^The APQC Blog

Lots of organizations provide tools and approaches to support knowledge management, but only a few have figured out how to integrate KM into their cultures and get employees excited about sharing what they know. If you’re interested in best practices for increasing KM participation rates, check out APQC’s new content collection, which contains 31 pieces based on our 2011 “Engagement and Participation for Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration” study.

Processes are more than activities, tasks, steps, and procedures. They involve people. Sure, we've mechanized large portions of many processes, but people are never far from the activities. People drive processes, and yet, so many organizations ignore the human element within processes, trying to change the way work is accomplished on a purely mechanical level. Organizations eventually learn that change will never happen without the involvement of people.

Earlier this week, we released our latest human capital management (HCM) best practices report. It is full of strategies to help organizations beat the technical talent shortage.

Technical Talent Management: Sourcing, Developing, and Retaining Technical Talent describes 19 best practices for effectively managing technical talent across the employment life cycle. Topics include:

Procurement has been gaining visibility through innovative developments that provide value to the enterprise beyond lower-cost goods. This new role for procurement led APQC to conduct the study Supplier Category Management: Driving Value Through the Procurement Organization, which looked at how procurement can maximize purchasing value through the use of strategic categories of suppliers.

As a stereotypical Millennial, I am often approached by APQC's KM subject matter experts to provide “user opinions” on new social media tools. Within a span of four days I had two e-mails in my inbox from Cindy Hubert and Jim Lee inquiring as to how and why I use Pinterest. I was already an active user of the tool, but I had not stopped to think about why I was drawn to it or its implications for collaboration.

According to research conducted in March 2012 by APQC in partnership with IEG, 81 percent of large corporations are currently investing in at least one major program to improve financial management processes.  This is a marked departure from previous efforts, which were relatively narrow in scope.

Executing a single improvement initiative is one thing. Creating a culture of continuous improvement is another. The idea of one improvement project is usually fairly clear and straightforward. There is a beginning and an end, clear steps, resources dedicated for certain hours and durations, and a clear end goal or target. What is this business of improving continually? When does it end? Who will sign on indefinitely? Do people understand what's at stake or how we're going to keep this going for any length of time? Continuous improvement is another matter entirely.

Good knowledge managers know that the real value of KM comes not when knowledge is shared, but when it is applied to a new situation—in other words, when the knowledge allows the organization to do something better, faster, cheaper, or more safely. One area where KM can generate a lot of value is the product development (PD) process. Ready access to past designs and lessons learned can empower PD teams to develop more innovative products, bring them to market faster, and avoid reinventing the wheel.

Turnabout is fair play: Consultants spent decades helping companies squeeze out every bit of margin across supply chains and within their internal operations. Now, consultants are the vendors feeling the vice clamps.

The last decade was bookended by two downturns, both of which led consultants to lower their average hourly rate. And those rates have been slow to climb as the steady migration of consultants into industry has turned clients into smarter buyers of consulting.

Results from the 2012 Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) Fraud and Control Survey conducted in January 2012 have been recently published. In its eighth year, the AFP Fraud and Control Survey highlights the situation, methods, and frequency in which the majority of organizations fall victim to payment fraud.