Knowledge Management: Benefits, Costs Associated, Use to Solve Problems

Knowledge Management (KM) is the structured running of a company’s knowledge assets to generate value and meet skillful and strategic conditions. It includes strategies, initiatives, procedures, and structures that support and nourish the refinement, storage, sharing, evaluation, and inception of knowledge. In the discussion below, its benefits, costs associated, how it can be used to solve problems, and sound recommendations of the Bobco Company are clearly outlined.

Benefits to the organization

It betters a company’s agility by having improved and quicker decision-making. It fastens their ability to solve issues. It fastens the gauge of innovation. It also leads to more sustained worker growth as well as development. It improves communication and nourishes business operations. There is also the sharing of expert prowess. This will, in turn, lead to better products and services rendered as well as enhance profitability as well develop better business plans. This will in the long run enable Bobco Company to increase their profits and acquire the skills to be able to reuse knowledge and skills. There will be heightened procedural productivity and staff efficiency. It will make Bobco Company make completely utilize their collective intellectual capital and it will aid them to be a step ahead of their competitors. The company will also be able to realize the market trends early enough hence having an added advantage against their competitors. KM will help Bobco Company to avoid repeated effort and also helps in avoiding the recurrence of mistakes done. It meets the company’s needs by providing techniques, templates, and tools as well as examples. It also provides hard-to-find expertise broadly available through community discussion forums, questioning the specialist systems, podcasts, recorded presentations, videos, and white papers. It also fastens customer delivery to customers leading to higher win rates, new customers, and add-on business. Capacitating a company to leverage size.

Costs associated

Knowledge Management incurs different costs that majorly include the personnel, material needed, equipment, systems, and other outside-originated costs; travel, seminars, office equipment, training, and value for supplies as well as other costs for the Knowledge Management program.

A prioritized list of initiatives

‘Before starting a knowledge management initiative, the company should learn more about its field. To start, read books, periodicals, websites, and blogs; attend training conferences; participate in professional communities to deepen one’s understanding of the field of knowledge management. This is practicing what a company encourages will allow it to learn from the experience of others, reuse the best ideas and avoid the usual problems’. The available resources include books, blogs, communities, consultants, conferences, thought leaders, tweeters, sites, and training. The list of initiatives to increase competitive advantage include a cost management initiative where the company has to offer to attract pricing to lure customers. It can also implement an innovative initiative where a company carries out things in a different and new manner. The company can also use the technology-based initiative where workers use up-to-date technology to better their products. It can also implement the adaptability competitive advantage by being open to change and adapting effectively this is all done by implementing technology-based knowledge where needed.

Knowledge Management Solutions

It solves the problem of customer relations by tracking the number of calls, questions issued and those answered as well as emails. Hence improving customer-company interaction that creates room for improvement. It also enhances customer satisfaction by availing customer satisfaction abilities. It also improves the customer feedback tools hence an organization can know areas to work on or what to avail.

Proposed Solutions

The Bobco (metals) company might be facing a number of challenges and in the long run want to get better results like increased orders by improved collaboration between sales, back-office duties, and services. Improved revenue by restoring a continuous run of innovations for the latest goods as well as new services. Heightening profits by distributing and reusing lessons acquired. The Knowledge Management solutions will implement this by laying down initiatives that motivate recompense collaboration, offering up-to-date ideas, and distributing and reusing lessons acquired. Furthermore, it will network by enabling multi-purpose collaboration. Thirdly, KM will codify by classifying and quoting particular lessons acquired and proposals. It will also analyze by selecting the best lessons acquired and proposals. It will also invent by developing up-to-date products and services and corporation and yielded ideas. It will provide augmentation by implementing professional systems for constructing new products, designing, and engineering. It will also disseminate by distributing lessons learned via email messages as well as an issue out blog entries on up-to-date ideas.

