Identifying Knowledge in Business Network

Identifying Knowledge in Business Network

The important elements of knowledge in a business network environment are the Knowledge sources and the analysis and utilization of the knowledge gathered from such sources. Methods for information flow from the business network must be developed, conserved, and made available to both the employees and managers.

For improving the business processes such as customer services, production lines, product quality etc. careful analysis of the information should be performed to derive solutions and identify key result areas.

Knowledge related to investment opportunities, technological strategies, innovative products and services, reliable alliances, mergers and acquisitions, or advertising must be captured for thorough analysis and vital business decision making. Some of the most important information sources are given below.

Employees Expertise: The dynamic nature of the employees in an organisation requires that the expertise and knowledge gained by the employees be preserved within the organisation. When an employee leaves an organisation, this knowledge will aid in training and helping the new recruits.

Customer Reviews: The review and ratings about product and services provided by the customers is considered most vital information in a business network. This information helps to ascertain the competitiveness of a business as well as maintaining a consistent customer base. This information can be instrumental in finding out the market trend and understand the customer requirements to enable future product designs and enhancements.

Product and Services statistics: The product and services statistics help to determine the overall progress of the business. Information pertaining to amount of sales and orders, production information and past performances of the products will help to analyze the profitability aspects of the businesses and its alliances in the network.

Important Aspects of Knowledge Management

Knowledge Gathering: This aspect addresses the methods and tools for gathering knowledge for establishing a knowledge base specific to a business domain. The experience gained by the organisation and its employees, experience of alliances and affiliates, need to be captured and preserved. New technological advancements in the field of communication, data mining and cognitive data capture should be adopted by the businesses to gather and preserve core business knowledge information.

Knowledge Analysis: After gathering adequate knowledge about the core business domain, careful analysis is vital in order to effectively utilize the knowledge. The analysis should be able to provide the advantages, weak links, problem areas and key result areas with statistical performance measures of the business. This aspect also brings out further knowledge acquisition methods and techniques in order to improve the effectiveness of knowledge gathering process.

Knowledge Planning: The statistical and analytical reports generated by the analysis of the gathered knowledge can be utilized for planning and forecasting effective business strategies. Planning related to future products, improving customer services, training the employees, solutions for problem areas and future business objectives can be very effectively done using the analysis outputs of the business data gathered.

Knowledge Organizing: The knowledge gathered from the various sources and the analytical reports have to be organized in an orderly way. The grouping of knowledge about the business domain specific to its interdependent fields of operation is a key requirement to maintain its integrity and effectiveness. The organized and grouped data can be used to perform pattern analysis, relativity analysis, root cause analysis and efficient search algorithms.