Question

Senior management has started reading about knowledge management and has asked you to explore opportunities for improving knowledge management at Dirt Bikes. Write a report answering the following questions.

What are the most important knowledge assets at Dirt Bikes? What functions and employee positions are responsible for creating, distributing, and using these knowledge assets? Are all of these assets explicit knowledge?

What knowledge outside the organization is required by the company?

How could the following employee groups benefit from knowledge management: designers and engineers, product development specialists, marketing specialists, sales department staff and representatives, managers

Describe the kinds of knowledge management systems that would be most valuable for each of these groups. What information would each of these systems provide?

Use the Web to research how the company could make better use of the Internet for knowledge management. What Internet information resources (specific Web sites or Usenet groups) would be most useful to Dirt Bikes?

Describe an enterprise portal for one of the employee groups listed in question 3. To which knowledge resources would it link? What would the home page of this portal look like?

Answer 1

1. The most important assets at Dirt Bikes are knowledge, explicit knowledge (documented) and tacit knowledge (in human mind) which is used in different department such as customers relations management, engineering designs, production development, sales and marketing processes. Knowledge is the concepts, experience and insight which provide a structure for creating, evaluating and using information. Explicit knowledge refers documented knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the ability and experience of company’s members that is not officially recorded. All of these assets aren’t explicit, but some are tacit knowledge. Tacit is a very important part of Dirt Bike’s business. For example, engineers can draft their designs, and our customer and sales staff can develop standard operation procedures documents. Engineers will keep on developing new ideas, and many techniques for working with people, techniques which will be utilized by customer support representatives and sales staff can’t be recorded in different traditional fashion, the “tricks of the trade” as they might be known as.

2. Knowledge outside the organization is not only required increase productivity as well as it is required to even be more functional. It is also required to know about customer’s demand, choice and satisfaction. Since Dirt Bike uses outside engine manufacturers, it should be knowledgeable about what engine products and developments are being developed at our engine suppliers. Marketing staff can more use outside media to increase its knowledge of current trends. Company requires knowledge on economic trends; this may extend from rates of interest for borrowing money for growth, to make sure sufficient compensation and advantages for employees.

3. Knowledge management systems can provide benefits to all the functional areas of Dirt Bikes such as designers and engineers, product development specialists, marketing specialists, sales department staff and representatives, managers.

Designers, engineers and product development specialist can use Knowledge Work Systems to help with transforming their ideas into real products. They could use computer helped design to make a new motorcycle structure to work with a new motor from engine supplier.

Marketing and sales department may use Intelligent Techniques and Structured Knowledge Systems to examine designs in their functional areas. Marketing department may use internal and external information to create focused on advertising campaigns depending on trends removed from information examination. Sales department can break down yearly deals figures to decide periods when additional incentives or particular financing ideas might be necessary.

Managers can use Enterprise Knowledge Management System. This technique would contain all the information as possible which may be documented and organized, from raw data to data studies. This permits managers to make the most knowledgeable decisions possible.

4. Knowledge management is the group of processes developed within an organization to make, collect, store and share and apply the business’s knowledge. Knowledge management permits organizational learning. Knowledge management increases the ability of the business to study from its environment and to include knowledge into its business process. Knowledge management can advantage all employee groups by providing new designs in corporate data form the business’s orders to find new structures and form new behavior designs required to build and improve the profits on return in knowledge management.

5. Utilizing the internet for knowledge management, Dirt Bikes will get large options for knowledge procurement. It could secure information for marketing purposes through website and third party advertising services. Design department can link into knowledge networks of overseas engine suppliers to work through design issues. The business as an entire will benefit from using dirt bike fan sites, message and discussion boards because the complete business requires to be in touch with the current trends in the market and the requires and wants of the customer. I think that motorcycle-usa.com would be most useful to Dirt Bikes because it gives all the latest news and reviews of the latest bikes.

6. Enterprise Portal is a new tool that Dirt Bikes can use to provide knowledge resources to employee groups to help them in completing their objectives. For example, Portals for sales and marketing would concentrate on communication and presentation tools, usage of company’s customer and sales information, and usage of important external sources of market and information research tools. It would need a secure login to protect sensitive financial data. The homepage would have always updated news section from both the dirt bike and financial worlds, and links to all of the information mentioned recently.