Daily, your organization is increasingly building valuable knowledge and experience. But how well are you capturing, documenting and sharing it? As your information and knowledge capitals grows, so does the importance of developing a knowledge management strategy. The first step as you begin to execute your strategy is to take inventory of how knowledge is used and stored. A knowledge audit is an incredibly valuable exercise for a number of reasons. So in this presentation, I want to share some of the key things to observe in doing so.

1. How to successfully conduct
a Knowledge Management
Audit
Christian Elongué
Elearning And Knowledge Management Consultant
Hello@christianelongue.com

2. What is Knowledge Audit
 A systematic review of your knowledge assets and how they
contribute to your organisation’s key activities
 Covers both explicit knowledge (information in documents and
datea) and tacit knowledge (people’s skills, experience and abilities)
 Identifies knowledge flows and knowledge gaps
 May be supplemented by audit of culture, information and
knowledge processes and common pain points

3. Objectives of Knowledge Audit
 Auditing helps you to clearly identify what knowledge is needed to support
overall institutional goals, individual and team activities
 It gives tangible evidence of the extent to which knowledge is being
effectively managed and where improvements are needed
 Provides an inventory of knowledge assets, allowing them to become more
visible, measurable and accountable
 Helps leveraging on students and partners knowledge
 Provide vital information to develop effective KM initiatives

4. My auditing Principles and Approach

5. Are you sure you know…
 What is the knowledge work of the College?
 Your employees learning habits and productivity?
 Whether you are getting better – or worse – at what you do?
 Where they are gaps and redundancies in your organisation?
 About planned and real work outcomes in each department?
 What knowledge is needed and relevant in your department?
 How things get done and if / how things could get done better?
 How Bluecrest activities relates to its vision and strategic objectives?
 How your clients (students, parents etc.) / partners really view BlueCrest?

6. If you aren’t too sure...
 An examination is needed of:
 Your organization – mission, mandate, objectives
 Organizational structure, service distribution
 Business processes and evident (known) work issues
 Communication and decision challenges /issues
 Knowledge resource strengths and deficiencies.

7. Value added of KM auditing for BlueCrest
 To leverage on Bluecrest’ people assets
 To figure a way out of corporate ebbing
 Strenghten the College’s competitive weaknesses
 Helps in designing a knowledge-based strategy and KM Blueprint
 Face competition from knowledge-intensive competition that are far ahead on the
learning curve in Africa and globally (e.g: African Leadership University… )

8. Overall process of Bluecrest KM Audit
1. Orientation and Background Meeting (Getting buy in & KM
Awareness, share vision, Engagement): Partially done already.
2. KM Readiness Asssessment (culture survey, benchmark and industry
research etc.)
3. Conduct Survey & interview for evidence collection
4. Explicit and tacit knowledge inventory
5. Mapping of processes, knowledge sources, sinks and flows.
6. Audit Result Analysis (social network analysis, knowledge network
analysis, SWOT analysis etc.)
7. Knowledge Audit Reporting (Recommendation of KM Strategy,
requirement analysis, selection of KM Tools)
8. Continuous-based knowledge re-auditing (measuring success,
performance analysis, monitoring the KM implementation etc.)

9. Synthesis of Knowledge Auditing Process

10. Possible Planned Initiatives for BlueCrest
 Knowledge Transfer and Retention
 Deployment de-brief
 Words of Wisdom (retirements, departures)
 Just In Time KM
 Directories
 Governance processes
 Info Management (shredding)
 Relationships
 Internally - between related functions
 Externally – with key communities
 Scope Determination (What it is)
 Conference feedback system
 Best or good practices
 Web Portals and interfaces
 Leveraging Infrastructure
 Internal Web
 Employee Profiles
 Knowledge Centre
 Interactive Forums

11. Possible Results from an Auditing Report
 Gaps in policy comprehension
 Information quality may be a concern
 Sharing not a universal value at BlueCrest
 Uncertainty in partner missions and mandates
 The IT and Communication tools may be an issue
 Poor Personal Knowledge habits that affects institutional productivity
 Employees confident of their knowledge levels (know what to do or know where to find out)
 Training needs in defined activity areas: e.g. how to operationalize an activity more effectively

12. KM Auditing Reporting may reveals relationship issues…
 Poor meeting practices
 Briefing, de-briefing, consultation, collaboration
 Chain of command, delegation or accountability
 Between people doing different function in same region
 Between people doing same function in different regions of West Africa

13. The expected results for Bluecrest
 Opportunities to reduce information-handling costs
 Areas of information policy and ownership that need improving
 Clearer understanding of the contribution of knowledge to business results
 Identification of core knowledge assets and flows – who creates, who uses
 Opps to improve coordination and access to frequently needed information
 Identification of gaps in information and knowledge needed to manage the
organisation effectively;

14. They trusted me…