Information and Knowledge are the new competitive weapons of our time. Regardless of industry, the most successful and smartest companies may be those that have the best information and knowledge and use them for strategic advantage.

The Information Age has replaced the Industrial Age. The strongest balance sheet, which previously measured physical assets, is today measuring a new asset - knowledge. Knowledge has become more valuable and more powerful than physical or financial assets, or even natural resources. Information and knowledge (i.e., experience, advice, industry, communication) are the new competitive weapons of our time.

Increased knowledge management capabilities can make it possible for you to:

• react swiftly and effectively to market changes
• predict more accurately and exploit industry trends
• understand and service your most valuable customers
• efficiently and effectively deliver new products and services
• learn from and adopt experiences
• create and apply new knowledge
• retain valuable employees long term
• reuse and reapply existing technologies through enhanced integration

Strategies
KPMG’s Advisory Services practice views knowledge management as the art and science of creating, identifying, evaluating, capturing, enhancing, distributing and aligning the intellectual resources of an enterprise. To achieve this end, it has created a number of tools for clients.

The ability to leverage the intellectual capital of the organization can reap numerous potential including cost savings, productivity improvements and improved staff morale. KPMG’s Advisory Services practice strategies combine state of the art technologies with critical 'soft' issues to make knowledge exploitation a real business differentiator.

The transformation to a knowledge-centric organization is like undertaking a journey. How and when you embark upon this journey will depend on your business strategy. Where you begin will depend on your people, existing processes and technology. KPMG’s Advisory Services practice can help you on every step of your journey.

There are serious risks of not undertaking initiatives to manage knowledge assets and processes. Here are just some of them:

• Productivity and opportunity loss
• Information overload
• Knowledge attrition – significant part of their organization lose a knowledge base over the years through the turnover of employees, customers and investors
• Reinventing the industry of standards and infrastructure for creating, capturing, sharing and applying industry best practice or lessons learned
  
  
  The bottom line is that strategic importance must be placed on helping to ensure that the right knowledge is available to the right person at the right time.
  
  KPMG’s Advisory Services practice helps clients raise awareness about the importance of knowledge and the value of knowledge management, and how to use it into your business. KPMG International itself has benefited from dedication to knowledge management and knowledge sharing on a global scale. Knowledge management makes KPMG what it is: one of the top global network of professional services firms.