The data that is raw and which has been verified to be exact and on time, is detailed and prearranged for a purpose, that gives it meaning and relevance, which leads to help improve in understanding and reduce in ambiguity. The worth of information lies on it affects on outcome, decision and behavior.
"Information Management describes the resources by which an organisation resourcefully plans, accumulates, systematizes, uses, controls, distributes and disposes of its information, and through which it ensures that the value of that information is identified and exploited to the fullest extent."(Barbara Laffan).
Properly managed information provides opportunity an organization to be more competitive in the market and help them out to optimize different function such as marketing, finance, accounting, legal, interorganizational relations and international relations. It acts an umbrella for an organization for bringing together structured, unstructured and semi- structured data.
Information management is a next logical step from using knowledge management tools. (Mike) Davis (a senior analyst with ovum).
Intense research has been taken in the early 90's on innovative firms and the way their use of knowledge. From these researches various imminent fact have emerged stressing the key role of competences and the absorptive capacities of firms, or the significance of arrangement of knowledge practices and their transformation in player system. From these researches it has been clearly verified that knowledge is not of a consistent nature but is basically a diverse resource that must be esteemed in its different appearance.
Knowledge management does not have any universal definition because of its criticality but based on vast researches and theories the knowledge management can be concluded as the path that facilitates individuals, teams and entire organizations to jointly and carefully creates, share and apply knowledge, enable them to achieve their objectives or goals very effectively and efficiently, and help them to understand the different cultural environment and the work force involved within the organization that will help in proper understanding of organizations needs. Properly managed knowledge leads the organization to very competitive in market.
In knowledge management knowledge transfer is critical stage, transferring of knowledge is the central to knowledge management between individuals and organizations. Knowledge is created as it is converted form tacit to explicit and back to tacit forms Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). When doing something tacit knowledge is derived that is private and personal where as explicit knowledge is driven from documents and other publicly transmissible forms.
Transferring of knowledge from one brain to another is literally knowledge transfer. This doesn't mean that the transfer of knowledge has to be in exactly the same structure. In order to have better understanding of transfer the concept of growing rather than transfer is used. The word transfer used seems to imply that all the knowledge is passed from one person to another like passing a football. The process of knowledge transfer requires certain amount of frame work within the transferee before it begin to transfer. This frame work is sum of knowledge learned by transferee right from his childhood that supports the knowledge transfer process itself as well as the actual structure being moved. The total success of knowledge transfer is dependent on largely on this frame work.
Approaches:
There are certain approaches for information and knowledge management to practice in order to assist in strategic and competitive advantage of organizations.
Technology-oriented:
Information management
The main purpose of information management is to make sure that right kind of information should available at the right time and at the right place. For information management, driven from technology, the primary means is computer based information systems. From technology oriented information management point of view it stresses the significance of information technologies. This is proven by the high extent of IT integration, the complication of its application, and its strong outcome for an organization.
Within it, the following aspects can be distinguished:
Data management,
IT management, and
Strategic use of IT.
Data Management:
Data management can be defined as manage the data that is concern with the planning, provision, and storage of data that involve both for computer personals and end users (Schulte 1987). Data management has a goal to get the most out of the value, usability, and quality of the data resource in an organization (Hoven 1995).
IT management:
IT management is defined as the management of hardware and software that must also included the IT personnel's. The stress here is on the technological portion of electronic data processing. (English 1996; Heinrich 2002; Henderson 2002; Schware 1988).
Strategic use of IT:
Information technology when used as a strategic resource has attracted more attention. There are number of articles, publication are on this topic and these publication explore the question whether and to what level IT can contribute to the goals or objective of an organization (Krueger and Pfeiffer 1998; McFarlan 1984; Porter and Miller 1985). With the assessment of information processing in an organisation a strategic orientation should go along. In order to have a better coordination of information processing with the corporate objective or goal there should be a creation of new post at strategic management level (synmott 1987).
IT companies that play the role in strategy focus on three factors.
Manage IT operations efficiently across the entire business network.
