DUCTION

“The basic economic resource is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labor.  It is and will be knowledge.”



–

Peter Drucker

A nation’s standard of living is increasingly dependent on the competitiveness of its firm. Competitiveness is vital if the nation’s firms are to take advantage of the opportunities opened up for them. Knowledge management Portal (KMP) has become the latest strategy in increasing organizational competitiveness. It is the most innovative, creative, and important management concept.

Organisations are facing ever-increasing challenges, brought on by marketplace pressures or the nature of the workplace. Many organisations are now looking to knowledge management Portals (KMP) to address these challenges. Such initiatives are often started with the development of a knowledge management strategy. To be successful, a KM strategy must do more than just outline high-level goals such as ‘becomes a knowledge-enabled organisation’. Instead, the strategy must identify the key needs and issues within the organisation, and provide a framework for addressing these.

Every organisation has a unique environment, defined by factors such as:

Purpose and activities of the organisation, Organisational history Overall strategic direction Organisational culture Size of the organisation Geographic spread, Marketplace factors Staff skills and experience, Available resources and

 

For this reason, each organisation has a unique set of needs and issues to be addressed by knowledge management. It is easy to jump into ‘solutions mode’, recommending approaches such as communities of practice, storytelling, content management systems, and much more.

 

Knowledge Management is one of the ‘critical success factors’. Identifying the needs within the organisation, and then design the activities accordingly. Hence KM acts as a vital tool towards gaining organisational Competitiveness

KM Methodology

Knowledge is what I know;

Information is what we know.

Knowledge has become the key driving force in the present day world. It is generally believed that the only source of competitive advantage in future will be the knowledge. Therefore, in this newly emerging environment, organisations are required to develop successful knowledge strategies, not only to compete and win in the market, but to achieve sustainable competitive advantage; this is possible only through KM Portal

In many ways it is technology that has been made knowledge sharing a reality – In the past it was impossible to share knowledge or work collaboratively with co-workers around the globe. Today it is a reality If implemented well and if people are trained and educated in its use, Knowledge sharing technology is good.

Interest in knowledge creation within organizations is growing at an astounding rate. The most effective way to create knowledge sharing culture is first to start practice at your level. The higher up the organisation the more effective you will be changing the culture but even if you are low down the hierarchy, you have an influence. Put in place the knowledge sharing technology and train and educate people in its effective use. The two together, People with appropriate knowledge sharing mindset and the appropriate knowledge sharing technology to support them.

Once the knowledge is created, Capturing takes place where in the knowledge database is created and all necessary data is been stored in the form of documents, Case studies and in various formats to be presented in usable format and there by making use of knowledge in the broader context.

Organizations receive massive amounts of information on a daily basis that they must gather, categorize, interpret and disseminate efficiently (Egan, 1998). Data such as sectoral news or market trends first comes in and needs to be captured. This process must be supported by established procedures of reporting, editing and publication. Filtered information must then be organized in maps. Mapping organizational knowledge is the most crucial activity in providing users with practical access to information.

In certain situations, it can be more than threatening for a worker to introduce knowledge into systems and actively search out that which others have introduced. It can also require a substantial amount of time and effort. Therefore, people need to be highly motivated in order to undertake such work. It is only when a knowledge manager adopts the principle of knowledge sharing for the whole organization that knowledge is shared and reused spontaneously.

Knowledge, in addition to being shared between employees, must be distributed by an organization to its employees. The dissemination of knowledge has a massive impact on the formation of competitive advantage. It is broadly agreed that in order to ensure the proper dissemination of knowledge it is necessary both to lubricate communication and nurture the right organizational culture (Gupta, 2002). Some organizations are beginning to evaluate and reward personnel who share and use knowledge. Such as IBM, Infosys, Buckman laboratories, Accenture, etc

Knowledge, in addition to being shared between employees, must be distributed by an organization to its employees. The dissemination of knowledge has a massive impact on the formation of competitive advantage. It is broadly agreed that in order to ensure the proper dissemination of knowledge it is necessary both to lubricate communication and nurture the right organizational culture. Dissemination also requires the transformation of highly individualized tacit knowledge into more widely shared explicit knowledge.

