HOW ORGANISATION USE IT FACTORS TO SUPPORT KMS?

The growing importance of knowledge as a critical business resource has forced
Management to examine the knowledge underlying their businesses, giving rise to
Knowledge management systems. the advent of the information technology
has made them easier to acquire, store, or distribute knowledge than ever before,
Many organizations are using IT to make possible sharing and integration part of knowledge.But considering the difficulty of KM systems and the variety of IT solutions available On the market, it’s difficult for the managers to decide what type of IT solutions to deploy in support of their KM systems.

There are two basic approaches to KM for which IT can provide support codification and Personalization (Hansen et al. 1999).codification approach is more explicit one in this Structured knowledge is codified and stored in knowledge bases. The main role of IT here Is to help people share knowledge through common storage so as to achieve economic Reuse of knowledge. An example of such IT tools is electronic knowledge repositories in other hand personalization approach is more tacit one where unstructured knowledge is shared largely through direct personal communication. The main role of IT here is to help people locate each other and communicate so as to achieve complex knowledge transfer. Examples of such IT tools are knowledge expert directories and video-conferencing tools.Both these KM approaches are very important to understanding the role of IT to support KM systems.

Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Siemens Infine on Technologies, and Xerox are some of the examples of organizations which used IT to support their knowledge management systems. These organizations produce high technology products (computing hardware and software). They are in rapidly changing environments where rate of improvement and speed of new product development is crucial. To perform well, technical knowledge must be transferred to product development teams in a timely manner. In the other hand at the time of launching products, knowledge needed by sales teams should be distributed fastly to gain competitive advantage.

Knowledge shared during the creation of high technology products is typically too tacit to be codified. The effort needed to codify the knowledge and answer each possible query May be substantial (Hansen et al. 1999). Hence, it is more effective to share knowledge through the personalization approach. Towards this direction, Siemens Infineon Technologies Makes use of telephone, electronic mails, and video-conferencing tools for knowledge sharing (Davenport and Probst 2000). At Hewlett Packard, physical transfer of people Across geographical locations facilitates such knowledge exchange (Hansen et al. 1999).

The main role of IT is to provide yellow pages that map topics with experts. Examples of Such IT include Connex in Hewlett Packard and Knowledge Map in Siemens Infineon Technologies. Employees in both organizations use such systems to locate colleagues with relevant expertise on specific problems and then utilize more personal forms of communication to gain knowledge from the experts.

In other hand, knowledge needed by sales teams (e.g., market characteristics, product
capabilities, and service tips) can be more readily codified and thereby cost effectively distributed to sales teams. For example, Hewlett Packard uses its Electronic Sales Partners as a Knowledge base of technical product details, sales and marketing tactics, and customer account history for its sales force (Teigland et al. 2000). Xerox deploys the Eureka knowledge repository to provide its service engineers with access to technical tips for servicing photocopier machines (Hickins 1999). In Microsoft, the Internal Technical Education knowledge repository (comprising online learning, live class schedules, and white papers) provides knowledge and training to its field sales force (Clayton and Foster 2000).

Organizations are found to have distinct patterns in their approaches to KM, It is possible that organization could use the personalization and codification approaches to KM, to Varying extents, depending on task characteristics or processes supported.

p.s:it's just a rough draft.
REFERENCES:
Hansen, M.T, Nohria, N. and Tierney, T. (1999). “What's Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge?” ,Harvard Business Review ,vol, 77,no. 2,pp. 106-116.
Davenport, T.H. and Probst, G. (2000). Knowledge Management Case Book: Siemens Best Practices. Publicis MCD, Erlangen.
Teigland, R., Fey, C.F. and Birkinshaw, J. (2000). “Knowledge Dissemination in Global R&D Operations: An Empirical Study of Multinationals in the High Technology Electronics Industry”, Management International Review, vol. 40,no. 1,pp, 49-77.
Hickins, M. (1999). “Xerox Shares its Knowledge.” Management Review ,vol. 88,no. 8,pp. 40-45.
Clayton, S. and Foster, P. (2000). “Real World Knowledge Sharing”, Knowledge
Management ,vol. 4,no. 2,pp. 26-28.