Discuss about the Knowledge Management for Capturing Organizational Information.
Knowledge management is often considered to be an amalgamation of the various processes that are frequently put to use for capturing organizational information, the processing of such information along with the storage and the sharing of the same (Hislop 2013). Researchers Liebowitz and Frank (2016) comment that knowledge management is essentially a multi disciplinary approach made towards the fulfillment of the organizational objective, by the optimized usage of the ‘knowledge’ (that is operational information) available to the organization.
Experts Borghoff and Pareschi (2013) are of the opinion knowledge management systems (as used by business corporations) include tools like that of Artificial intelligence tools, Content management systems, Data mining and data warehousing ( along with OLAP), Decision Support Systems, Document management systems, Groupware systems (along with KM 2.0), Simulation tools used for supporting the decision making processes, extranets and intranet and semantic networks. Needless to say, information management systems like that of ERP (Enterprise resource planning) and CRM (Customer relationship management) are also considered as organizational knowledge management processes (Fuller 2012).
OMANTEL, based in Oman, is one of the leading organizations that operate in the field of internet and wired telephony. At present, the organization is said to be the leading internet service provider in the country (OMANTEL.om 2016). This report is aimed at shedding some light on the knowledge management processes utilized by the organization: however, due to the discussions made in the report would concentrate mainly on the Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP system of the organization.
The introductory sections of the report have been utilized so as to provide an insight into the domain of ‘Knowledge management’, besides providing a brief background of the organization. In the consecutive sections, discussions would be made on the ERP system currently utilized by the organization, the entire emphasis being laid on the appraisal of the said system. Last but not the least, recommendations (for the further improvement of the said system) would be made to the higher management of OMANTEL in the concluding sections of the report.
Oman Telecommunications Company or OMANTEL is one of the pioneer organizations that operate in the domain of telecommunications. The organization is practically owned by the government of Oman (the government has 51percent share in OMANTEL) and is the sole internet provider of the country. The information available on the official website of the organization indicates that at present, OMANTEL provides services to the largest network area of Oman, besides having the most up-to-date infrastructure for providing the same (OMANTEL.om 2016).
At present, OMANTEL provides the following services to their customers:
The following sections of the report provide a detailed discussion of information gathered from the various existing scholarly publication that dwells on the domain being considered.
According to Woods, and Cortada (2013), knowledge management systems include all sorts of Information technology and management systems that utilized for the storage and retrieval of organizational data sets, with the aim of improving the collaboration between inter-organizational departments and storage of information resources. Authors Becerra-Fernandez and Sabherwal (2014) are of the opinion that the primary reason behind considering such ICT systems to be an essential component of Knowledge management lies in the fact that all the operational activities conducted by these systems efficiently enhance the KM process, in some manner or the other.
Researchers Dent and Whitehead (2013) second the opinion made by Borghoff and Pareschi (2013), as they claim that information management systems like ERP and CRM to be essential elements of knowledge management processes.
According to Nettsträter et al. (2015) Enterprise resource planning systems can be defined as an integrated business management system that aims to cover all functional areas of the business, including production, logistics, accounting, human resources and finance. The authors have also remarked that ERP systems are incorporated within the IT infrastructure of business organizations, with the primary objective of organizing (needless to say integrating) all the operational activities or processes of the enterprise, thereby ensuring the optimization of the flow of information between these systems. On the other hand, researchers May, Dhillon and Caldeira (2013) claim that the implementation of an efficient ERP system within the organizational infrastructure ensures the implementation and maintenance of a single data base ( to be used for the processing and consecutive storage of enterprise data sets), the utilization of a single application for the retrieval, modification and maintenance of the said data sets, along with a common user interface for facilitating the above mentioned operations.
Researchers Poba-Nzaou et al. (2014) have pointed out the fact that although most business organizations tend to implement Enterprise Resource Systems that are customized according to their specific needs, yet, efficient ERP systems are characterized by certain specific features. The features, as pointed by the authors, include the following:
While most experts in the domain of computer and information technology concentrate on the characteristics and features that efficient ERP systems must possess, researchers Nettsträter et al. (2015) have concentrated their study on the factors that motivate business organizations to implement such systems. The authors have been capable identifying a wide range of factors, some of which have been discussed in the followings section:
On the other hand, researchers Elragal and Haddara (2012) are of the opinion that business organization often opt for the inclusion of ERP being motivated by the fact that the inclusion of the same facilitates the process of maintaining the HR information and the inventory details, along with the above mentioned factors.
Knowledge management helps to gather, manage and share the knowledge capital of the organization to turn the existing business operation into more effective and efficient business process (JUNIOR and CHAVES 2015). It is the main priority of all sorts of organizations to promote an integrated and collaborative approach throughout the organization to capture and create best business process. However, capturing organization’s valuable assets (Knowledge) and distribution of these assets throughout the organization is a critical task.