With new technology and services support consistently to business innovation.
Act in response quickly to change.
Knowledge Management:
Most of the focus is extremely on unstructured data in the IT driven approaches and on various application areas of technology (Prusak and Davenport1998) and they are characteristically fall into the category of knowledge database (e.g. advices from the knowledgeable person), indexes and map routes for knowledge (e.g. yellow pages) also network and communication tools for knowledge (e.g. chatting, collaborative software) (Corral 1998).
From the above it is clear that knowledge management is mostly an organizational constructive science (ponzi 2002). However it must be noted here that knowledge management has also got strong links with the business strategy (Broadbnet 1998).
There are two main approaches in knowledge management: Human and system oriented. In system oriented it laid emphasis on the capability to help share, store, create and use the explicitly documented knowledge of the Company. Under this dimension it laid emphasis of codifying and storing knowledge. The codified is done via information technology and this help in reusing the knowledge. The emphasis is laid down on complete set of rules about what to do in each and every step under different circumstances. Another is human approaches; this approaches emphasis knowledge sharing via interpersonal interaction. This approach exploits dialogues through different modes of communication like social networks that includes occupational group and teams. It also helps in sharing knowledge from person to person contacts. This approach also tries to attain internal and opportunistic knowledge and to share it casually. It must be noted that knowledge can be obtained in a number of ways from experienced and skilled people.
DELL
Introduction:
The journey of Dell was begin when an18 year old college freshmen from Texas Michael Dell founded it in 1983, at the begin Dell sold upgraded version of desktops of IBM over nights and weekends. Dell's business had grown unbelievable $6 million within a year. Located its headquarter in Round Rock, Texas, Dell is one of the world's largest direct sale vendors of computers; dell market place involves desktops, laptops, printers, high end storage products, workstations, network servers, and various ranges of computer software's and peripherals. Dell is now became huge corporation with 75000 employees around the world and a turnover annually more than 61$ billion. Dell's main competitors are IBM, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard and NEC.
Information and Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management:
Enjoyable and most outstanding customer service by Dell create expertise in the customer service help the Dell Company become one of the fastest growing computer manufacturers in the world. But evolving information and rapidly changing technology age customers wants even more. To meets customer's expectation for quicker, better-informed, and further responsive, with the intensive research Dell developed a host of Microsoft Exchange server-based knowledge management solutions that has helped the company increase productivity and cut costs while improving customer service. This standardization by Dell introduced in 1998 which the company chose not only for their reliability and scalability, but also as a knowledge-management platform. "Exchanger gives us more than a messaging system," say Panella. It gives us a stable, scalable platform we can also use for collaboration, data storage, application development and knowledge management".
Dell created a universal contact-management system in order to have better connect its internal sales support team and its field sales representatives, this can easily updated and synchronize by sales reps whether they were accessing the system from an internally or external servers. Finding out the solution involves simple implement, Exchange Public Folders on the server side and Outlook contacts on the desktop.
With this implementation Dell's sales, management, marketing, and executive staff can able to access any customer's full history, including the most recent activity at a customer site, that includes order status, and relationship or competitive details, this became possible because of standard outlook contact interface. The contact information is stored in Exchange Public Folders, so it is automatically synchronized every time an employee logs on to e-mail account. This system help the team to standardized the customer information corporate wide and integrated the inside and outside sales forces into a single team because of the timely sharing information. This interface also helped with sales productivity and also managing to plan meetings, assign tasks and manage follow up.
This system has also given the Dell sales force competitive advantage. That means if Dell employee finds that a competitor is inviting the Dell customer, employee can target and quickly contact the appropriate people at the customer site. Then the representative can update the contact information immediately, so other Dell employees know about the situation and the action can taken.
Dell expands and implemented the use of knowledge management solutions. Like its IT department staff is developed reporting tools that will help in managing records, track, and analyze the success of systems such as customer Recovery. In addition, the Dell Company also developed an automated approval system that will trim down the time it takes to fulfill employee requests, whether for new equipment or a transform in benefits. Employees will enter their requests in a custom Outlook form that will then automatically rout to correct managers for sanction.
