Currently, we are living in an ultra-competitive environment changing every minute. To remain in competition people and organizations must change. The key to change and growth is awareness, sharing ideas and thinking innovative ways for getting ahead of the competition. Survival and success depend completely on the ability of an organization to adjust to the dynamics of the business environment.
What is Knowledge Management (KM)
Knowledge management can be defined simply as doing what is required to make the most of knowledge resources. In general, knowledge management focuses on organizing and making available important knowledge, wherever and whenever the need arises. In some way, KM is about the survival of an organization in today’s world of competition which is increasing rapidly in complexity and uncertainty every day. What worked yesterday may or may not work tomorrow. The focus is on “doing the right things” instead of “doing things right”.
Why Knowledge Management
Today’s customers are more educated and demanding. They provide feedback to manufacturers regarding the design of products and services from a consumer perspective. This has initiated new and radical changes in the business world. Today’s 4G internet services facilitated fast and timely sharing of knowledge. With the help of KM, a company can leverage and utilize most of its intellectual assets. The company can resolve customer’s queries quickly, create new markets, developing new products in a shorter time span and dominating emergent technologies.
Another benefit of KM is the intangible return on knowledge exchange rather than hoarding knowledge. Often times, employees start one part of the work from “scratch” on a project because the knowledge required elsewhere but is unknown to them.
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If you check around all performing business organizations are successful only because they are capturing knowledge and using it. For example, online shopping sites capturing data of their sales transactions to find out which product is in demand, which product is getting purchased in combination, pattern in purchasing of customers and on the basis of it making certain decision as how to place various products (e.g. place shaving blade and shaving cream next to each other), pricing of various products, what to offer, etc.
Factors Triggering Interest
- The pace of change has accelerated dramatically during the past decade.
- Globalization and geographic dispersion changed the organization’s scope.
- Downsizing and reengineering resulted in staff attrition and knowledge drain.
- Networking and data networking make sharing knowledge easier and faster.
- The increasing dominance of knowledge as a basis for improving efficiency and effectiveness triggered many companies to find the means for utilizing the knowledge they have gained from previous experience.
With the expected depletion of highly knowledgeable workers, KM is going to play an important role in the near future. For organizations to be successful, it will be essential for them to capture and preserve the knowledge acquired by senior employees so that new entrants can utilize it immediately and improve upon it to run the business more smoothly and more efficiently.
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