Knowledge Management Strategy and Consulting
Alan Baren
Knowledge Management Consultant
Are you a company interested in reducing your costs, growing your revenue opportunities and improving your overall productivity?
I am an experienced knowledge management professional and am looking for companies interested in finding new ways to improve their productivity.
I worked closely with the Vice Chairman at PricewaterhouseCoopers to formulate their initial global knowledge management (KM) strategy back in the late 90’s. I have worked for several years in the e-learning and e-business space as well, designing new information-based products and services.
Many Chief Knowledge Officers and knowledge management professionals focus primarily on the improving the knowledge sharing environments of their company. While not without some benefit, these ‘softer’ initiatives can be costly and do not result in the immediate cost-savings and revenue generation many companies need in this economy. There are several "low hanging fruit" initiatives that can be pursued for your company to more efficiently connect your sales team with new opportunities, reduce the time to deliver product and services to market, and improve your customer service. Knowledge management initiatives need to be tied to real objectives, be performance based so they can be easily measured and most importantly, facilitate the daily business processes and deliverables of your organization vs. becoming a stand-alone activity.
Some of the key objectives I could pursue for your company include:
 Developing your KM strategy, and the KM objectives that best support your company’s overall business objectives
 Meeting with key stakeholders across your company to understand their daily processes, their information needs both internally and externally from customers, vendors and the marketplace, and where are their sources of greatest pain and revenue potential.
 Identifying a comprehensive list of KM objectives that would be valuable to your company.
 Prioritizing this list of initiatives considering their costs, timeframes, resources required, resources available, ease of measurement, and both the short and long-term results each would yield.
 Select the highest ROI initiatives to pursue for your company and within 3 months begin to demonstrate significant cost savings or revenue creation.
I am a high achiever with strong references, a self-starter, and have always been able to accomplish significant changes with very few resources. I am experienced at harnessing a company’s existing resources and cross-functionally managing them towards a common goal.
Within knowledge management and business process reengineering space, there are a plethora of activities that any company can pursue to improve its operations, sales or customer relations. Knowledge management initiatives can focus on best practices, continuous learning, improving knowledge flow and collaboration or simply improving existing processes. They can also be focused internally or externally. Knowledge management professionals tend to arbitrarily select an initiative without evaluating its potential benefits. The key to a successful KM program is carefully evaluating all the cost saving and revenue generating initiatives that are possible, and then determining which initiatives have the highest ROI and the most immediate results on the bottom-line. Sometimes even the smallest activities can generate major benefits for a company.
It is also important that any KM initiative be implemented in support of and integrated with the company’s daily business processes. Knowledge management systems or processes are rarely successful if implemented as ‘stand alone’ efforts that create yet one more task to perform for the company’s employees. Initiatives pursued should support the daily business process; making employees ‘smarter’, improving processes, reducing costs, or shortening time to market – as part of current work flows.
My background includes a throughout understanding of both KM strategy and successful implementation of tactical KM initiatives. I have over 16 years of business experience, including knowledge management, e-learning, e-business and product management. I have managed many new initiatives and brought new products and services to market for both Fortune 500 companies and early-stage B2B startups. Companies I have consulted or worked with include AT&T, Bankers Trust Company, Empire of America Savings, IBM, The Tribune, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. At Coopers & Lybrand and PricewaterhouseCoopers, I mapped out the integration of various KM initiatives around the company and coordinated business and technology resources in developing its KnowledgeCurve intranet website. I have an MBA in Finance and Operations Management from University of Chicago and a BS from Cornell University.
I can assess the types of knowledge management initiatives your company could pursue - with minimum investment or risk - to further your primary business and financial objectives. Then if desired, manage a select set of those initiatives through implementation and measurable results. Whether you have a knowledge management organization in place or are considering starting one, I can help you define or refine your knowledge management strategy, tie that back into your corporate strategic objectives and map out the types of initiatives, resources, and process changes that would produce the greatest results for you.
Contact Information:
To contact me to further discuss KM consulting initiatives, you can contact me at abaren@verizon.net.
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