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Knowledge management system

Knowledge management system is defined as any kind of IT system that stores and
retrieves knowledge, improves collaboration, locates knowledge sources, mines repositories for
hidden knowledge, captures and uses knowledge, or in some other way enhances the KM
process.
James Robertson (2007) goes as far as to argue that organizations should not even think
in terms of knowledge management systems. He argues that KM, though enhanced by
technology, is not a technology discipline, and thinking in terms of knowledge management
systems leads to expectations of "silver bullet" solutions. Instead, the focus should be
determining the functionality of the IT systems that are required for the specific activities and
initiatives within the firm.
Too often, the effects of technology on the organization are not given enough thought
prior to the introduction of a new system. There are two sets of knowledge necessary for the
design and implementation of a knowledge management system (Newell et al., 2000):
1. The technical programming and design know-how
2. Organizational know-how based on the understanding of knowledge flows
Botha et al (2008) stress the importance of understanding what knowledge management
systems cannot do. They point to the fact that introducing knowledge sharing technologies does
not mean that experts will share knowledge - other initiatives have to be in place.
Akhavan et al (2005) identify several additional failure factors including:
1. lack of top management support,
2. organizational culture,
3. lack of a separate budget,
4. And resistance to change.

Building upon all this, and incorporating previously discussed elements, failure factors of
knowledge management systems are as follows:

Inadequate support: managerial and technical, during both implementation and use.

Expecting that the technology is a KM solution in itself.

Failure to understand exactly what the firm needs (whether technologically or otherwise).

Not understanding the specific function and limitation of each individual system.

Lack of organizational acceptance, and assuming that if you build it, they will come lack
of appropriate organizational culture.

Inadequate quality measures.

Lack of organizational/departmental/etc

Lack of understanding of knowledge dynamics and the inherent difficulty in


transferring tacit knowledge with IT based systems.

Challenges Faced
Solent Sports faces many challenges that prevent the effectiveness of its current
operations and ambitions in order to expend in future. These challenges are
1. Solent Sports implemented the accounting and distribution systems 15 years ago
and they didn't upgrade their system according to requirement of the era.
2. Point of sale systems is not fully integrated with the accounting system that
doesn't allow them to monitor the inventory levels.
3. The branch manager gathers data from different systems and prepares the reports
for management on monthly basis using existing templates of word processing
and spreadsheet software.
4. The branch managers and employees from the others branches are not aware of
the status of the others branches.
5. Training is one of the major challenges that Solent Sports is facing because the
sales persons must know the qualities of the products, attributes of the products
but also know how the people use their products in their regions.

Proposed Knowledge Management System


Following is proposed knowledge management system for Solent Sports

people

Knolwedge
Management
Acquire
create
Share
utilize

process

capture

knowledg
e

Knowledge
Technology

retrieve

Knowledge
strategy

KM
engineering

knowledge
culture

KM
process

Knowledge management is created by the following process

Acquire (obtaining knowledge from different sources)


Create
Share
Utilize
Capture
Retrieve

There are people in the organization and they share knowledge with them and the knowledge is
processed, stored and knowledge bank is created.

Knowledge strategy
Knowledge management becomes knowledge strategy when all these elements are considered
together as a core function managed by the firm's senior-most leaders to support the firm's
strategic goals.

Knowledge Culture
To create a knowledge sharing culture you need to encourage people to work together more
effectively, to collaborate and to share - ultimately to make organizational knowledge more
productive.

KM Process
KM involves processes that facilitate the application and development of organizational
knowledge and aims to create value and to increase/sustain competitive advantage for the
organization in 3 dimensions:
1. Strategic Dimension
2. Managerial Dimension
3. Operational Dimension

KM Engineering
Engineering Knowledge Management is an strategy to capture explicit and tacit design
knowledge for reuse in product development.

KM Technology
Technology has long been an enabler for Knowledge Management. Technology alone cannot
deliver successful knowledge management, but knowledge management in any but the smallest
organization will need technology.

Problems Faced:
The current problem in the organization is that reports which are the base for the decision
making are made on the authentic data and the sales point of the organization are not connected

with each other, so they are not aware of the challenges of the other sales point and neither they
can give any suggestion for the improvement. So the GDSS is the best system to adopt and
overcome the challenges.

Group Decision Support System


The Solent Sport should adopt the "Group Decision Support System" because while
organizations have massively adopted enterprise information systems to support business
processes, business meetings in which key decisions are made about products, services and
processes are usually held without much support of information systems. This is remarkable as
group decision support systems (GDSS) seem very fit for this purpose. They have existed for
decades and modern versions benefit of web-based technologies, enabling low cost any-place,
any time and device independent meeting support.
Group decision support system (GDSS) technology supports project collaboration through the
enhancement of digital communication with various tools and resources. These types of
programs are used to support customized projects requiring group work, input to a group and
various types of meeting protocols.
Following are the requirements of GDSS system

Data collection from different sources (sales data, inventory data, market research data
and etc.)

Data Formation and collation


a suitable database location and format built for decision support-based reporting and
analysis

Robust tools and applications to report, monitor and analyze data.

The Solent Sport should take following types of decision while adopting the GDSS
Decision Network: In this types the participants communicate with each other through network
or through a central database

Decision Room:
In this type the participants are located at one place i.e the decision room. The
purpose of this is to enhance participants interactions and decision making by computerized in
specific time.
Teleconferencing:
In this the groups are composed of members or sub groups that are geographically dispersed;
teleconferencing provides interactive connection between two or more decisions rooms.
The GDSS system could be integrated in the present infrastructure of the Solent Sports but the
company has to face certain challenges like the company has to update the system according to
requirement. The company has to increase the budget and hire the professionals of IT who are
responsible to run the system and maintain it.

An Expert System
The 2nd proposed system which the Solent Sports should adopt the Expert System. Because
"Expert systems can also handle uncertainty," Huntington notes "and this capability distinguishes
them from simple tree diagrams." For example, an expert system designed to help consumers
select a camcorder could come up with the best match based on user input, even when the
request was not a perfect match to any single product. It would not have to come to a dead-end
and report that no product was a fit, as a simple database search might. That produces a much
better emulation of the interaction that would occur with a human salesperson. Expert systems
can, however, call up information from databases, which allow new information such as prices
changes to be reflected in the decision without changing the rules.
An Expert System can be defined as
"Expert system is an ideal way to convert both tacit and explicit knowledge into a form that is
available to many users, a key process in knowledge management."
The implementation of expert systems involves systematic and well-established procedures for
representing the knowledge of experts, a process referred to as knowledge engineering. Yet
knowledge management efforts often struggle with eliciting and documenting tacit knowledge.

At the same time, data warehouses, a mainstay of knowledge management, are a valuable source
of information that may not always be used effectively in expert systems.
Currently the information is not being collected in effective manner and resources are not being
used efficiently. The system is not up to date according to market requirement.

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