LEARNING FOR "WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A B2B AND B2C?"

In this piece of learning, we'll continue our investigation of cleverness in business, and look at the concepts of business-to-business and business-to-consumer models of digital enterprise. We'll do this by:

  • Looking at the idea of a knowledge management framework
  • Investigating some of the technologies involved in knowledge management
  • Looking at the communication of knowledge between B2B and B2C organisations, and within organisations
  • Exploring how we can use the communication of knowledge to gain a competitive advantage

Activities and the Knowledge Management Framework

This is quite a useful framework to show how knowledge could be managed within an organisation. There are several components within the framework (acting as a series of inter-linked activities) that have specific roles, and these are identification, acquisition, development, sharing, utilisation and retention.

Knowledge Identification

This represents the effort of the enterprise to trace data, information, knowledge, and know-how that exists inside the organisation and outside in the organisation's environment.

Knowledge Acquisition

This activity represents the effort of the enterprise to obtain knowledge through business experiences (with stakeholders), or by purchasing knowledge and skills from outside sources.

Knowledge Development

This activity represents the effort by the enterprise to improve itself in a variety of ways through the use of knowledge within the business.

Knowledge Sharing

This activity represents the effort by the enterprise to distribute knowledge through the business to those who need to use it to make decisions within business processes.

Knowledge Utilisation

This activity represents the effort by the enterprise to ensure that all knowledge contained within the organisation is usable and used.

Knowledge Retention

This activity represents the effort by the enterprise to choose, configure, keep and revise knowledge as time goes on, particularly where tacit knowledge exits in people's heads and they move on from the business.

These activities do not take place in isolation; they are in fact strongly linked to each other. Most importantly they operate within the needs to the organisation, and are bound to the enterprise corporate strategy. An important issue to be aware of is the constant process of evaluation and re-examination that takes place across the whole framework in time with the assessment and review of the business strategy.

  • Now do Task 1 from the Tasks Page

Technologies involved in Knowledge Management for the business

In order to fully explore the tools involved in knowledge management, you would need to go on a separate and very long course in its own right. We will discuss very briefly some of the common tools in use, but the tools break down into three groups: corporate information tools, networking technology and programming concepts.

Corporate information tools in current use include such examples as expert systems (and associated "intelligent" technology), decision support systems (for systematic and repeated decision taking where clear policies on decisions exist), management information systems for the easy communication of corporate information through the different units within an organisation and the tools associated with data mining and data warehousing of customer information.

Networking technologies in current use include such as examples as local area networks, wide area networks for communicating across geographical and organisational boundaries and private networks (such as VPN) for secure sharing of information. These technologies have now been consumed by the whole nature of the Internet, and the enterprise will use networking technology concepts such as groupware, Intranets and Extranets.

Programming concepts in current use include such examples as the standards of HTML, XML and Java. In addition, the concept of object-oriented design and programming has increased the speed at which applications can be designed and deployed.

The whole point of these technologies is to increase the quality, quantity and speed of communication.

The Models of e-enterprise and the Impact on Communication

You should remember this model from "What is digital enterprise?".

We are interested in the notions of B2B and B2C - where a business is doing the selling.

In B2C communication, the success of the communication is dependent on the quality of the information systems used by the enterprise, the availability of the web site, and the quality of its web site. This communication can be further enhanced through the use of an enterprise portal.

In B2B communication, success revolves around the collaboration, accumulation, and knowledge-exchange and information transformation between organisations. Partners within a B2B sphere have to create a genuine community of partners. Experience in the B2B world show that electronic marketplaces for specific industries or market sectors help promote the sale and distribution of goods and services between partners.

In essence, B2C communication has a focus on intra-organisational communication just within the business, whilst B2B has all of that AND a focus on communication with other businesses

  • Now do Task 2 from the Tasks Page

Whether an organisation is B2B or B2C focussed, the fundamental principle behind communication is the same - success comes from how quickly an enterprise can identify, acquire, develop, share, utilise and retain enormous quantities of information across physical, geographic and temporal boundaries. An inter-organisational communication infrastructure is merely an extension of an intra-organisational infrastructure.

Using the Communication of Knowledge to gain Competitive Advantage

If you haven't done any business studies in the past, it's worth referring to this web site to have a quick read about this model of thinking, which comes from Michael Porter:

http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/porter.shtml

In electronic bnusiness terms, we can consider the use of the following strategies to gain competitive advantage, and these too follow some of Porter's principles.

An interesting point to note: Business success does not appear to drive around being the cheapest supplier for the broad spectrum of a whole marketplace (most electronic businesses are not the cheapest supplier of goods and services and probably don't have the lowest costs). Why do you suppose that might be?

An electronic business could adopt a "focus" strategy, zooming in a specific strength that it has in servicing a particular market segment or market need. Alternatively, an electronic business may concentrate on an aspect of product development desired by its customers and not dealt with by rivals. The third aspect is to develop great cohesion and coupling with business partners and customers, removing the power of suppliers and customers