APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (KM)
“Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach of identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of the enterprise’s information assets. These assets include database, documents, policies, procedures and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers.” (Duhon, 2003). Roy-J Limited, a consultants company introduced knowledge management after realizing the potential and opportunities of intranet and internet solutions in promoting and marketing the company. It is a very crucial aspect for enhancing success of any other organization.
Either in dimensional, operational, or managerial view the company comprises of four stages of knowledge management processes. The first one being knowledge creation within the company. The company has a comprehensive information system that manages the large amounts of data and information, which is captured from daily transactions. This enhances future data and information retrieval for introduction no new product. Each time the company is lacking in knowledge, and then it can be either created within the organization or acquired from outside. Employees are always encouraged to be as creative as possible and forward their ideas of improving the company’s knowledge base.
Knowledge codification is another crucial component of knowledge management process where all the collected raw facts and figures are analyzed which processed into a meaningful knowledge. Data in its form may not be very useful to the organization and so this data is usually processed to convey a useful meaning and may support knowledge and information based decision-making. At this level it6 is also worthy to note that this valuable knowledge of the company is protected and all the security measures are put in place. This in compliance with the law on patenting where every company is required to disclose all the documents as well as secrets of new inventions to be given the ,patent right to do business. The company takes a commercial advantage with the IP protection by deriving revenues from other partners who wants to use our knowledge.
Knowledge application helps to gain a competitive advantage in the field. Knowledge management skills have helped the company identify the knowledge assets that it has and make the best out of it. Most companies around the world usually fail to realize and recognize their knowledge base and therefore do not make use of it at all. The company emphasizes on documenting all the knowledge assets and sharing of that knowledge across the various departments.
The final process is about knowledge sharing which is very crucial to every organization. The company tries as much as possible to educate its staff that knowledge from a group has much impact than one from a single person. Staff is thereby encouraged to share the knowledge. When a new idea that cannot be implemented within the organization is conceived, the company licenses the idea to another company thereby increasing its profits.
The organization consists of standard operating procedures that are one uniform way of doing things and carrying out various tasks. Details of how the company conducts its business are documented in policy documents so that any person recruited is must go through and sign confidentiality agreements pledging to abide by those procedures. Such documents are never disclosed to unauthorized persons who may have the intention to use it for selfish gain but persons working for the company only know them.
Over the last five years this system has been applied and fully assimilated in the operations, the company has a reason to brag. The business currently is information driven and organizations are measured by the intellectual rather than physical assets. There are number of ways in which this system has benefited the company-;
- Improved decision-making. The company is comprised of five branches in the major cities each headed by a branch manager. The executive team usually needs information so as to make decisions in daily running of the organization and also major decisions. Knowledge management has help improve the speed at which decisions are made and enhanced decision making even in the smaller departmental units.
- It has transformed the company into a learning organization. With information available about how the organization is performing, how businesses is conducted among other materials being well managed in service training trainings are now easy to conduct. The company continues to sharpen the skills, knowledge, and expertise of its staff using their own information. For instance, an employee may be a diploma holder while being recruited but after two years at work, they have their degrees as well as the experience.
- It stimulated innovation and change in people’s culture. Knowledge management ensures there if free flow of ideas and that people can freely interact within and even outside the organization’s environment. Members of the company are now free to bring on board their ideas and what they think should be done to improve performance.
- It has cut down on operation cost by eliminating those processes and operations, which does not benefit the organization. This has led to increased sales and profits.
References
Bateson, G. (2002). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Bantam. New York: Nerd Press.
Bellinger, G. (2004). . London: Oxford UP.
Davidson, M. (2003). The Transformation of Management. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Duhon, B. (2003), It's All in our Heads. Inform. New York: Pantheon.
Wenger, C. Etienne, & Snyder, W. M. (2005). Communities of practice: The organizational frontier. Harvard Business Review, 78(1), 139-145.
