Knowledge Management (KM) and Structured Settlements·

 

[1]-Introduction to KM

 

Knowledge Management (KM) means organizing knowledge to achieve productive work, competitive advantage and business value. KM provides a professional discipline for personalizing this new technology to help Knowledge Workers understand and manage personal, organizational and industry knowledge. The tools of Knowledge Workers consist of the personal computer, the Internet, and related technology.      

 The ability to capture tacit (experiential) knowledge in digital format and share it anytime anywhere with anyone connected to the Internet is a recent phenomenon. Most professionals and business organizations have not acquired the skill sets needed to work productively in this new environment. KM enhances the abilities of individuals and organizations to perform, compete and survive in this new environment.

[2]-Successful Knowledge Management

Successful  KM requires:

1)      Executive leadership by example;

2)      Champions and evangelists;

3)      Healthy work environments for innovation, sharing and idea exchange;

4)      Conscious and continuous programs for identifying, analyzing, gathering, organizing, and sharing specific categories of knowledge in terms of resources, documents and people skills;

5)      Performance measurements (metrics);

6)      Learning strategies;

7)      Rewards and incentives.

 

[3]-Impact on Structured Settlements

 

[a]-Suitability

(1)   The structured settlement industry encompasses several overlapping domains of knowledge including law, insurance, medicine, economics and accounting.

(2)   Structured Settlements is an international business.

(3)   Structured settlement products and services must satisfy multiple federal and state legislative and regulatory requirements.

(4)   The Financial Services Modernization Act1 changes fundamental rules for structured settlement participants.

(5)   Interdisciplinary and geographically dispersed teams, representing multiple business organizations, interact to perform case-specific and program-specific structured settlement work processes.2

(6)   Workflow processes within the structured settlement industry remain primarily dependent on paper, telephones and airplanes.

(7)   Much of the knowledge within the structured settlement industry is tacit (experiential) and/or social (contacts) and has not been captured in transferable formats.

(8)   The structured settlement industry has not established case-specific or program-specific performance metrics.

(9)   KM concepts like mapping, harvesting, benchmarking and best practices have not been applied to the structured settlement industry.

(10) All of these characteristics make structured settlements an excellent focus for KM applications.

 

[b]-Applications and Benefits

Many potential applications for KM exist within the structured settlement industry. Categories for KM applications include:

[i]-Personal KM

 Knowledge Workers require functional skill sets as well as subject matter expertise. Obtaining functional skill sets requires skill set analyses and learning strategies. Skill Set Yellow Pages provide one methodology for organizing and communicating skill sets within a team or community.

[ii]-Collaboration

 Knowledge Workers collaborate in Virtual Teams or Communities (Communities of Practice; Communities of Interest). Shared Internet workspaces provide significant performance advantages compared to collaboration alternatives like conference telephone calls, emails or team travel. Benchmarking and best practices improve individual, team, organizational and industry performance.

[iii]-Information Architecture

Multiple structured settlement participants require different types of information at specific times during their structured settlement work assignments. KM tools and resources permit and encourage organizing knowledge and information on a user-specific and task-specific basis.

[iv]-Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The objectives of CRM include: understanding customers from multiple perspectives; qualifying and selecting customers; matching products and services to customers; differentiating products and services from competitors. KM tools (including help desk technologies) provide new and powerful resources for CRM. Benefits include improved customer responsiveness and loyalty.

[v]-Product Development

For most of its history, the structured settlement industry has marketed one product (a Qualified Assignment funded by a single premium life insurance annuity) to the personal injury marketplace. The results of this one product strategy include: 1) the structured settlement industry has never captured a significant percentage of personal injury claim dollars; 2) the structured settlement industry has positioned itself narrowly, as a niche market of annuity sales persons within the insurance claims industry. KM encourages strategic and entrepreneurial thinking and provides methodologies for developing and improving structured settlement products.

[vi]-Work Processes

The primary work processes of structured settlements (case preparation; case negotiation; and case closing)3 are paper-driven and inefficient. Without industry performance metrics and benchmarks, it is difficult to evaluate or improve these work processes. KM provides tools and resources for substantially improving structured settlement work processes. Benefits include: reduced time to market; efficient linking of customers and suppliers; innovation opportunities.

[vii]-Learning

Knowledge Work requires continuous and organized learning for individuals, organizations and industries. KM's primary objectives include increasing learning efficiency. An organization with superior intellectual resources can understand how to exploit and develop its traditional resources better than its competitors.

