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Markets, customers, technology and competition are continually changing

because knowledge gets stale fast. Is the knowledge management framework able to

handle change? Then, one situation for an example; Sarah is a materials expert at one

of product design firm. To make finding the materials easier, she has building a master

library of samples linked to a database that explains their properties and manufacturing

processes.

Why Sarah doing it? Why she is managing knowledge? Of course, she is

making the knowledge easier for others at workplace to learn and get the benefits. That

is what today¶s managers need to do with the organization¶s knowledge resources. They

make it easy for employees to communicate and share their knowledge so they can

learn from each other ways to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently.

According to Wikipedia, knowledge management comprises a range of strategies

and practices used in an organization or workplace to identify, create, represent,

distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. It is also an established

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discipline since 1991 which includes courses taught in the fields of business

administration, information systems, management and library and information sciences.

Knowledge management efforts typically focus on organizational objectives such as

improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons

learned, integration and continuous improvement of the organization.1

From the definition above, why we needs for managing knowledge at workplace?

Some reasons are knowledge will enable companies to compete for customers. The

Economist Intelligent Unit 2005 who had conducted a study to know how managing

knowledge for competitive advantage to various companies mentioned that knowledge

about customers, their preferences and their behavior is the overwhelming focus for

improving the quality of information in large organizations over the next three years.

Understanding who knows what, and how people use different types of information as

part of their work is just important a part of good knowledge management as having the

latest business intelligence technology. Therefore, companies like Tesco have

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demonstrated how customer analytics can support initiatives to increase customer

loyalty and expand market share in order to compete with their competitors.2

Other example, a study had been conducted to Schlumberger, a global oil

industry services supplier with more than 52,000 staff working in 80 countries.3 The

study concluded that in order to stay competitive, better systems for capturing

knowledge is needed to lead higher productivity, better decision making and improved

service quality for the customer. Then, the strategy focused on providing a means to

capture the lessons learned during service delivery, a way to store and retrieve local

and frequently needed reference information, and to ensure that the firm retains past

knowledge of operations.

There is no shortage of information in today¶s organizations. Technologies

generate huge and numerous of information but we are still starving for knowledge.

Why this is happened? It is a same question with why do executives find so difficult to

get the information they need? All the answers reflect to the knowledge management.

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The majority of executives in the survey believe that information is trapped in silos in the

organizations and cannot be shared. The other reasons are the ignorance of what

knowledge already exists within the organizations or where to find it is also a serious

problem according to the survey . Simply providing access to an open of information is

not enough, however. Executives need knowledge delivered in a form they can quickly

interpret and act on. One way organizations can do this is to build online information

databases that employees can access4.

For example, William Wringley Jr. Co launched an interactive Web Site that

allows sales agents can question company experts about products or search an online

knowledge bank.5 In its first year, Wringley estimates that the site cut research time of

the sales force by 15,000 hours, making sales people more efficient and effective. This

is one example that shows how managers can use communication tools to manage this

valuable organizational resource called knowledge.

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Then, the desire to build deeper customer relationship has consistently emerged

as the top priority for majority of firms.6 They believe that the ability to understand their

customer needs, and to predict changes in the behavior, could give them an advantage

over their competitor. Therefore, they must learn how to analyze this information to

identify what drives customer behavior. Tesco for example, uses information from its

club card loyalty card to understanding purchasing behavior, enabling promotion to be

planned and targeted to meet customer requirements. This is another way for an

organization to managing their knowledge.

In addition to online information databases for sharing knowledge, some

knowledge management experts suggest that organizations create communities of

practice, which are µgroup of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a

passion about a topic and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in that area by

interacting on an ongoing basis7. The keys to make such communities work are that

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group must actually meet some fashion on regular basis and also use its information

exchanges to improve in some way.

For example, in Germany it is common apprentice engineers and welders, a

system in which workers communicate their past experiences to the next generation.8

To make these communities of practice work, it¶s important to maintain strong human

interactions through communications; interactive web site; email; video conferencing are

essential tools.

Many of IT systems firms bought to create better information flows by generating

more data than users can digest and make it easier for people to find information of real

relevance or important. Thus, it is required for us to define clearly our information

requirements and then pick the technology that will best support these needs.

The question here is how IT help improve the relevance and value of information

for managers? Nowadays, mobile users has been a key IT issue and this will continue

to be a major goal for many firms. For managers recent times, even having access to

information on move is considered important but having knowledge management and

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business intelligent solutions assume much greater important than mobile technologies

in the survey 9.

While question in the survey ³ What are the main obstacles to achieve an

efficient flow and use of knowledge within your organization?´ indicated 50% from the

respondents claim the internal barriers to the cross department sharing of information

and knowledge is on one of the obstacles.10 To solve this problem, a knowledge-

management team can play a useful role in facilitating the exchange of information

between different departments. Some firms have gone further, appointing a dedicated

head of knowledge management on the executive team.

As conclusion, the ability to capture and managing knowledge has become

critical for firms as they seek to adapt changes in the business environment. Whether it

be learning from past success and failures, identifying opportunities to improve

customer profitability, or simply enabling teams to become more productive, knowledge

management lies at the heart of well managed company.

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pike others intangibles asset, knowledge is a tricky and unseen thing to manage.

But there plenty of examples that prove knowledge can well managed at workplace with

a vary approaches of knowledge management. The ability to manage the knowledge

can make the companies translate their information assets into real value for the

business.

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1. Robbins, S.P and Coulter,M.2009. à

, 10th Ed. New Jersey: Prentice

Hall International.

2. Zafir,Hizam and Fazilah.2009. 



 . Singapore: Cengage

pearning Asia Pte ptd.

3. http://graphics.eiu.com/files/ad_pdfs/Tata_KnowHow_WP.pdf

4. http:// www.adb.org/.../knowledge.../managing-knowledge-workers.pdf

5. httpd en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management

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