Sound Recommendations

Knowledge Management is the best course of action to provide the solutions stated above to the Bobco Company. It puts measures in place to motivate by offering users incentives and rewards to inspire their desired behaviors hence more customers and thus more profits. It will also motivate employees by enhancing communication, and training, establishing objectives that are placed in every performance plan and observing and giving feedback on the development of company goals. An example includes when the Bobco Company senior leaders carry out coffee talk meetings or regular meet-ups together with the employees who bring in systematized performance objectives, reusable information, monthly progress reviews, and awards for employees that set a good illustration for others to follow by sharing one’s knowledge.

It also puts specific measures to network as it enhances sharing of knowledge by connecting those who might be of assistance and also provides communication among organizational silos hence really good and up-to-date ideas are exchanged. This is implemented by constructing and enlarging social networks which in turn build treasured connections among various individuals as well as groups. Up-to-date social software and platforms sustain these networks by being able to add friends, tagging resources, and realize common interests. Carrying out conversations is a major way of developing trust, obtaining understanding, and coming up with amazing brand new ideas that aid the company. They also improve communication with the local community hence allowing members to acquire knowledge together this is done by team spaces, community spaces, and threaded discussions.

These solutions are justified and heavily recommended since KM works for hands-on with the organization (Bobco) clearly shown when they enhance the supply of knowledge with strategies like document repositories, project databases, and expertise inventories. The contribution side of knowledge management involves document collection and files combination, obtaining information and products of labor as well as keeping in storage these forms of comprehensive knowledge in repositories for instance, in Bobco Company when targeting to enhance supply, presentations and conversations must be recorded and collection of stories must be done for future reference and reuse of the content. The content obtained is exactly the raw materials that should be retrieved, analyzed, searched for, codified, disseminated, questioned, and reused.

The Knowledge Management Team also analyzes the supply of obtained knowledge hence implementing in useful ways. Before coming to a conclusion by using what has been obtained, the information is thoroughly speculated to verify its validity. Confidential information has to be scoured thoroughly and then ultimately secured. Analyzing obtained information may bring out patterns, tendencies, or trends which can be corrected, expounded on, and exploited. Processing data to bring out the vital parts can lead to knowing brand new ideas and acquiring skills on how to improve output. Knowledge is obtained in various forms like rules of thumb, lessons learned, and proven methods. Dave Snowden describes technologies that process large volumes of data with a view to weak signal detection and pattern recognition by naturalistic sense-making, derived from an understanding of the cognitive processes that underpin human decision-making as resourceful and able to nourish businesses. In the Bobco company, measures put in place to enhance analyzing of data include social network analysis maps that synchronize relationships and moves among organizations, people, or groups hence nourishing communities, realizing missing connections, and better links between groups. The method of Positive Deviance can also be implemented thus aiding in locating those vital practices, and behaviors and thus the ability to obtain improved ways used in tackling problems that occur more frequently than their adjacent competitors with similar access to equal resources.

After analyzing data, the KM codifies the collected knowledge to yield standard methodologies, repeatable processes, and standard methodologies. Data can be combined, content collected and processes joined to produce better business results. Codifying knowledge also includes finding the worth of intellectual property, and summing metadata to information kept away in repositories to ensure ease of availability when looking for them. It also involves tagging content making it easier for users to find collections, useful views, and connections. Bobco Company can put such measures in place by selecting important files as quality set aside knowledge, recognizing procedures and demonstrated practices as well as issuing a list of formal methods. After obtaining knowledge, one should clarify it hence making it effortlessly available to be reused hence providing it in a worthy state.

