Knowledge Management In E-Commerce: An Analysis

Commerce and E-commerce the Knowledge Process

Knowledge management refers to the process of the establishment, sharing, management and the usage of the different kinds of knowledge and data that are received from the organization. The following refers to a multidisciplinary approach which helps the organization to effectively manage and achieve the different objectives of the organization. In this following essay the researcher has taken into consideration the knowledge management aspects of an organization. The main aim of undertaking the research is to determine the amount of knowledge management that Everest Treks need to have.

The last decade has seen an immense rise in the importance of knowledge management in and around the different parts of the world. Compared to other managed resources such as assets, capital and people knowledge is based upon perpetual regeneration. The more knowledge is used the more is the knowledge produced. Knowledge Management usually comprises of three main functions;

1. Knowledge Criterion- It consists of processes and sub processes of acquisition process. Processing new knowledge, validation of the information and integrating the new knowledge with the existing system (Laudon & Traver, 2013).
2. Knowledge Transfer-The transfer of knowledge refers to the question of how, what, when and in which form the knowledge the purpose is delivered to the business organization.
3. Knowledge Application-The application of knowledge refers to the methodology by which knowledge is employed and integrated into the organization (Mazzarol, 2015).

The knowledge management functions create a continuous knowledge feedback problem, the application of the existing knowledge, a set of new possibilities for the creation of new knowledge (Palacios, Soto & Merigó, 2015).

The transformation of the knowledge process functions from the domain of commerce to that of e commerce (Teo & Bhattacherjee, 2014). The following process helps the organization to comprehensively formalize the knowledge of the humans and the knowledge processes to replicate human intelligence. The perfect starting point for the broad comparison between the electronic and the traditional commerce system would be the best one to describe (Chong et al. 2013).

There is a vast difference between the electronic and traditional commerce system. The researcher has provided some of the common and critical differences between the two parts of business which have a huge impact on the knowledge management of the organization (Gholami et al. 2013). The main contrasting factors are the scope of time, scope of the products and the geographical scope.

1. The traditional stores have a limited or a maximum or minimum supply of items whereas online stores has a huge collections of products as because market size is much bigger than the traditional stores and the unlimited number of products these online stores have in their disposal (Laudon & Traver, 2013).
2. Secondly the conventional stores have a limited variety of products under their fold (Chiu et al. 2014). For example a shoe store deals exclusively with the shoes whereas an e commerce system has a wide range of different products starting from a blade, clothes to fashionable items, shoes etc.
3. It is very much difficult for a traditional store to keep open for 24 hours a day as it involves a lot of problems. There will be no consumers available at night in a conventional store (Fang et al. 2014). On the other hand an e commerce business is open round the clock and customers can easily place their order at any time of the day or night. The online system of the e commerce is way ahead and much more convenient for the customers and the people who are busy all the time (Laudon & Traver, 2013).
4. Physical commerce is limited to the sale of the products locally and in regional markets. The largest MNC’s established in a particular area are limited to the sales of their products in just a small area (Wang, Wang & Liu, 2016). The online stores on the other hand may start locally but given a proper marketing and brand promotion will surely be able to extend its reach globally. The global market will help the business to grow and earn huge revenues. The global reach of the business will help to gather more and more knowledge in the organizational system. the inflow of quality local, regional and global knowledge will help Everest Trek to organize itself according to the demands of the customers and arrange the system accordingly.

The experts dealing in Knowledge management believes that the creation of the knowledge involves a continuous transformation of tactical knowledge into explicit knowledge which can be expressed with a formal representation. The following description usually refers to the knowledge acquired from the human experts. The total information is stored in the local databases and other forms of electronic repositories increases gradually. The use of the new technologies requires very less human intervention as because all of the system is controlled via the knowledge management software’s installed by the organizations to perform their daily business. The researcher has addressed each of the sources in detail;

1. Users of the System-According to (Wang, Wang & Liu, 2016) The organizations depend on the different electronic data to be the perfect in storing the different information of the organization. The following includes the transparent sources of information that are related to the customers such as originating IP logs, cookies, stored sessions and many more as such. Apart from this there are many more direct methods to fetch out information from the customers. The system used by the organizations to gather the knowledge serves as a mediator between the customers and the organization. The organization can conceptualize the information received from the customers in a similar way like the information from the organization (Andam, 2014).
2. The Environment- The organization, customers and the suppliers are all involved in the environment in which the system operates. In the business context environment can be termed as the place or the area in which the suppliers, people and the customers operate. The typical factors that determine the system are economic factors, new and latest technologies, cultural events, fashion trends and many more as such (Hartono et al. 2014).
3. Experts-Knowledge acquisition from the human experts is a very difficult task thus the organizations employ different other tactics to acquire knowledge. The foundation of the human experience derived consumptions, in which the system’s knowledge grows and evolves (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013).

Knowledge acquisition from the information that is stored in the system applies to the information collected about the customers from the customers themselves and the environment in which the business operates (Da Costa, 2016). As mentioned earlier environment is the particular sector where the business, the people and the suppliers are based. The knowledge acquisition involves the addition of new knowledge on the existing knowledge, the depreciation of the existing knowledge and removing the unnecessary knowledge that is of no use for the organization (Hartono et al. 2014). The organizations usually take no risks and concentrates both on the knowledge acquisition and the evolution of the knowledge. Evolution of the knowledge by the organizations is done to keep a regular update and to adapt to the changing conditions of the market both locally and globally (Hartono et al. 2014).

Differences of Scope

The adaption of knowledge involves the addition of new knowledge as well as the creation of new databases with the new and latest knowledge (Hartono et al. 2014). The organizations ensure that all these knowledge are evaluated and correlated so that no irrelevant knowledge is present in the system. There are generally two types of adaption involved in the acquisition of knowledge namely on-line and offline. Online adaption of knowledge is done when the customer is online or he is surfing the internet and the system is supporting him while in the second case the customer is supported by the employees of the organization in real time. 

Conclusion

In this following paper the researcher has analyzed the different knowledge management aspect of the e-commerce systems, through the integration of the functions of the knowledge acquired by an e-commerce system. A thorough scrutiny of the following report will help the readers to gain a crucial knowledge about the knowledge management system of an organization. The different perspectives of the research have highlighted different knowledge about e commerce and the level of human analysis and the process by which the latest systems are implemented across the organization.

References

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