New problems could be similar to old problems or even consist of a combination of old problems. Systems that create knowledge & information: Refers to systems that implement data mining algorithms, and which seek to create new knowledge through the inference of data relationships. Technologically speaking, intranets, groupware, data warehouses, networks, bulletin boards, and video-conferencing are key tools for storing and distributing this intelligence (Maglitta, 1996). Knowledge intensive companies around the world are valued at three to eight times their financial capital. Intellectual capital comprises human and structural capital. Human capital refers to the body of knowledge the company possesses. Human capital is also known as tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge may reside in the minds of the companys employees, vendors, and customers. Enterprises richest resource is the knowledge residing in the minds of a particular organizations employees, customers and vendors. Structural capital is everything that remains when the employees go home: databases, customer files, software, manuals, trademarks, organizational structures, and so on in other words organizational capability. Those companies that invest in IRKM applications will obtain a competitive edge in the global market. References Anacubis, [n.d.]. < http://www.i2.co.uk/anacubis/ >, [accessed 7.11.05]. Autonomy, [n.d.]. < http://www.autonomy.com/ >, [accessed 8.11.05]. 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