How to transform and use the acquired and refined knowledge across departments in knowledge management?
The following information comes from Wang Zhenyu, chief analyst of kmpro knowledge management
1. First, we must realize the cross-department transformation and use of knowledge, that is, the technical mechanism for cross-department sharing. The system can support a flexible sharing system of knowledge dimensions or knowledge content, and can share part of the knowledge content to other departments through permission control while preventing other departments from directly modifying or deleting the knowledge.
2. Discover the application chain relationship between knowledge, that is, the value chain between knowledge from department a to department b. For example, the knowledge to solve a bidding document may involve the collaboration of multiple departments such as finance, marketing, sales, and technology. If Once the knowledge chain can be clearly handled, the cross-departmental sharing and transformation of this knowledge will naturally come naturally.
Of course, there is still a lot that needs to be researched and specialized in knowledge management itself. The above is just an introduction.
What are the common orientations of knowledge management?
Here are some application patterns and strategies mentioned, I hope they will be helpful to you.
Data comes from landray/KM/ShowArticlex?ArticleID=402 The first mode is to build a dedicated small system. For example, Lenovo and EPSON focus on building a knowledge base to order and systematize explicit knowledge; building an expert database to build implicit expert resources; and at the same time building a CKO evaluation toolbox to help knowledge managers and knowledge management departments Evaluate and motivate employees.
The second model is to build a traditional system and introduce knowledge management. Some companies will introduce some concepts and methods of knowledge management in the process of office automation construction, such as Haima's construction of kOA knowledge management platform; some companies have introduced the concept of knowledge management in personalized business systems, such as Daqing Exploration Institute, which Many of its work are project-oriented. How should the knowledge in the project operation process be managed? This has also improved the design concept and design method of its business system, which can be called a knowledge-based business system.
The third model is to build a portal, which has attracted the attention of more and more enterprises. It has two different approaches. One is non-integration: it does not integrate the existing systems of the enterprise, but only focuses on how to manage unstructured knowledge and expert bodies in the enterprise. For example, Tsingtao Brewery has established many different departments. The knowledge channel improves the knowledge dissemination model between departments.
The other is deep integration, which not only focuses on unstructured knowledge itself, but also focuses on deep integration with business system data. The fourth model aims at unified planning and distributed implementation with the goal of knowledge-based information systems (building a knowledge-based application development platform), and considering the knowledge-based knowledge of future information systems from a comprehensive perspective. This is a concept that Lan Ling has always mentioned.
Lanling not only provides such a platform, but also provides flexible secondary development space according to the continuous changes of your business and management to meet the needs of business and management development. The knowledge-based application development platform encapsulates many application mechanisms and models of knowledge management, making it easier for enterprises to do independent development more flexibly.
The fifth model is a cross-departmental and regional knowledge community. There are many successful examples in foreign companies, such as BP mentioned earlier. Domestic companies are also constantly introducing this model, especially some large group companies. There are many branches and branches, and they hope to establish an interactive platform for cross-department and cross-regional knowledge exchange for a certain professional knowledge field. The sixth mode is other different personalized KM professional applications, such as elearning, innovation management, and professional search tools, which are all personalized professional applications.
Different application models have specific needs and solve specific problems. Therefore, when promoting knowledge management applications, enterprises must first think about application models, and then think about functional solutions, and support them with management mechanisms, Knowledge sorting methods, etc. In long-term knowledge management practice and research, we have also found that some basic KM system construction strategies have a very good guiding role in the successful promotion of enterprise knowledge management: the first strategy is business-oriented strategy.
The focus is on how knowledge management can help "me" and my department, and focus on the accumulation of knowledge in the process of one's own business work. The project knowledge management done by Daqing Exploration and Design Institute uses this strategy. It focuses on the stages of each project, what document output will be produced at each stage, and manages it systematically.
The second strategy is the portal-oriented strategy. Not only pay attention to "me", but also pay attention to "others" and provide knowledge dissemination and services to other departments.