Effort won't stop here. Dell executives have embraced knowledge management as an integral component of running an effective and efficient business. "Very soon after migration, we've gone from using Exchanger just as our messaging system, to using it for business-critical knowledge management applications." Say Panella.(Dell senior Manager for Global Messaging Infrastructure.)
Dell implements CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and SCM (supply Chain Management) strategies, CRM is a tool which is used to define the process of maintaining and creating consumer relationship (Moon 2003). Having the customer from long time assures their repeat business as compare to gaining new one that involves spending more money. The main objective of Dell is to provide customer's service and technological needs to their customer very effectively and efficiently in order to make them satisfied with their services. Dell utilize three types of software's that ease Dell's CRM i.e. Custom designed Web pages containing purchasing data, marketing automation software, and a system that assists the sales, marketing, financial and segments of management in Dell.
SCM is a tool that is used to explain the management of the flow, of unprocessed materials to the finished product, which a company uses to get services and final products to its customers. Relationship created by Dell has developed very strong with both of its customer and suppliers that ensure Dell that right kind of components are available to meets customer requirements. This tool also ensures Dell a system was in place to get the product shipped and delivered to the customer efficiently, effectively and on time. Dell's direct focus on customers resulted in competitive advantage for Dell.
Information Management:
Dell has complex and large IT infrastructure over 1600, applications and 12000 servers distributed worldwide. Dell's IT infrastructure that keeps the operations-including 24/7 online ordering, just in-time custom manufacturing, and world class customer service, to keep its operation very effective, efficient and running can be challenging to manage. To make it simple for the management, Dell designed, developed, and deployed the Dell Business Service Management Dashboard (BSMD). The BSMD is a visual tool that helps enhance IT efficiency, increase uptime of critical systems, and provide executive-level visibility into the global Dell IT environment. The BSMD help IT staff to view the overall health and structure of the Dell IT infrastructure at a quick look. In particular, Dell IT staff wanted a tool that would do more and utilize the output of the monitoring systems already in place that would allow IT staff to model the dependencies between individual IT systems, define business, and model the dependencies between those business processes and the applications that support them. With the help of BSMD provide an overview of the Dell IT infrastructure and its current condition illustrates in real time and put together with their knowledge management, troubleshooting tools and diagnosis.
BSMD combines all the output underlying Dell monitoring systems, that including Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, Emplrix OneSight, and Microsoft Operations Manager systems, after it uses business process and IT component dependency models, after processing it displays that data into a sequence view from high level business units down to individual IT components. In this sequence the top level displays high-level business processes such as online ordering and manufacturing, in order to have better understanding of this sequence it is distributed with color codes uses to highlight status in real time as show in Fig 1, by click any one of the process step, IT staff can view the structure and status of the database servers, applications and other IT component that support that step.
From the time its implementation the BSMD has facilitated Dell to considerably simplify and increase the effectiveness of its IT management. In addition, the BSMD currently combine with the company's knowledge base to improve problem resolution capabilities. Having such kind of effectiveness with this system Dell further adding several features to it, including links to the company's trouble ticketing system and to server management tools.
Dell has also using a system called Customer Recovery in workgroup document-management system. Customer service representative who handle incoming customer issues and order, with the help of this system the representative enter inquiries into a customer Outlook form. This form is routes with the help of automated workflow application to the appropriate person within Dell. Dell managers able to check whether or not the inquiry made by customer has officially closed by the service representative and this also help managers in tracking who is resolving issues and how they are being resolved. "Customer Recovery makes sure that we've addressed whatever issues the customer has raised in a timely and efficient manner, Panella"
Innovation in information management is begin with when company understand what the real value of data is, especially in terms of information life cycle management of storage area and networking solutions, Dell understand this and they focus on innovations on the area that protects the information that held within the life cycle of data. The products developed by Dell address some of the key element market needs that customers facing today particularly in virtualization, because of the tough economic climate Dell make sure that the solutions they are delivering provide positive return investment and also delivering significant cost savings, Dell develop snap shot management solution to provide these benefits to customers, Dell direction is being able to provide great technology within encompass overall cost of the solution which protects the investment internally made by the company within the products itself. With help of the snap shot management solutions dell able to manage the lower end customers through the entire life cycle management deployment.
