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In an organization, you want to have a competitive advantage over your competition. However, competitive advantages are not easily obtained and ever harder to keep. One way of gaining a competitive advantage is to implement an Enterprise Resource Planning systems or ERP.
The Enterprise Resource Planning system allows a company or business to consolidate and integrate all the different aspects of its business practice. The ERP systems are information systems, but they incorporate the entire organization and are online networking systems that allow cross-functional processes using a common database. There are many organizations that use the ERP systems to gain to competitive advantage by consolidating and integrating all the different aspects of its business practice to provide an overall view of the corporation. Also, the ERP systems give you much better access to real time information, which can make decision making much easier and more accurate.
However, ERP systems are very complex and hard to implement. These systems require huge amounts of time and money to implement and to keep them running properly. Though there are ERP systems that work great and give the company a competitive edge, most have failed. Companies continue to use ERP systems because if they are implemented correctly, they do give the company a competitive advantage over the competition. Also, in some markets, if your competitors are implementing these systems, it may be wise for you to consider it. Because of how beneficial these systems can be and how hard they are to implement, knowledge management approaches are being used to help the implementation process.
In the knowledge management structure, knowledge goes through four stages; creation, storage/retrieval, transfer, and usage/application. Knowledge creation is both creating new knowledge and/or replacing old knowledge that is no longer relevant to the organization, but not getting rid of knowledge because you store it for future reference. This is the next stage, knowledge storage/retrieval. It is important for an organization to store all its knowledge, including the knowledge it replaces, because it will allow the transfer of knowledge in the organization. This knowledge transfer references the old and new knowledge to keep from repeating mistakes. Finally, there is knowledge application. This step refers to putting all the knowledge that you know have into every aspect of your organization. In an ERP systems case, this will help with integration into the whole organization because you will not have to reinvent the wheel every time you run into a problem. However, the knowledge management approach is also affected by the organizational culture.
In every organization you are going to have individuals who are not excepting of change and do not want anything to do with the new system. This change often forces individuals inside the organization to learn new ways of doing a task or performing a process. These individuals, if left unchecked, can pose a serious problem to the knowledge management process, which will effect the integration of the ERP system. It is imperative that the organization makes sure it members understand why they implementing a new system and not just told to do it. If the individuals are more excepting of the new system, they will seek help and learn from other people in the organization, which it knowledge management.
The advantages of a successfully implemented ERP system are great. However, you must first be aware of the risk associated with ERP systems, and understand how to combat these risks when they occur. ERP systems can give a company a competitive advantage if implemented correctly or can loose the organization millions if implemented incorrectly. This is why many companies are using knowledge management with the implementation of the ERP systems. Though it does add another step to the implantation, it decreases the risk of failure and allows the company to learn from its mistakes.
(Sorry about the weird spacing, I couldn’t get it to line up the right way)
I have been doing some extra blogging on the topic of KM and I have found that we are not the only crazy people out there (sorry, bad attempt at being funny). A man by the name of Ray Sims has a blog called “43 Knowledge Management definitions – and counting…” Sims started this blog in order to get a grasp on lack of consensus on a KM definition. Though Sims does not agree with the term “Knowledge Management” and describes it as an oxymoron, he realizes that if his title is going to include KM than he should know something about it. Anyway, check out his blog, I believe that there is now 54 different definitions on it. So, if anyone is still having trouble with your “what is KM” essay, maybe this will help. Enjoy.
This is a really cool company that produces management systems. They make several different types of systems depending on what you need for your company and how much you are willing to spend. The following is an exert from there site giving a broad overveiw of what they do. Also, there is a cool triangle that will help you understand them better. (The blog will allow you to post pictures if you want.) The link I provided will take you to their site and you can check out all the different management systems they offer.
http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/products/index.html
SumTotal provides integrated solutions that manage, deploy and optimize talent, learning and knowledge to achieve business results. The SumTotal Enterprise Suite can be the underlying platform for competency, knowledge, learning and content management, improving the strategies, people, processes and technologies that impact business performance.
Through reporting and management dashboards, SumTotal gives you insight and tools for the employee life cycle, allowing you to align your organization’s goals, assess and manage talent gaps and drive business performance. We bring experience, best practices, workflows and templates to give you an optimal solution, based on our applied insight and experience with over 1500 leading companies throughout the world.
Our current suite brings additional capabilities, including functionality for compliance and regulatory management, version control, mobile and offline access, talent, performance and knowledge management and exception reporting. That is why so many companies turn to SumTotal Systems to strengthen the core talent of their operations.
