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Supporting Knowledge Work

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Frito Lay Case

What business issues was Frito-Lay looking to solve with a knowledge portal? What kinds of issues do you think had to be overcome in order to make this system work? What did this portal do what were its functions? Who benefited from this Information System, and how?

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Objectives
A model for managing knowledge Issues in knowledge management Wikis for knowledge management

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Companies Want to Manage Knowledge

Knowledge: expertise, skills, deep understanding of a subject Knowledge cannot be controlled or engineered, but can be leveraged through organizational processes, culture and technology Two states of knowledge

Tacit
> Exists within a persons mind and is private and unique to each person

Explicit
> Articulated, codified and made public

INFO420: Managing Information Technology

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A Model For Managing Knowledge

Tacit

Explicit

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Building Human Capital

Human Capital: A form of intellectual capital that consists of

Knowledge, skills and innovativeness of employees

Components: 1. Knowledge creation and capture

Getting people together to create new knowledge Making tacit knowledge explicit

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Building Human Capital contd

2.

Knowledge Absorption and Reuse

Getting people to internalize the knowledge (information) where it can be enhanced and reused and acted on Identifying source of organizational memory Yellow pages for subject matter experts
> Social networks perspective

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Building Structural Capital

Intellectual capital embedded in hardware, software, databases, organizational structure, processes, patents and trademarks

Knowledge that has been codified into tangible company asset Amex: Authorizers assistant Creating metadata indexes for knowledge repositories (documents, databases) Need to be able to search for and retrieve any type of information (Frito Lay)

1. Knowledge organization and categorization

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Building Structural Capital contd

2. Knowledge Distribution and Access

Pushing knowledge out to users and accommodating users who pull information to themselves Push: targeted news feeds based on subscriptions Pull: Search engines. Across many different types of information data, documents, web pages, etc.

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Building Customer Capital

Customer capital is the strength of a companys franchise (relationship) with its customers Components of customer capital

Brand capital
> Familiarity with company and its products and services

Value capital
> Value customers place on companys product and services as a function of price and quality

Retention capital
> Loyalty (repeat customer)

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The Cultural Side of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management: Implementing new technology yes, but we must also change organizational culture (behavior)! People generally are motivated by self-interest how do we create a culture that rewards knowledge sharing (vs. hoarding)? Issues to overcome:

whisteblower syndrome Gatekeepers Experts step up Benefits of formal KM projects are intangible

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Wikis
A simple open source for online knowledge repository

Collaborative software that allows Web pages to be created and edited using a Web browser
> Facilitates group work (collaboration) without face-to-face is the key feature of a wiki

Knowledge creation based on trust and code of ethics Low cost of acquisition (OSS) and use (built for dummies) Reasonable level of functionality, security and durability Self-organization and management of corporate knowledge (Web documents)

Wiki for business use

INFO420: Managing Information Technology