Pay attention not only to internal management but also to external services, and establish a knowledge dissemination service network inside and outside the department. Tsingtao Beer has created a similar channel. For example, the human resources channel is a portal for the human resources department to display itself to the outside world, provide human resources self-service, and centrally manage and disseminate the company's training resources.
The third strategy is to not only focus on "me" and "other", but also on everyone, and promote the exchange of professional knowledge in the form of a knowledge community. Some foreign experts and scholars divide organizational models into four generations: the first generation is a functional organization; the second generation is a process-oriented organization, which connects departments horizontally; the third generation is called project-oriented, which forms project teams according to work needs and completes the work. Then it was disbanded; the fourth generation organizational structure is a knowledge community-oriented organizational structure. It can be seen that the knowledge community has a high position and plays a great role, especially for group companies. It not only has a horizontal general portal of the group company, but also There are many vertical departmental portals and decision-making portals.
For example, the HR management professional portal connects different HR departments vertically and promotes the exchange of professional knowledge among HR system personnel. The fourth strategy is to use knowledge maps to promote core knowledge standardization dissemination strategies. It mainly focuses on the core strategic key knowledge of the enterprise.
In the example of store management, we found that store management is very core knowledge for the enterprise. How to standardize and systematize this knowledge through knowledge maps and other methods to make it more efficient? Good communication is its focus. The fifth strategy, the strategy of combining sexual functions and personality functions, focuses on resource integration. We found that in some large enterprises, different departments will develop some functional applications according to their own needs, and they often develop them repeatedly.
In particular, enterprise IT departments must consider clearly what are the common functions when planning? What are the characteristics of the department? What can be integrated? How to integrate this kind of IT resources, unified development, unified deployment and implementation of comprehensive resources, and do some personalized implementation on this basis, is particularly important. How different strategies should be applied in an enterprise must be promoted based on the enterprise's different understanding of the business.
For example, we promoted the 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 knowledge management applications in a certain enterprise: a large community should be established to form a platform for discussion and mutual assistance for all members of the department; two portals should be established to Internal and external portals; 3 types of knowledge maps, job, process, and project; 4 types of knowledge bases to effectively manage institutional processes, method templates, business documents, and experience cases; 5 major processes to manage the core processes of work solidify. Once we understand the goal of reaching 12345 in the future, and then manage around this model, the direction of thinking will be clear and easy to implement.
What is the value of a well-functioning knowledge management system?
A well-run knowledge management system can not only use past experience to solve recurring problems and improve the company's service and support capabilities for customers, but also help avoid the company's past mistakes in the development process. If you have gone through a detour, give some warning and help.
Field is a large-scale machinery and equipment manufacturing enterprise established in 1997. In the past ten years, its number of customers has grown from zero to more than 300 by the end of 2006. New customers continue to add, and old customers also require continued after-sales service support.
In the face of the rapid development of the market and technology, it is not only critical to maintain more than 300 customers to continue to use and expand the investment company's equipment, but also to provide them with value-added after-sales services, which will also become a new profit for the company. point. However, the five existing after-sales service engineers are increasingly unable to provide satisfactory after-sales service and technology to more than 300 companies across the country in a timely manner.
Therefore, having enough qualified after-sales engineers will be the bottleneck to ensure these strategies.
The company has been growing continuously for ten years, and there is a mountain of after-sales service documents. How to sort out the information that is helpful and valuable for newly hired service engineers from this large pile of service documents will directly affect the rapid training of new qualified service engineers. The speed of engineers also affects the company's development strategy.
At the same time, other departments within the enterprise are accumulating more and more knowledge. If these sporadic knowledge cannot be sorted and classified, this knowledge will only be the accumulation of history and will even change with the growth of personnel. Loss and loss together will not provide much help to the subsequent development and continuous improvement of the enterprise. For Field Company, a well-functioning knowledge management system can not only use past experience to solve recurring problems and improve the company's service and support capabilities for customers, but also help avoid the company's past mistakes in the development process. detours, give some warning and help.
