KM Benchmarking

In one of the KM communities of which I am a member, there was a question on potential queries that one could ask in order to carry out a KM benchmarking exercise. I haven't done an exhaustive or meticulous job of it, but I've - off the cuff - rattled of some queries one could possibly ask to be answered by the company that one is benchmarking with. Obviously, there's a lot more that can go into this document - both in terms of the themes and the associated queries.

- Benefits / Disadvantages of having a central KM team over decentralized teams responsible for KM activities in an organization?

1. Explain your KM team structure, hierarchy, roles and functions
2. What is it that your team has accomplished so far and what were the key reasons why it succeeded?
3. What are the challenges your team faces and how are you trying to overcome them?
4. Have you ever been in a situation wherein you knew exactly what to do to solve a problem or accomplish something but you never got around to implementing it?
5. Can you recall a situation wherein you were able to achieve a quick win in an extremely smooth manner?

- ROI Methodology that helps compute the ROI given the yearly investment in the KM program of an organization?

1. What are the KM objectives for your organization? How do you monitor them?
2. Explain the quantitative and qualitative measures for ensuring you achieve your KM objectives
3. How do you calculate the cost of your KM initiative? What is your explicit financial budget for KM?
4. What makes the management continue to lend support to the KM function? What do they expect out of it and what are they complaining about?

- How do organizations cope with legacy / dated / archaic content?

1. What is your content archival policy and procedure?
2. Have you come across situations requiring you to refer to content created many years ago? Has that ever been a problem?
3. How often and vociferously do your users complain about the presence of obsolete content in your repository? What do you do to resolve such issues?

- Aspects of KM culture within an organization (including incentives, rewards, non financial ones also)?

1. How do you conceive, build and sustain a culture of sharing, learning, reuse and collaboration within your organization?
2. Do you engage with the HR teams for the above?

- Ideas on re-usability of content within the enterprise

1. How do you identify content that can be reused? What are the associated policies, procedures and tools for the same? Do you measure the benefits of reuse? How do you award the people who contribute reusable content?