It is not the organizations which own the best knowledge that achieve competitive advantage but, rather, those that make the best use of it. In order to make the best use of knowledge it should be fully applied to the activities of the organization and this would require that all the other knowledge processes, namely, creation, dissemination and sharing, should be taking place.



 KM Strategy

Developing a knowledge management strategy provides a unique opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the way the organisation operates, and the challenges that confront it. By focusing on identifying staff needs and issues, activities and initiatives can be recommended with the confidence that these will have a clear and measurable impact upon the organisation. To be successful, a KM strategy must do more than just outline high-level goals such as ‘become a knowledge-enabled organisation Instead, the strategy must identify the key needs and issues within the organisation, and provide a framework for addressing these.

Knowledge management strategies and drivers must be reviewed from a human resources perspective. The human resources management department assists the leadership of an organization in identifying the sources of the required knowledge and the best way to capture it, as well as assessing mastery of knowledge among employees and determining the benefits of that assessment to the organization. It also establishes the link between organizational strategy and employee knowledge, identifying needs and narrowing gaps.

Knowledge management can be considered successful if employees understand how corporate knowledge adds value, how it is created, and why it needs to be managed. The role of human resources management can be summarized as follows:

(a) Training and developing knowledge workers;

(b) Developing managers and team leaders as knowledge coordinators;

(c) Building a knowledge-sharing culture.

 

Research Work Conducted to determine the KM Effectiveness towards Organisational Competitiveness

Objective of the Study

1. To study the effectiveness of Knowledge Management Portal (KMP) implementation in an organisation

2. To study the contributing factors by KM towards Organisational Competitiveness

3. To find the extent to which technologies, practices, tools and process help the organisation to generate, organize and leverage knowledge

Research Methodology

Research Design

Exploratory Research Design

Sampling

Unit: IT Organisation

Size: 100

5 Leading IT Organisations who implemented Knowledge Management Portal were chosen for the study and 20 Project Managers from each organisation was surveyed

Method: Judgment Sampling

Data Collection

Questionnaires

Major Findings

52% of the Respondents approach Co-worker for gathering information for immediate solving of the problem 78% of the Respondents say that the reason for contacting the co-worker for solving the problem is due to Faster pace in getting the information. Majority of the Respondents (51%) says they use 40 – 60% of Explicit Knowledge (Documented/Codified) followed by Tacit Knowledge

4.       56% of the respondent says around 80-100% knowledge sharing culture exists among the team members than sharing among the teams

Majority of the Respondents (33%) says Problem Solving skill is developed to a large extent when using KM portal followed by Decision-making Skill (29%) and General Business Knowledge skill (22%) Majority of the Respondents (39%) says they are interested to share Case studies in KM portal for helping others to solve the problem followed by Web sites and Book of Knowledge.  48% of the Respondents Strongly agree that Corporate Intranet is the best Tool to share the knowledge followed by Brain Storming Session and Web Portals. 62% of the Respondents say Important as Reason for using KM portal is, to ease collaborative work of projects followed to improve the use of knowledge from sources outside the organisation (60%) Majority of the Respondents (29%) say Usage of KM portal is Very Effective to improve Knowledge and Skill of Employees.

10.28% say Km improves Clients and Customer Relation and 26% say

     Km helps the organisation to add New products, improve workers

     involvement and knowledge sharing across departments.

11. The Group resisted KM implementation in the Organisation was Management says 32% of the Respondents followed by R & D (21%) and HR Group (14%)

 

Specific findings related to Objective of the Study

Contributing Factors of KM towards Organisation Development

a)       To protect your organisation from loss of knowledge due to employee departure

b)       To improve the competitive advantage of the organisation

c)       To help integrate knowledge with in the organisation

d)       To increase efficiency by using knowledge to improve the process

e)       Improved Knowledge & Skills of Employees

f)        Improved Clients/ Customers relation

g)       Improved Employee Efficiency & Productivity

h)       Increased Flexibility in Development & Innovation

i)         Help the organisation to add new Services/ Products

j)         Improved involvement of Workers in workplace activities

k)       Loss of key personnel and their knowledge

l)         Removal of Information overload problem with in your organization

Effectiveness of KM

a)       Knowledge sharing Culture exist in the organisation among the team members to an large extent there by it proves the effectiveness of Km Portal

b)       Effectiveness of KM portal can be measured by the factors contributed by KM towards Organisational Development.