SWOT ANALYSIS
Information and Knowledge Management
Strengths:
Availability of information needed at one place.
Provide platform for alignment of IT and Business.
Able to manage unstructured Data help them to multiple gains.
Able to extract any kind of information from the Database with regard to its customers or suppliers.
Ability of self service reporting.
Internet application of the company to other parts of the business which includes customer support, relationship management, and procurement is growing very quick at the rate of 30 percent. Nearly 25 million visits received by the company website at more than 45 country specific sites.
Enormously CRM and Information are used for data retention of its potential customers.
Weaknesses:
Benefits are intangible.
Availability of multiple tools.
Constant management support needed.
Availability of technologies in multiple.
Huge amount of money is required for each tool to develop and implement.
Opportunities:
Profitability will increase.
Management of vendor became easier.
The use of Technologies and Tools are standard.
Retaining the customer become more convenient and better.
Combination of Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) become simpler.
Help business in proper understanding its customer's preferences and behaviors.
Threats:
Meeting the requirements with the regulatory.
Loses can take place with improper implementation of information after making new product.
Open to competitors.
Customer mix out as a result of information improper handling.
If properly not adopted and implemented are very dangerous to the business that leads to put the customer in jeopardy.
Recommendations:
Over the past twenty years growth in Dell Company has tremendous. Standard of quality during this period has continued to raise. The achievement of these illustrious goals has been facilitated by the Company's managing their information and knowledge.
From the above analysis it is clear Dell have very efficient and effective information and knowledge management but Dell really on technology more, for example the communication based culture like an e-mail, it is the company as the primary work environment. Effectiveness of e-mail is there because it permits lower level of employee to communicate with senior management and also get the strategy directly from the top level of the management; this is an effective means of communication across the whole company around the world but on the other hand, increasing dependence on communication technology-mediated generate an environment that may bring down relational development and this harm Dell's internal environment and personal relation within the company can begin to fail within the employees that may bring to failure in managing the information and knowledge which lead to decreases in productivity and increase in isolation and emotional detachment from the company's identity as well as other employees.
In order to maintain the effective means of communication Dell's top level management within their strategy needs to make public and personal communication more important. No doubt Dell maintain efficient means of communication within their internal environment, however a company can always improve their communication because it is ongoing process by which information and knowledge is exchanged through system of behavior, signs and symbols. Efficient, more reliable and effective communication can only be created when Dell's top level management can work closely with the marketing communication department and create a clear cut corporate mission. Today's rapid changing environment a clear-cut corporate mission help in keep employees associated with what the company is determined to be, but it also help to maintain right kind of approaches and stability for customers weary.
The main source of information for Dell Company is E-mail, constantly receiving it, causes overload for employee and this casual communication process often isolates employees and does not allow them to interact. Working constantly over 5 hours a day watching at computer screen increases the risk of insomnia, depression and other mental health problems. In order overcome this problem Dell must give preference more face-to-face communication, using meetings, company outing, and team building activities. If the upper level management in Dell put more efforts on internal communications then this will help employee remain more engaged, concentrate more on work, and productive loyal. This will help Dell company to become stronger against their competitors and also lead to enhanced relationship with their consumer and suppliers.
Conclusion
Dell implements its knowledge and information in a multiple role that involves both its customers and employees this help Dell replicate to hold stability within the internal and external environment and able to apply situational context by having proper core knowledge of its tools and external surroundings. Dell's dedicated team able to develops such kind of mechanism which helps the company to evaluate and change their knowledge assets and reuse them in different situations. Constantly updating its knowledge and information with Dells newly developed and implemented tools help the company to be more agile towards its information and knowledge management.
