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Knowledge Application 203

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Figure 6.8
Chunking in content management

KM operates at a fi ner level of granularity — the work has been done a priori, so users
need not wade through thick technical documents or other “ containers ” of knowl-
edge. These have been broken down into the valuable knowledge nuggets that are of
greatest use.
Content management in KM thus involves breaking down documents into their
conceptual components and mapping these out using concept indexes, semantic
networks, or hierarchical knowledge taxonomies. Decomposition is also a prerequisite
for the development of EPSSs. Understanding the EPSS vision remains far from uni-
versal. Indeed, misunderstanding of the EPSS vision is far more common — a result, in
part, of misapplication of the term by people who sought “ currency ” in being on the
bandwagon, despite the fact that they were selling traditional CBT, online reference
materials, and so on. Still, after roughly eight years since the phrase was coined, there
are quite a few success stories for “ true ” performance support systems. What we call
EPSS may change — there is a movement to replace the term with “ performance cen-
tered systems, ” an attempt to recapture the original intent and to better appeal to the
IS community — but the concept is here to stay, justifi ed by the value these systems
have provided to the visionary organizations that sponsored them.
EPSSs can help an organization to reduce the cost of training staff while increasing
productivity and performance. They can empower an employee to perform tasks with
a minimum amount of external intervention or training. By using this type of system,
an employee, especially a new employee, will not only be able to complete work more
quickly and accurately, but as a secondary benefi t will also learn more about the job
and the employer ’ s business. For an update on this approach, see Dickleman (2003) .
An EPSS application at Sun Microsystems is explored here (box 6.2).