Delivering Knowledge as a Service – KaaS, is not the same as Software as a Service (SaaS) although both share the foundational aspect of being cloud-based. KaaS is about delivering the right knowledge to the right person in the right context at the right time via desktop, laptop or any mobile device. Catchy, yes but practical! KaaS delivery of knowledge consists of both explicit and tacit knowledge. It allows for access to tangible knowledge such as how-to’s, lessons learned, best practices, proven workflows, case studies, procedural manuals, plans, and templates as well as to the people who are experts about that knowledge.

To provide KaaS, the delivery of knowledge must be dynamic, accurate, and personal. Dynamic knowledge is constantly updated adhering to your organization’s content (information and knowledge) lifecycle management processes. This also includes the experts who can provide insights about the knowledge. The Dynamic component of knowledge reflects your organization’s brand, tone and evolves over time. The Accurate component of knowledge is identified as the authoritative source and authoritative voice for that subject matter. This knowledge is accepted by your organization as the “source of truth”. The Personalized component of knowledge answers the questions that the users of your knowledge are seeking. Personalized knowledge is tailored to the device and applications the users are leveraging to access answers to their questions. Personalized knowledge is facilitated by how knowledge flows throughout your organization.

Understanding Knowledge Flows

An understanding of how knowledge flows throughout your organization is essential for delivering KaaS. Interacting with stored knowledge in repositories and connecting this explicit knowledge to the tacit knowledge holders brings together a holistic view of knowledge. Tacit knowledge holders include SME’s who are experienced with executing certain tasks, developing a solution, working in a specific industry, practice area or company while leveraging the stored knowledge.

A way to visualize knowledge flows is through a knowledge map (or knowledge graph). At a time when organizations need to ‘know what they know’ and use that knowledge effectively, the proliferation of knowledge makes it especially difficult to locate existing knowledge and get it to where it is needed. Mapping responsibilities, expertise, and the explicit knowledge that is used and produce will help gain an understanding of the know-how within the organization and deliver that know-how to the user(s) that are requesting it.

Incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI plays an important part in KaaS by elevating how the delivery of knowledge occurs to the people who need it (employees, vendors, customers). AI is used to scale the volume and effectiveness of knowledge distribution. AI will enable KaaS in your organization by providing the ability to:

• Predict trending knowledge areas/topics that your users need
• Identify which targeted knowledge will resonate with audiences based on real-time engagement and content consumption
• Auto-curate and personalize knowledge based on individual preferences
• Improve content decisions by determining precise distribution schedules, paired with machine learning around what content will resonate best with certain audiences
• AI will make search and its search products more relevant, precise and efficient.
• AI through intents will be able to better know what content your customer needs. Intents will provide a better understanding of what the customer is looking for by better understanding each customer intended use of the content.
• Chatbots w/ Natural Language Processing (NLP): Chatbots provide value across employees, vendors, and customers critical decision-making points with personalization of the delivery of knowledge. Chatbots with NLP will provide cognitive capabilities to understand, interpret and manipulate human language that will enable chatbots to anticipate the needs, attitudes and aspirations of users to deliver personalized outcomes. Chatbots are used for deflection of inbound customer calls, automation of tasks and direct access of knowledge and its associated components (i.e., SMEs, and/or other explicit knowledge) all geared to achieve substantial business value.

At the end of the day KaaS is a framework that can help your organization leverage knowledge from anywhere, anytime, and by any user in a distributed computing model. To properly incorporate a KaaS model your organization must understand what knowledge means for your organization, where it comes from, and how to use it. The main advantage of deploying a KaaS model will not only be better management of the knowledge but also better access to knowledge. If you know where the knowledge comes from, where it goes, and how it is used your organization is well on its way to properly delivering a KaaS solution that meets your organization’s needs.