 

[c]-Business Models

KM, and its related technology, create and require new business models and introduce new business rules. The structured settlement industry currently operates with old business models and old business rules. In the words of Kevin Kelly: "as innovation accelerates, abandoning the highly successful in order to escape from its eventual obsolescence becomes the most difficult and yet most essential task."4

 

[4]-KM Systems

 

[a]-Definition

A system is a collection of elements or components that are organized for a common purpose. The purposes of a KM system include achieving productive work, competitive advantage and business value.

 

[b]-Components

General components (layers) of KM systems include:

(1)   Interface - browsers; portals; Internet platforms; and workrooms.

(2)   Authentication - recognition; security; and firewalls.

(3)   Filtering - search engines; indexing; metatagging.

(4)   Applications - many categories exist including decision-making; searching; mapping; harvesting; classification; and collaboration (see also, KM Tools infra).

(5)   Transport - content exchange including email.

(6)   Middleware - wrapper tools to integrate legacy or cross-platform data.

(7)   Repositories - data warehouses; discussion forums; document bases.

(8)   Legacy Systems - Legacy systems and applications consist of languages, platforms, and techniques that preceded current technology. Most users of computers have legacy applications and databases that serve critical business needs. Historically, the legacy challenge has been to keep the legacy applications running while converting to newer, more efficient code that makes use of the newest technology and programmer skills. The Internet introduces new legacy issues. Successful KM systems and business models anticipate evolution and migration.

 

 

[5]-KM Tools

KM tools can be defined broadly to include equipment, networks, platforms and application software; or, more narrowly, to focus on application software. (See examples of application tools under KM Systems-Components supra). Most KM software applications (tools) also include their own program-specific tools (egg Microsoft wizards). Knowledge Workers develop personal KM toolkits. Knowledge Workers may use one tool generally and frequently and another tool one time only for a specific task or project.

 

[6]-Knowledge Management Skill Sets

 

[a]-Knowledge Workers

Knowledge workers require basic functional skill sets in addition to their subject matter expertise. Functional skill sets include those needed to: 1) operate and maintain a personal computer; 2) work collaboratively and productively in Internet workrooms; 3) develop and implement personal learning strategies.

 

[b]-Knowledge Management Professionals

KM professionals include many backgrounds and skill sets. Categories of KM skill sets include: strategy; innovation; organization; organizational behavior; collaboration; communication; implementation; internet searching; web design; software design; software integration; mapping; harvesting; content development; CRM; work processes; classification; competitive intelligence; facilitation; training; expert systems; artificial intelligence. KM certification programs exist.5

 

[7]-Knowledge Strategies

 

[a]-Business Strategy

Business strategy is the most important context for directing KM. Within the structured settlement industry, few, if any, strategic models exist linking knowledge-oriented processes, technologies and organizational forms to business strategy.

 

[b]-Knowledge and Strategy

Knowledge is fundamental to strategy and competition. Knowledge strategies support and enhance business strategies. Competing successfully with knowledge requires either: 1) aligning business strategy with existing organizational knowledge; or 2) developing knowledge and skill sets to support business strategy.  Essential elements of knowledge strategy include identifying: 1) which existing knowledge resources are valuable and unique; and 2) how those resources support product and market positions.

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Footnotes

 

1. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher from Structured Settlements and Periodic Payment Judgments, by Daniel Werner Hindert, Joseph Julnes Dehner and Patrick Johann Hindert, published and copyrighted by Law Journal Press. All rights reserved. Copies of the complete work may be ordered from Law Journal Press, Book Fulfillment, 105 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016, or telephone (800) 537-2128 x 9300.  In preparing this article, the authors acknowledge and thank: Dr. Eric Tsui, Dr. Denham Grey and Tenho Connable for their general KM expertise and assistance; Dr. Amrit Tiwana for his expertise regarding KM systems; and Dr. Michael Zack for his expertise regarding knowledge strategy.  
2. See Section 3.10 [2] infra and Appendix R for additional information regarding the Financial Services Modernization Act also referred to as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999.
3. The structured settlement case-specific work processes (preparation; negotiation; and closing) are described in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 respectively infra.
4. Ibid.
5. Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy, Viking Press.
6. See Knowledge Management Consortium International at http://kmci.org.