Knowledge Management

Only available on StudyMode
  • Download(s) : 106
  • Published : April 9, 2011
Open Document
Text Preview


Managerial and Decision Support Systems

9. Knowledge Management 10. Data Management: Warehousing, Analyzing, Mining, and Visualization 11. Management Decision Support and Intelligent Systems



Knowledge Management

9.1 Introduction to Knowledge Management 9.2 Knowledge Management Initiatives 9.3 Approaches to Knowledge Management 9.4 Information Technology in Knowledge Management 9.5 Knowledge Management Systems Implementation 9.6 Roles of People in Knowledge Management 9.7 Ensuring Success of KM Efforts Minicases:


After studying this chapter, you will be able to: ³ Deﬁne knowledge and describe the different types of knowledge. · Describe the activities involved in knowledge management. » Describe different approaches to knowledge management. ¿ Describe the technologies that can be utilized in a knowledge management system. ´ Describe the issues associated with implementing knowledge management in organizations. ² Describe the activities of the chief knowledge ofﬁcer and others involved in knowledge management. ¶ Describe beneﬁts as well as drawbacks to knowledge management initiatives.

1. DaimlerChrysler 2. Buckman Labs


PROBLEM ➥ THE $8.6 billion division of PepsiCo based in Plano, Texas, had informaFrist-Lay, a tion scattered in disparate systems around the country with no simple way for geographically dispersed sales forces to access the same information. The vice president of customer development described the situation as akin to having “knowledge trapped in ﬁles everywhere.” Different salespeople would be requesting the same information, but there was no means of keeping track of frequently requested information and data. For example, the corporate sales, marketing, and operations staffs were often asked for information concerning private-label trends within snack categories. These support staffs found themselves gathering the same data again and again for different salespeople. In addition, each individual salesperson often had valuable knowledge stored on his or her own laptop, which was not accessible to others. Not only that, but the ability to coordinate with other salespersons was missing. For example, “If somebody got a piece of research and wanted to get input from account executives in Baltimore and Los Angeles, the ability to collaborate [online] just wasn’t there.”

➥ THE SOLUTION Frito-Lay decided to implement a knowledge management (KM) portal on the corporate intranet. The KM portal would enable a central point of entry for all sales-related customer and corporate information. The portal would contain information (such as sales, analysis, and news) about the team’s customers and would contain proﬁles of individuals within Frito-Lay. The portal would help reduce the time it took to locate information on products, sales, promotions, and research. In addition, the portal would make locating an expert within the company much easier. Following a pilot conducted with one of the highly dispersed sales teams, three goals were established for the portal: to streamline knowledge, to exploit customer-speciﬁc data, and to foster team collaboration. Navigator Systems, a consultant based in Dallas, Texas, built a prototype in about three months using technologies such as Lotus Domino, BusinessObjects’ WebIntelligence, Java, and IBM’s DB2 database. A search engine called Autonomy was used. Autonomy is a natural-language search engine that allows users to search information in different repositories such as spreadsheets, Word ﬁles, and presentations. To populate the portal, an audit was conducted that resulted in expertise proﬁles. The expertise proﬁles enable salespersons to learn who had expertise in promotion planning, activity planning, costing, or new product announcements, for example. The portal is password-protected so that sensitive customer data is limited to the immediate sales...
tracking img