After analyzing and codifying the obtained knowledge, it is still not of much worth unless probable information users are notified that it is available. Hence its subsistence must be distributed both broadly to create awareness to all probable users and n to let aimed customers narrowly know of its existence. Communication vehicles are used in the distribution of knowledge. Email messages, newsletters, and websites are used to create understanding and awareness. Podcasts, blogs, and wikis that are available online can be looked up via feeds. Contents can be spread through association and collected via assembling, also including being able to create personalized sites to show specifically useful knowledge. Bobco Company can put out the following strategies to aid in dissemination. ‘This includes giving out custom-made notifications of new or altered content, weekly newsletters showing up-to-date submissions to repositories, and A KM section on the company’s home intranet handle having the top ten most-visited documents for that particular month. Podcasts featuring discussions with presumed leaders should be uploaded weekly. Con calls done weekly having conversations about acquired skills and email messages which should be shared are manifested practices and also better methods of improving awareness’.

Knowledge Management also focuses on demand which is on the opposite state of supply. This includes looking for users and information, obtaining the information, questioning as well as yielding queries. Demand-steered information takes the merit of codification, connections, analysis, and distribution. Thus encouraged by distribution and the ability to make it simple in getting the necessary resources. Bobco Company can put certain measures in place to entertain this. These include demand strategies such as prowess locators, search engines, and asking on the skilled processes. Particular tools and methods that permit demand for more knowledge consist of threaded discussions and e-learning structures.

‘The knowledge that we consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information in action, information focused on results. The results for disseminating, supplying, codifying, analyzing, networking, motivating and demanding information is paid off through action’. Hence KM program will aid the Bobco Company when including knowledge into scheduled workflow and using procedures and various processes to be done through codification. Distributing acquired skills enables it to be applied into newly arising situations. Reusing and using information, replying to requests, and answering questions asked are actions that are brought about by demand.

A particular type of action is invention. This includes developing brand new products as well as services and developing up-to-date ideas to examine and come up with innovative techniques and procedures that can aid transform a company, firm or even a country. Generating up-to-date roots concerning the demand of a consumer, restoring personal nourishment as well as that of the organization, and reconstructing the existing set of rules can aid a company to nourish, thrive, and undergo tough times.

Intelligence computing can cause the human thinking process to imitate how the brain works thus dealing with complex problems that contain ambiguity as well as being uncertain. Artificial Intelligence carries out functions comparable to acquiring skills and making decisions in humans. Intelligent personal assistants can recognize voice commands and queries, respond with information or take desired actions quickly, efficiently, and effectively. Using these approaches can enhance the capabilities of humans by augmenting their powers of observation, analysis, decision making, processing, and responding to other people and to routine challenging situations. Cognitive computer techniques for instance IBM Watson, intelligent assistant techniques that include Amazon Echo, Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri, and Google Now as well as the artificial intelligence techniques, for example, expert systems can be used to expand the capacity of people to comprehend, make a decision, act, acquire skills and avoid problems.

A Knowledge Management program contains various priorities that include a consulting firm, software company, and research, and development firm. In order for the Knowledge Management program to exist, one needs to create a three priority objective list consisting of challenges as well as opportunities that the KM program takes note of. Avail around answers to queries on technology, users, and procedures. Describe the Knowledge Management initiatives hence particular measures will be put in place to aid in the implementation of the program. Gain support from the senior executive using around ten commitments that will help the KM initiatives to be implemented. Come up with and implement an Implementation Plan that consists of program governance which includes individuals, procedures, complement section, desired ways of skill flow, and technology. People components needed are those with culture and values especially the community, knowledge manager, and surveys from people. ‘Knowledge Management surveys include; KM opportunities Survey, KM Resource Survey, KM Employee Satisfaction Survey, Community Managers Survey’. It also includes training, documentation, communications, goals and measurements, incentives, and rewards. Process components include methodologies, creation, capture, skills acquired, proven practices, content management, classification, merits as well as reporting and management of change.

In conclusion, Knowledge Management is an important tool for different companies. All their initiatives include recognizing vital knowledge as well as organizing, collecting, and storing the important knowledge and then distributing knowledge and information among users hence improving company businesses in the long run. They concentrate majorly on knowledge empowerment measures as well as sharing of information.