Tools and Technologies used by the Organisations

a)       Corporate intranets, Online Applications and Web portals will enable the effective sharing of knowledge among the employees in the organisation

b)       Best practices Repository, Tele conferencing, Video Conferencing, Electronic Discussions encourages effective Knowledge sharing

Conclusion

KM itself has come a long way and has a long way to go from where it is now. It is indeed a long journey and the trip has just begun. Organisations have to sustain competitive advantage. This is possible only through ‘Effective implementation of Knowledge Management Portal’.

A Key success factor in KM is getting optimal emphasis on each of the four focal area People, Process, technology and Content right from the early stages of deployment. The specific emphasis laid on each of these is a function of the organisational culture and business context. A useful way to verify the completeness of an organisational architecture for KM is to check whether it meets the following criteria

 “Knowledge management is necessary for companies because what worked yesterday may or may not work tomorrow” 

“Knowledge Management is the Innovative and Effective Aid to sustain Competitive Advantage”

 REFERENCES

Davenport and Prusak, “Working Knowledge, Harvard business Laurence Prusak, Principals of KM Nonaka and Takeuchi, ‘The knowledge creating company’ Number 3 1999 school press Knowledge Management – A source of competitive Advantage – The Business Review, Vol 10,No 2, March 2004 Creating Knowledge Edge in Business – The quarterly journal of foundation for organisational research and education, New Delhi, Vol XXII No. 3 (Oct- Dec 2004) Creating Knowledge in Business By Anuradha Padmanabhan, S. Govindarajalu and A. Vasumathi published an article on Prasena, Benjamin Eliway – 2002 in “Knowledge Management, Attention, and Human Capacity and Capital building: An integrative framework and future challenges with in eBusiness environment” Shabir A. Bhai in his article “Knowledge Management – A source of      competitive advantage” published in ‘The Business Review’, Vol 10, No 2, March 2004 James Robertson, Published on 2 August 2004 “Developing a knowledge management strategy“

 

Faculty in a Leading Management school, Chennai. Research interest includes HR, Knowledge management.

 

Have you seen online guru’s sales page or landing page of certain ebook which claims that you need to work only 15 minutes a day online and you could make thousands of dollars a month? They make it so interesting to read, and many wannabe online entrepreneurs or newbies have fallen to the trap and wasted money buying ebooks which does not carry much values. That is the reason why people should learn and educate themselves to avoid this trap. Sometimes many newbies just could not avoid the temptation of easy money promised by a particular guru using online business, and they fall to the trap. Sometimes, its just life and you learn from your mistakes.

Another claim that they often make is the business will be fully on autopilots where all you need to do is set it up in 15 or 30 minutes and you could forget about it. The business will continuously run 24 hours a day and generate tons of money. This is a misleading statement. How could you just set up a business which will run by it self and generate income without human intervention at all to maintain it. If this is true, why the guru isn’t setting up 100 of this kind of business and just sit relax while waiting for the money. These are the questions one need to ask himself before taking a bite of the claims made by these gurus.

No knowledge is required to start the online business. This is another claim which makes people think online business is easy and anyone could just set up a website to make money online. In reality, any brick and mortar business owners will agree that knowledge in the business being operated is crucial in order to be successful in the business. It goes same to the online business models. Efforts to understand and learn the business model need to be made by the online entrepreneur prior starting the online business. This will give the potential entrepreneur the idea whether he is ready to do the work required to make the online business a success.

The above are some of the claims made by many online business gurus which have made many newbies to have false assumptions about starting online business. Understanding and the knowledge of online business are crucial, and therefore anyone who wants to start a business must place in the effort to learn all the required skills.

Rahman Alwi is an online entrepreneur who runs his online business from home. If you are interested further about online businesses models, step by step guides and options, do visit Learn Online Business – 100% free
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