Differences between a knowledge management system and a document management system

Many people have asked me this question. The following text is mainly used to answer this question:

When it comes to knowledge management, it is easy for many people to think that knowledge management is actually document management. It seems that there is nothing wrong with this sentence. Document Management is indeed an important part of knowledge management, but it is definitely not the whole of knowledge management, but it is only the easiest for people to understand, the most convenient example is knowledge management.

Document management is of course an old discipline concept. Its appearance is due to the need to manage a large number of documents within the organization. documents need to be classified, catalogued, stored, and retrieved. The document management system is a software system used to implement document management. It classifies, codes, stores, and searches electronic documents.

Nowadays, some document management systems have introduced the concept and technology of knowledge management, for example, document permissions, settings of different dimensions, relations between documents and users, document versions, and even searching and searching documents using data mining techniques. However, this does not mean that document management is close to knowledge management.

Because the core idea of Knowledge Management divides knowledge into two categories: Explicit Knowledge and tacit knowledge. Explicit Knowledge refers to the knowledge that can be clearly expressed and disseminated in formal languages, it mainly exists in enterprise literature, intelligence, and archives. This is only part of explicit knowledge. Tacit Knowledge refers to the knowledge that is not easy to express and hidden at the organizational level or in the personal mind, such as the company's culture, thoughts, employee skills, and ideas for solving problems.

Documents are just a way to store knowledge. The most important knowledge is not stored in documents, but in the head of every one of us. One of the purposes of knowledge management is to transform tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and exert its value.

In addition to ignoring the hidden knowledge, the document management system compares with the knowledge management system, there is also a lack of attention to people, attention to the relationship between knowledge and organization, and ignoring the knowledge structure. The following table can be used for comparison:

Serial number	Item	Knowledge Management	Document management
1	Explicit Knowledge	√	√, But the most written part of management explicit knowledge.
2	Tacit Knowledge	√ Focus on Mining	× Ignore all
3	Unstructured knowledge	√	√ Documents are typical of unstructured knowledge
4	Structured knowledge	√ Structured processing	× It can only be in document format
5	Connect to other systems	√ Other system information results can be converted into knowledge	× Cannot be converted to a document
6	Position	√ Focus on the relationship between knowledge and position, and establish a position Knowledge Base	×
7	Employee	√ Focus on the relationship between knowledge and people and launch a personal knowledge portal, which not only organizes enterprise knowledge, but also organizes personal knowledge
8	Knowledge Structure	√ Focus on balancing the knowledge structure and its beneficial impact on the Enterprise, and provide a knowledge map	×
9	Main technologies	Knowledge release, knowledge comments, knowledge subscription, knowledge Q & A, knowledge exchange, knowledge evaluation and performance, knowledge sharing, knowledge training, knowledge security, knowledge collaboration, instant messaging, data mining, and Version Management, knowledge tracking	Document Library and search
10	Active Application	√ Knowledge points and training mechanisms can be established to promote usage	×

From the above table, we can see that knowledge management is obviously at a higher level than document management, but as far as the current industry situation is concerned, there are fewer and fewer customers who can achieve document management.