The KM Reality Award recognizes an organization where knowledge management is positive reality, not just rhetoric. The award recipient has demonstrated leadership in implementing knowledge management practices and processes, realizing measurable business benefits.
To be considered for the Reality Award, the knowledge management program must have been in place for at least 1 year, receive support from senior management, and have defined metrics to evaluate the initiative and its impact on organizational goals.
At the KMWorld 2022 conference on Thursday, November 10, Enterprise Knowledge was announced as the winner of the KM Reality Award 2022.
2022 KM REALITY AWARD WINNER: Business Insights
Enterprise Knowledge is dedicated to providing unparalleled consulting services in the areas of knowledge and information management, software development and project management. Enterprise Knowledge focuses on practical, proven solutions by engaging end users to ensure systems are designed for them, to truly meet their needs.
Walmart’s Knowledge Management (KM) program, led by Amber Simpson within Walmart Global’s Enterprise Learning organization, is responsible for improving processes and tools to create, share and grow knowledge for training that they create for 2.4 million associates. Among other things, Amber serves as the Product Owner for the design, development, and deployment of the Learning Content Database (LCD), a digital library that increases the ability to find and discover learning content among its 200+ L&D experts to learn content that already exists can be leveraged and/or repurposed for future learning needs expressed by business partners or associates.
Challenge
Knowledge management best practices and processes were originally initiated within Walmart US Learning to improve its ability to more effectively and efficiently create and manage learning content. The organization lacked a central, user-centric location to find and store learning materials, relied on overly complex manual processes, and lacked a governing body overseeing content creation processes and management of work teams. KM has since been scaled to support the entire company, Walmart Global, to further improve communication and collaboration across the organization and equip them with modern KM technologies .
Results
Many organizations conceptualize the idea of a “single source of truth” for where all of their content resides, and in the case of Walmart, they’ve made it a reality. By developing the LCD under Amber’s leadership and integrating it with Walmart’s learning management systems, learning experience platforms, badging software, and content repositories, Walmart Global can now access its learning content from one centralized location to understand its purpose, who it is delivered to, and what skills and competencies will be acquired as a result. The LCD provides a record of all learning content, enabling its trainers to accurately deliver quality learning content to associates around the world in the most efficient and reliable manner. What originally took days or even weeks for trainers to find and manage, now takes mere seconds.
Walmart’s global knowledge management program and LCD technology are focused on delivering measurable results, including improving and managing content and learning processes at scale across multiple enterprise systems, reducing time for trainers to find and learn about previously provided training materials and increased operational efficiency. with the use of automated processes.
Over the past year, Amber and her team have developed the following skills through Walmart Global’s KM program and technology:
- Content management
- Taxonomy design
- Ontology design
- Company search
- Knowledge Management Technology and Implementation
- KM Leadership (Became a team of 5 with varying degrees of roles and responsibilities)
Enterprise Learning associates believe in KM and proactively identify new ways to further streamline their business processes and improve technology capabilities. Their level of engagement has been widely visible and has inspired others within Walmart to improve their processes and tools to build, share and grow knowledge around their areas of focus.