In the leading telecom organization OMANTEL, supply chain should be improved with the integration of ERP system as a knowledge management process. In order to make a place in the competitive world, ERP implementation can proof as a best knowledge management system for OMANTEL (Al-Fawaz and Eldabi 2012). However, integration of this new system leads to critical situation which must be tactfully handled by the organizational authorities.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) integrates the data and business functions into a single system provided by its software solution. In order to increase the operating efficiency of this telecom industry by reducing the costs ERP is very crucial to share the same data and information from one department of the organization to others (Rajasekar and Al Raee 2013). In addition, in this growing business trend, ERP system also incorporates other business extensions such as human capital management, business information, customer relationship management and many others.
Figure 1: Extensions of ERP System
(Source: Ahamed, Kamoshida and Inohara 2013, pp-200)
While integrating the ERP system into its existing business operation, OMANTEL has faced lots of challenges from its internal as well external ends. In addition, technical issues, hardware and software requirements, potential risks are also present which creates greater potential barrier for the organization. Some of the challenges faced by the organization are as follows
Limitations in ERP Technical Abilities: In order to implement and ERP system, the organization needs advanced hardware components as well as software applications. A central database system with data warehouse and data mining applications is very crucial. Moreover, in order to make the ERP system platform independent, may more advanced applications should be integrated with the existing business applications (Guo, Wang and Feng 2014). All these factors need expert and technically skilled personalities to drive the process for its best use. Therefore, the organization should think about their recruiting process to hire skilled experts in their organization who can tactfully handle these technical issues.
Inconsistency: Integration of new system needs management support as well as financial structure to maintain its stable and consistent operation. While integrating ERP system with the telecommunication services of OMANTEL, the management authorities did not support it at the initial stages (Chen and Liu 2013). As a result, proper selection of ERP vendors and applications has been undone.
Increased Cost: Applications of new software and its technical requirements increase the business cost of OMANTEL. In addition, hiring of skilled personalities increases the overhead cost of the organization (Hintsch and Turowski 2013). Therefore, the organizational authorities try to improve their existing business operation rather than implementing new ERP system inside the organization.
Change Management: The greatest reason of ERP failure is the change management of the organization. In most of the cases, the organization engages the new system but do not use it due to inadequate personnel, increased maintenance and implementation cost (Biswas, Roy and Chowdhury 2013). In addition, before implementing new approach, proper testing of the system and training for the employees is very crucial. All these new integrations misbalance the internal situation of the organization badly.
Data Management: It is observed that, the data validation and conversion process of this organization is not properly planned. OMANTEL has not understood the importance of the data conversion which can have positive effects on the implementation schedule (Pettersson and Segerstedt 2013). Mapping the existing data structures with new system can be time consuming and tedious.
Inappropriate Technical Infrastructure: Technical issues regarding the ERP system implementation are also unwanted in this situation which slows down the business operations of the organization. Knowledge transfer from the system is insufficient due to the network issues of the organization (AFERA 2014). Due to stress testing, inadequate volume and insufficient bandwidth is one of the greatest barriers which delay the completion of overall project.
In order to implement the ERP system successfully, the entire process should be processed by the following stages
Figure 2: Implementation Stages of ERP System
(Source: Bogaard 2015, pp-100)
Strategy Planning: First of all a project team should be made who are engaged with the core business operations, so can help to prioritize the business requirements. Prioritizing the business requirements is very crucial for better customization and up gradation of the entire system (Al-Debei, MAl-Lozi and Fitzgerald 2013). The best strategy can help to meet the business needs successfully. In addition, this strategy planning will help to select the right vendor to implement the ERP inside the business organization successfully.
Software and Vendor Selection: In order to make the ERP project successful by incorporating bets ERP software, proper vendor selection is very necessary. ERP software vendors should be properly judged by two ways. At first, the software solution should be properly checked whether its technical feasibilities are well fitted for the business operations are not (Ahamed, Kamoshida and Inohara 2013). Then, the vendor’s culture should be judged whether it can support the culture of the OMANTEL or not. Now a day, most of the business organization relies on the outer resources to purchase ERP software rather than developing by itself. Therefore, proper evaluation is very necessary to ensure the success of the system implementation.