Therefore, the most urgent task for Field Company at present is to quickly implement the knowledge management system of after-sales service based on the actual situation of the enterprise, using after-sales service as a new strategic profit point. After Field Company understands the basic concepts of knowledge management, the importance of knowledge management and the reasons why it must be introduced, it is still more important for enterprises to successfully implement knowledge management.
The implementation of knowledge management by Field Company not only focuses on the simple application of knowledge management systems, but also formulates a very strict project management process in detail. Based on the analysis and summary of successful and failed knowledge management implementation cases, Field Company combined the theory and practice of project management to summarize the key points of success and failure in implementing knowledge management systems at home and abroad. Based on the actual situation of the company's current after-sales service department, in In the first phase of knowledge management, efforts were made from six aspects and finally achieved good results.
1. High-level support: In the early stages of the knowledge management project, the operations director in charge of after-sales service personally served as the project manager, and held meetings with project members to discuss specific usage details during the project execution. The support of the company's top management is crucial to the implementation results of knowledge management.
The support of top managers is reflected in: project decision-making, clear authorization, consistent problem-solving standards, introduction of effective change management strategies, and choosing the most appropriate time for the company to implement projects. During the implementation of knowledge management, the after-sales service engineer wanted to check the knowledge documents of a certain latest product through the knowledge management system, but the product design department was busy with the development of new products and could not provide it in time.
After the operations director learned about this situation, he went to the product development department in person to understand the actual situation. When he learned that the product development department was currently short of manpower, the operations director coordinated and provided personnel support to meet the after-sales needs in a timely manner. The needs of the service department thus ensure the normal progress of the knowledge management project. 2. Strategic Integration New reform projects need to be integrated with the enterprise's strategy, so that they will appear more meaningful and more practical, and they will also be more likely to receive support and response from the implementing personnel and participating departments.
The after-sales service department is the cutting-edge experimental field for Field Company to implement knowledge management. On the one hand, it reflects the company’s strategic focus on after-sales service as a new profit point for the company in the future; on the other hand, it also starts from the actual situation of the company. , set out to solve the training system of after-sales service engineers, provide knowledge accumulation for the work convenience and personal growth of after-sales engineers, and have positive significance for improving the after-sales service level of enterprises. During the project implementation process, the enthusiasm of the after-sales service engineers was fully exerted.
Only when knowledge management is linked to the strategic management of an enterprise, the management of the enterprise will also pay sufficient attention to it. Knowledge management is closely linked to enterprise strategy. It takes the enterprise's strategic focus as the project goal and develops it from top to bottom.
Domestic enterprises should determine the breadth and depth of knowledge management projects based on their strategic deployment, pay attention to project investment returns, and establish business cases. 3. Follow the principles of project management. The success of the project has a significant relationship with the management of the project manager.
In order to ensure the success of the project, the operations director who is also the knowledge management project manager not only carefully studied the professional knowledge of knowledge management beforehand, but also read a large number of knowledge management cases in an effort to learn more lessons from failures; The after-sales service department understands the engineers’ ideas and needs and has made sufficient preparations.
At the knowledge management project kick-off meeting, he not only issued the project management charter and clarified the responsibilities of project management, but also formulated clear knowledge management application goals in the after-sales service department for the first stage of knowledge management, that is, ensuring the case of after-sales service Becoming the core of knowledge management, it can facilitate quick reference by relevant engineers and provide relevant support and support for after-sales services.
During the implementation of the knowledge management project, project team members strictly abide by the implementation methodology formulated in advance. At the same time, they will also comprehensively consider the business elements of the IT and after-sales departments, make corresponding adjustments in a timely manner, and formulate a plan that meets the requirements. Actual project plans and adhere to the project progress, listen to opinions and suggestions from other support departments and users, pay attention to training and formulate support and maintenance plans after project implementation. 4. Use culture as the soil. As a change in the enterprise management process, knowledge management needs soil and environment for its growth. One of the focuses of the knowledge management project is to cross.
What are the benefits of implementing knowledge management in enterprises?
