A methodology for mining embedded knowledge from process maps1

Knowledge management is concerned with identifying, capturing, storing, reusing, and distributing the key intellectual assets of an organization. While there are well-established procedures for productively manipulating knowledge in explicit forms (e.g., groupware, expert systems, the Internet), less well developed are procedures for making tacit knowledge explicit. One form of tacit knowledge is that embedded in organizational processes. We present one methodology for mapping organizational processes and then using the resulting maps to extract knowledge about the organization implicit in those maps. From those process maps and the revelation of the embedded knowledge in them, valuable managerial insights can be mined. We show that an understanding of an organization's central processes reveals a treasurehouse of knowledge with many benefits for the firm. In particular, we exhibit a case study of a marketing research firm, and we model its process for converting a client's often vaguely stated needs into information useful to the client. From the revealed knowledge, managers can mine a rich set of insights providing opportunities that convey many prospective benefits: the firm can learn how to • better serve its clients; • more efficiently and effectively train its employees; • more effectively design its business processes; • fine-tune its strategy for conducting business in its marketplace; and, • derive a set of guidelines on how best to manage its knowledge workers. We conclude by sketching other possible arenas for knowledge exploitation in other phases of the firm's knowledge management chain: identification, storage, and distribution.