Master of Science in Knowledge Management – Managing Knowledge

I.            Internal redeployment of staff – refers to using the employees from XYZ to carry out the tasks from the new knowledge management project. Beneficial because it maintains employees who are already trained and conversant with the operations of the company therefore saving up on resources that could otherwise be directed at training new staff. The disadvantage of internal redeployment is that it bring no new skills and talents to the project.

II.            Recruitment of new staff – refers to the process of tapping into the labor market for new skills, talent and experience. Beneficial because it introduces a new perspective to the project that was initially not there. The con with recruitment is that it is costly in terms of resources and time since new staff has to be trained on the operations of XYZ.

III.            Sending staff to attend KM training – A project that introduces knowledge management affects all staff at XYZ. Training and education of staff is important and beneficial in the achievement of the goal of KM which is to improve the efficiency of operations at XYZ and maintain knowledge. The disadvantage of training is that it takes a lot of time that would otherwise be used creating more productivity for the company and also that it is an added cost on the company.

I.            A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System – Including a CRM system as part of a KM system serves to benefit the company especially in the improvement of sales, marketing and customer service. An example of a CRM system that can be applied at XYZ which is a software engineering company is a star rating operation that enables customers to rate and review the services and products offered to them. Tracking of interactions between a customer and XYZ can be used to contribute to knowledge that can be applied as strategy in the future. The biggest assumption with a CRM system, however, is that customers are expected to be rational and rate and review services and products on the basis of merit.

II.            A communication tool – Communication is vital in any organization. Communication in a KM project is between users or a user and the knowledge base. It is the medium through which the knowledge reaches the user for application. Examples of such tools could be email, messaging services, video conferencing and other collaboration tools. A communication tool makes accumulated data sensible and applicable to a user. One assumption, however, is that such a tool is not a distraction to the operations of the employees, for instance, using an email service to communicate information that is not relevant to the activities of XYZ.

I.            For search engines, the relevance of output is subjective which could mean an error in result. A method to mitigate this challenge is creating room to allow for machine learning where a search engine learns the inclination of a user and uses the feedback from prior searches to provide more accurate result in future searches.

II.            Compared to n natural languages like an SQL query search script, a search engine search operation is highly ambiguous. For example a search script using a natural language for a person with the last name as ‘DOE’ would be ‘select name from employee where last = “DOE”.’ The result would be very precise and display all employees with their last name as DOE. However such precision is unavailable for search engines and a search for the name DOE would return a result of DOE as a keyword including words like DOES and SHELDOE among many others. One way to mitigate this ambiguity is to offer more search options that groups date from where a search occurs.

III.            Synonyms is another problem associated with a search engine. For instance, a search operation my fail to return a result from a search of the keyword ‘CAR’ because it is referred to as ‘AUTOMOBILE’. A way to mitigate this is to ensure the search operations is deeply detailed to comprise thesaurus keywords.

I.            Start small enables learning of the organization making improvements to the KM more accurate and customized towards the nature of business.

II.            Start small enables analysis of KM before full implementation to determine its applicability to the company. From this information, a company can abort the project, re-strategize or continue developing the project. Additionally, staff will be able to learn, apply and adapt as the KM becomes more vital to the organization.

III.            Start small enables pulling of funds required without cause major disruption to the activities of the business. A KM project is likely to be a costly expense on a business if implemented all once that could incapacitate other departments.

I.            Keeping staff motivated when it comes to sharing and storage of data.  A possible solution is to ensure the KM is ingrained into the employee culture where they learn, improve and share information.

II.            Keeping up with the constantly changing technology. A possible solution is to opt for cloud based operations that removes the task of updating hardware and software licenses each year. On cloud, XYZ outsources storage facilities and pays for the amount of facilities used rather than implementing an entire data center for the program.

III.            Information insecurity. With this, the objective is maintain data confidentiality, integrity and availability. A cybersecurity team should be assigned to monitor networks and implement security audits and ensure all vulnerabilities are in check.

IV.            Quantifying the knowledge and its benefits to XYZ. It is not possible measure knowledge but the effort should focus on the shared purpose rather than identifiable effort and result.

I.            The people element challenge is organization learning where the staff lacks the training to carry out the activities of ABC through an online platforms.

II.            The technology element is transferring information from face to face delivery to an online platform.

A knowledge process applicable in ABC would be knowledge discovery which refers to finding knowledge that exists to apply to the situation. A knowledge method that could fulfil this is research where investigations pertaining towards the solution of the challenges ABC faces could be considered the research objectives of the knowledge discovery process.

Application of the concept of meta-level knowledge in ABC could be a transfer of knowledge from a domain expert to a program. The different levels of knowledge are articulated through cognitive understanding, basic competence, mastering of basics, going beyond the basics and lastly continuous improvement.

Before the age of computers and the internet, people would communicate through letters written in text and photographs in postcards. Entertainment too was in text and in print. None the less, information got through with most of it being left to imagination. Of course times have changed since and we have live video and video calls a huge improvement on was initially available. The same concept applies to online learning. People would spend hours in library searching for information from old books, something that can be done in an instance by a search engine. Learning today includes multimedia tools that contribute greatly to the way we understand things. Online learning is one such development. It is an extension of an in-person class with added features in video, audio and text formats. As the world progresses in different fields and industries so must education and the reason we must embrace online learning.

I.            Motivate – First step is to motivate the FGH staff to want to implement a knowledge management strategy.

II.            Network – Second step is to build connections between people as knowledge is shared through direct contact of people.

III.            Supply – Third steps involves creating a supply of knowledge including files and documents to use.

IV.            Analyze – Once the knowledge has been captured, the next step is to analyze it to ensure it is useful and applicable.

V.            Disseminate – Lastly is the distribution of information and the publishing of standard procedures of knowledge capture to be used in future.

·         Collecting refers to the transfer of knowledge through the collective effort of information into documents which can be achieved at FGH through the development of knowledge assets and through the process of knowledge synthesis.

·         Connection refers to knowledge transfer through connecting people and can be achieved through mentoring, coaching and action learning.

·         An improvement of both these methods would comprise the use of technology where for collecting lesson management systems and portals can be included and for connecting, collaborative tools like forums and conference applications can facilitate the KM practice at FGH.

An ‘information is power’ metaphor can be used to show employees at FGH the importance of information passing amongst employees. The metaphor could be interpreted that possession of knowledge enables better company decisions which in turn lead to increased company revenue.