(1) Enhance competitiveness: Through knowledge sharing, organizations can improve execution efficiency and effectiveness. Through knowledge sharing and sharing, they can solve problems faced by customers or enterprises and accumulate relevant experience. With learning, it becomes the knowledge of the organization and establishes a set of rules of thumb, which can enhance the competitiveness of the enterprise and maintain long-term sustainable competitiveness.
For example, when Company B is faced with a flat organization and lower-than-expected profits globally, it must increase the speed of knowledge accumulation to widen the distance between competitors; while Company D’s knowledge management integrates market demand and real-time mainly based on regional market demand. (2) Improve knowledge sharing across units: Knowledge management can solve the problem of knowledge sharing among units within the organization, because individuals or departments in each unit can freely retrieve the information required in the knowledge base and transfer knowledge to Effective centralized integration can achieve added value.
In both companies B and C, it is necessary to take into account the knowledge information and experience accumulation of technology and customer service units at the same time, provide cross-department sharing through knowledge management information, and shorten customer service time. (3) Accelerating innovation capabilities: The essence of knowledge management lies in information acquisition, information storage and information reorganization. Through the transmission and reorganization between individuals and organizations, knowledge innovation can be accelerated and the value of knowledge can be increased.
Company A has a technical training center and provides patent bonuses; Company B encourages experiments and projects to create new technologies and customer services; Company D uses information analysis to launch Original product. (4) Reduce operating costs: The accumulation, value-added and innovation of knowledge can significantly reduce the operating costs of enterprises, and the required knowledge can be found in real time, solve problems, improve efficiency and avoid customer loss.
The most obvious example is Company D. Since all operational information is in an electronic database, it provides the most real-time information on the sales, supply, and customer preferences of goods, while reducing inventory and reducing the company's costs. Management and sales costs. Company C, on the other hand, advertises smart copying and virtual factories in factory construction and customer service, which not only reduces factory construction costs, but also saves customers the time and cost of repeated inquiries.
(5) Reduce knowledge loss due to employee resignation: If the company's knowledge is systematically integrated and managed, this knowledge will snowball in a geometric or geometric progression over time and experience. Growth, the company will not be unable to continue to grow or knowledge will be interrupted due to the resignation of employees.
What are cross-departmental and cross-functional roles?
In knowledge-based innovative enterprises, everyone’s position in the enterprise is no longer based on the strict hierarchical order and order of enterprises in the era of industrial civilization. The detailed division of labor system is precise in positioning, but fuzzy in positioning. In knowledge-based innovative enterprises, traditional job descriptions are becoming increasingly useless and are replaced by role descriptions, which are hierarchical and classified management of human resources to determine employee qualifications and behavioral standards at different levels and categories. , work specifications. Traditional job descriptions are no longer enough to clearly determine a person's positioning in the enterprise, and cannot answer the questions that require cross-departmental and cross-functional teamwork in knowledge-based innovative enterprises.
Since multinational companies were first exposed to the problems of cross-department teams, they also found some solutions first.
For example, at IBM, every employee's performance will be evaluated by his "boss" from different vector directions. The phenomenon of "one word" will not occur at IBM. When IBM was working on the ERP project of Harbin Beer Co., Ltd., it involved countless people from IBM Global Services (IGS), IBM China Headquarters, Shenyang Branch, and product departments working together. The Harbin Beer project added an amount to the performance scores of IBM project members in the RS6000 Division, GMB (industrial and commercial enterprise), IGS, and Northeast District (Shenyang Branch).
The organizational structure adopted by IBM ensures that users feel "one voice", because this project is only led by one person or department, and this person becomes the owner of the project, that is, the project leader . The Owner needs to determine what kind of help is needed for the project, what departments and which area of ??personnel are needed to cooperate. Under the leadership and coordination of the Owner, personnel from these relevant departments gathered into a team to work collaboratively for this project and provide rapid and lasting support. At IBM, the organizational structure is a "three-dimensional matrix", with product lines on the X-axis, industries and functional departments on the Y-axis, and geographical market division on the Z-axis. The multi-dimensional matrix structure ensures the relative independence and coordination between various departments. Every employee at the intersection is affected by the four different directions of product, region, industry and function. Everyone's work is related to others. interaction.