Designing of the Plan: After selecting the software, hardware and software should be enlisted in a documentary form is needed. The entire architecture of the ERP system should be designed in a blueprint form. This blueprint document will help to further proceed with the implementation work (Tripti 2015). However, IT infrastructure of the organization with data accuracy management should be properly checked to meet up the business needs positively. Data needs to be transferred and cleaned properly to run the ERP system smoothly. Data mining application is or uses of intranet portals are useful in this case to filter the corporate information into useful knowledge. Omatel stores large array of data and information into a central database. All of these information are not useful for business applications. So it is the responsibility of the project team to extract that information and transform in to the knowledge. Data mining can strongly identify and analyze customers’ buying pattern which is very important to maintain customer loyalty and to draw new customers towards the organization (Guo, Wang and Feng 2014). On the other hand, intranet portal can help the employees to find out crucial information to perform the jobs perfectly. In addition, this intranet portal offers secured platform to mitigate the problems of data duplicity and redundancy.
System Configuration and Optimization: After collecting all the required hardware and software, now it is the time to set up the system inside the organization. In order to install the system, an inductive training should be provided to the employees of the organization to maintain the system operations consistent (Biswas, Roy and Chowdhury 2013). At the initial stages it will become difficult to cope up the employees’ expectations with the new system as they are comfortable with the older system. Therefore, the objectives and goals of the new system implementation should be clearly defined to the employees so that they can make best efforts to make this system successful. In addition, the selected hardware and software should be tested again before engaging these inside the system (Anaya and Olsen 2014). This kind of system optimization will help to integrate the older system with the new solution in a single and comprehensive environment to enhance the scalability and reliability of the business operations.
System Evaluation: After implementing the system successfully in the organization, the system should be evaluated for its consistent operations. The project manager with the team members should ensure the fact that the installed system will work at its peak efficiency for the well fare of the organization (Pettersson and Segerstedt 2013). The team should also check out the fact that this new system will offer much more than the customers’ expectations with better quality of products and services.
With the above mentioned challenges, employees’ responsibilities to handle new system, strategy and execution of the system and awareness are also the common pitfalls of ETP system implementation (Barnaghi et al. 2012). After all these issues and challenges, ERP system is still suggested for this telecommunication industry as it can take the existing the business into another level. Some of the greatest applications and benefits of ERP system are highlighted as follows
Integration of Financial Information: Integration of ERP system will help to increase the structural connectivity of the OMANTEL, so that transactional operation will become effective throughout the organization. Structural connectivity will help to use performance tool like balanced scorecard which can increase the sped of the transaction of information (Guo, Wang and Feng 2014). In addition, this will help to increase the invoice control and payment process, thus boost the productivity of the organization.
Integration of Customers’ Order Information: Use of ERP system as knowledge management process will help to analyze the customers’ needs and by collecting this information organization will be able to achieve higher customer satisfaction. In addition, employees will be able to track the inbound logistics electronically so that business operations can be enhanced in a positive way (Ahamed, Kamoshida and Inohara 2013). Engagement of enterprise resource planning system (ERP) with the existing business applications can respond to the customers’ queries very quickly by faster monitoring and resolution process.
Reduce Inventory: The best application of ERP system is that it can reduce the inventory of the resourced materials utilized to make products to improve the manufacturing process. This will allow the users to deliver best quality of telecom products at reasonable cost with best quality of service (Al-Debei, Al-Lozi and Fitzgerald 2013). Implementation of ERP system in the OMANTEL organization not only provides flexible production but also facilitate effective data transfers and communication of the critical information throughout the organization. As a result, employees can access the real time data, reports and documents to customize the entire business operations.
From the above analysis, it can be stated that scalable design of ERP software helps to manage the telecommunication project of any size and any cost without creating impacts on the current operations.
Conclusion
The above mentioned sections of the report have presented discussions on the ERP system currently utilized by OMANTE. The information available from various resources indicate that while the said ERP system was being implemented in the organization, the authorities experienced several issues associated with the technical inabilities of the experts associated with the project, the changes that were constantly being incorporated in the operational activities of the organization during the phase when the ERP system was being designed and implemented, the high cost of implementation of the entire project and the management of the changes that were about to be incorporated in the work environment of OMANTEL due to the inclusion of the ERP system.
However, it has also been indicated in the report that the higher management of OMANTEL were capable of overcoming the difficulties, and at present, the said system is being utilized for managing the inventory of the organization, for integrating information associated with the orders placed by the customers and that of the financial transactions of the organization. It has also been observed that the inclusion of such an efficient ERP system has been possible solely due to the fact that the higher management of the organization had decided upon utilizing a standardized procedure for the implementation of the ERP system: the entire process was subdivided into 3 stages, namely the Pre Implementation Stage (consisting of activities like Planning and Software And Vendor Selection), the Implementation Stage (which included detailed planning of the entire system) and the Post Implementation Stage (including System Optimization and System Evaluation). It can thus be concluded that the utilization of standardized procedures have been helpful in the implementation of a successful ERP system in OMANTEL.
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