This is a really cool video describing Knowledge Management made by Lotus, which is a IBM company. I believe that Lotus uses this video to excite and inspire their employees about Kowledge Management and to instruct them on why it is becoming essential in their company. There are also professors and other business owners using this video for the same reason as Lotus. You can see their comments and responses on the same page as the video. This video is really cool and its only about 2 1/2 minutes long, so check it out.
Today, organizational changes are no longer the exception but the rule, the successful management of organizational change has become a key success factor for innovative companies. One important factor in ensuring that a merger-and-acquisition (M&A) transaction enjoys the desired positive results, is the existence of recognizable synergies., as well as the successful exploitation of the planned synergy defects. too often financial aspects dominate corporate thinking, while differences of nationally, corporate cultures and working environments, and the incompatibility of It landscapes, are ignored. The know how needed to ensure the successful implementation of M&A plan is frequently only present in the heads of individuals. Siemens’ intention is to turn this expertise into common, corporate knowledge and thereby build up a dynamic corporate development. Siemens’ single step process for M&A at ICM is as follows: Preparation – analysis and development of co-operations or acquisition/divestment goals and strategies, Evaluation of co-operations or acquisitions/divestment opportunities. Transaction – Execution of co-operation or acquisition/divestment projects, approval process for application and approval of capitol investments. Integration/post closing – integration planning and execution, post closing management.
M&A differ greatly is size, scope, and so on, which makes standardizing the characteristics difficult. However, there are certain general factors that are found in successful M&A and, consequently, it is possible to postulate some reasons for the failure of M&A projects as well: Communication/Buy in, Vision/strategy, integration team, experience/information.
This is why Siemens developed the Mergers and Acquisitions Knowledge Exchange (MAKE). The main goal of the MAKE project is to imple,ent a knowledge management solution that will improve M&A activities at Siemens ICM. The necessity for KM in the field of M&A stems form the intention to collect and share knowledge about M&A processes and thereby multiply experiences. The more efficient handling of knowledge in this field should lead to the realization of synergies and practical use of the knowledge, and should also avoid knowledge loss.
The application of KM to the field of M&A is both promising and challenging. The scientific value for the KM field lied in the expansion of the networking concept (business communities) to a field where some of the usual prerequisites do not apply. The methodology of Business Communities must be developed further and adapted to the specific needs of the M&A context.
The MAKE project has already had a considerable impact on current M&A projects. However, the final success can only be evaluated once the Business Community is fully functional and self-sustaining, and the components of the developed concept have been fully implemented. It is important that at a defined future point, the applicability of the project’s approach to domains with similar furthers and shortcomings is further investigated.
I found a really cool article and model for situation handling. This article talks about how different decisions require different skills and different knowledge. This is a very interesting topic, especially since it will be useful in a real world setting. Here is a paragraph from the article and the link to the full article.
“ Important situations vary widely. Some are well known and require routine, even automatized knowledge. Others are complex and require extensive, at times abstract, knowledge and metaknowledge. In well-known routine cases, effective situation-handling involves many steps and requires different kinds of knowledge to support the primary tasks of Sensemaking, Decision-Making/Problem-Solving, Implementation and Monitoring. Similar steps are required for both simple and complex personal situation-handling cases and for organizational situation-handling.”
I found a list of different definitions for knowledge management. There are many different terms and phrases used to describe KM and because non of us seem to have a clear understanding of what KM actually is, I thought this would help. Below are a couple of the definitions given on the site that I liked and the link to the site itself.
- The process of systematically and actively managing and leveraging the stores of knowledge in an organization is called knowledge management.
- The way a company stores, organizes and accesses internal and external information. Narrower terms are: “Organizational Memory” and “Knowledge Transfer.”
- a term that can have multiple meanings. In business information technology knowledge management refers to an entire integrated system for accumulation, integration, manipulation, and access of data across multiple organizations, including such data as credit data, consumer profiles, market data …
I simply Googled “knowledge management” and found this website. KMWorld.com. This site is full of different things having to do with KM. They actually publish a magazine as well called KMWorld magazine. I found an article from the September issue of last year called “KMWorld Trend-Setting Products of 2007.” In it they list several different technologies, systems, and software that I have never heard of and I thought it would really interesting because I have no idea what this stuff is. The article gives the links to the home pages of each of the products, so if you are interested in one of them you can learn more. Here is the link to the article: http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=37332
