Analysis of Knowledge Management Systems at Equals

In these days hundred numbers of vendors have incorporated the concept or idea of portal in their business organization. The specific organization that has been chosen for critically analyzing the benefits and impact of Knowledge Management approach is Woolworths Limited. This report depicts the current Knowledge Management system captured by Woolworths Limited. The areas of Woolworths Limited with insufficient infrastructure and gaps are also identified and analyzed in this report. Currently available KM and the set of knowledge uptake by the employee of Woolworths Limited are also demonstrated in this report.

Apart from this, the issues or challenges associated to Woolworths KM model are also elaborated in the consciousness for portal is seems to have created light of Knowledge Management (KM) risks for the beginning of time (Patil and Kant 2014). In order to facilitate growth as well as increasing internet usefulness Yahoo has succeeded in creating structures. Not only this but also yahoo and some other have made structural provision, layout and document navigation. Along with searchable directories those are established for web sites and some other categorized topics always a standardized format is very much crucial.

2. Analysis of Woolworths Limited’s KM system

Currently the company has developed a new business strategy in terms of intranet design and development. In order to create knowledge in Woolworths Limited the impact of information is very effective. According to Mariano and Awazu (2017) the enterprise portal must contain all official up to date and corporate information and theses information should have on time and secured access ability (Wang and Yang 2016). The knowledge portals of Woolworths Limited support the role of the knowledge workers and also combines all external and internal information that are suitable for the enterprise.

The users always want flexible workplace portal where which is capable to offer integrated access form to the resources need by the users.  Woolworths Limited has mentioned all related content and identified that growth is the primary element for the community. It helps to place high values over the usage of the community portal (Natek and Zwilling 2014). It helps the company to retrieve and insert all necessary data in the portal whenever required. Moreover, the portal used by Woolworths is a community portal. Different success factors are available that helps to reach the knowledge management factors.  In order to analyze the current knowledge management system the SECI model needs to be considered (Nonaka et al. 2014). The discussion is done in the below section.

2.1 Socialization

Socialization procedure is used for converting any implicit knowledge to a new implicit knowledge set by making professional social interaction. People associated to this organization are always intended to interact with different employees and consumers of the organization to understand the goal and objectives (Wang and Yang 2016). Though, the communication approach utilizes by the company is extremely formal and thus most of the times the employees do not feel free to share their ideas with others. The decision making process used by the company is also not integrated and therefore, sometime the knowledge shared with little coordination lack.

Challenges at Equals

2.2 Externalization

In this process the complicated knowledge converted into clear knowledge by using different codifying approaches (García-Holgado et al. 2015). The ideas and thoughts of all the associates are considered individually through either documentation or imagination to decide the final process. Though, the team management process of Woolworths Limited is extremely professional and as a result the problems of the employees are always resolved sooner (Sabri 2014). However, the system security is another positive approach that helps to maintain the application security and nine of the external users are allowed to access any data without permission. 

2.3 Combination

Woolworths Limited has successfully combined all necessary components together to systemize the processes. All explicit knowledge will be integrated and the overall complexity will be reduced. The executive board members are allowed to reformulate the terms and policies (Wu et al. 2016). The database, network and the portals are needed to be combined properly to make sure that all the operations are operating accurately. Proper combination of the elements and functional components the knowledge management system of the company will be improved.

2.4 Internalization 

The company also uses professional processes which help to convert the clear knowledge into implicit knowledge. Both annual reports and hard written reports are available through which awareness can be generated (Corones and Davis 2017). Though, the company is focused on internationalization but still they are not aware about personal development of the individual employees.

3. Challenges at Woolworths Limited

After analyzing the current operational and functional activities of the company it has been found that the company is facing certain challenges and those are as follows:

• Slowing customer cycle (Wu et al. 2017)
• Issues with the product cost
• Decreasing rate of return on Woolworths a de-rating
• HR facility issues
• Very high rated competitive pressure
• Threats from the new similar type of entrants
• Diversification for the new products
• Lack of security concern in the user portal

4. Recommendations

4.1 Coordination and measurement

After analyzing all coordination and measurement related issues facing by Woolworths Limited it is found that those are required to be resolved to avoid further errors. The recommendation lists offered are as follows:

Training and development: The Company needs to arrange professional individual training and development program to make them much aware of the company needs and objectives. On job training will help the members to become more flexible and engaged to their job roles.

Encryption technology implementation: In order to increase the overall security of the company portal the associate technical experts are required to incorporate professional encryption technology to the system. This security will prevent the unwanted users to access information from the portal without permission.

Open communication: Due to communication gap sometimes the employees become unable to share their point of views with the rest of the employees. Therefore the policy of Woolworths Limited needs to be revised with the implementation of open communication. It will help the employees to share their creativity and ideas with both the higher authority and coordinators. It will help to establish coordination among the members.

4.2 Organizational structure

As the socialization and externalization processes used by the company is little limited therefore, it is crucial for the company to include professional multi disciplinary approaches to make sure that all the associates are contributing the best from their end. It is the responsibility of the company higher authority to invest a little much capital to improve the search functionalities. After that the content of the products and services offered by the company needs to be well categorized. In order to create the content of the company offerings all the employees should be encouraged professionally. A community of practice development will provide a friendly environment to the company associates.

5. Conclusion

From the overall discussion it can be concluded that, in order to gain measurable success and long term sustainability from sufficient services and products it is mandatory for the company to check the current KM model and they ways through which this can be improved. The portals are all regarded by the organizations through access route of Knowledge Management (KM). Before implementing the portal it has to be planned accurately so that all the users can successfully access needful information from the portal.

After determining the business requirements all the sources of information should be identified accordingly. After the end of the analysis the business impact should be analyzed and even if any changes are found to be incorporated then possible changes need to be implemented. The blueprint of the organization that should be implemented for the consumers and employee must cover all the single elements and components. Based on challenges proper recommendations are also developed  in this report.

References

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Wu, Y.W., Lin, Y.A., Wen, M.H., Perng, Y.H. and Hsu, I.T., 2016. Design, analysis and user acceptance of architectural design education in learning system based on knowledge management theory. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science &