Role of Knowledge Management in SCM and ERP

With every passing day, customers are becoming more and more demanding desiring products that suit their need and not standardized product or service options. They also have started pressing heavily for more economical pricing and lower lead times. This has increased the importance of innovation as well as the need to reduce the turnaround times which also impact the overall costing of products or services. Better and precise supply chains are becoming ever important link in the whole process and since a supply chain today runs across organizations instead of focusing only in one organization with the advent of collaboration all around, we can say that instead of organizations, today supply chains compete. These supply chains, as I said earlier, run across organizations, so it makes prudent to create, record and share knowledge that flows from one organization to another and we do not lose any intelligence that was gathered by any of the constituents of the supply chain. This makes knowledge management, a very important tool in the whole business plan of continuous improvement in supply chains by leveraging intelligence on knowledge like alternate supplier base, price deflation trends and levers, item substitutes and their sources, best possible routes of particular product manufacturing, best practices to resolve supply chain conflicts etc. Leveraging knowledge that gathered in these fields by different experts will make not only the job easier and also will reduce the lead times considerably as the wheel does not need to be invented from scratch every-time which makes an important impact on reduction of overall pricing of the your product or service.

We all know that basic ingredients that go in a knowledge management program are:

• Creation of knowledge in identified areas
• Recording it in a collaboration tool so that it can be easily accessed by everyone
• Ability to search and find relevant knowledge by the potential users
• Effective utilization of knowledge
• Continuous updation and revision of knowledge to keep it pertinent and latest

All KM programs, need to incorporate above points and with the advent of multiple knowledge management tools like MS SharePoint (the most popular among all), managing KM has become easier but still the onus of creating, sharing and updating knowledge still lies with the experts.

Supply Chains around the world are gaining specifically in the fields of supply chain modeling, simulation and new product introductions, the most as they include not only multiple iterations of the activities involved but also include multiple experts spread across various geographies and time zones. Also, the knowledge created during these iterations becomes the basis of further improvements in the products or services and again a huge impact on overall lead times and cost.

Talking about ERP, the role of KM is equally important here but we see a shift in the role if you compare it to SCM. Here, the importance is more about the knowledge acquisition, knowledge transfer process because of multiple parties (teams) involved one after another (quite a contrast with SCM where multiple teams work at same time frame) and of-course knowledge updation. Every stage of an ERP implementation cycle needs to capture and share knowledge and the main objectives here are to again leverage the knowledge that already exists, to reduce the timeline of that particular activity, make the project delivery independent of the people so that sudden attrition does not impact the project heavily where loads of money is invested by organizations and to make sure that the incoming team (whenever it happens) have access to the compete documentation of the project. One of the major bottlenecks in an ERP project is a long testing cycle that includes defects identification, their resolution and re-testing and this cycle can be vastly reduced by ensuring that correct codes are transferred to the test instances of the new system and proper version control is in place. In addition, sharing best practices of other important stages of an ERP product like system design, integration testing, data migration and production black outs etc. make sure that we implement tried, tested and winner ways to complete the project.

Knowledge Management is a vast field and one small article on this heavy topic even if we are topic of niche areas of SCM and ERP, is not possible. Though I have touched upon a few areas where KM can be beneficial in both these fields, I am sure there are much more to it and I would like to have readers suggest how they are leveraging KM in their SCM and ERP projects so that everyone else can benefit form the experiences.

Knowledge Management - Few ways to contribute

Knowledge Management has evolved as one of the most important tools for not only the companies in IT space but also companies in Pharma, BPO and Research space. According to a report released by AMR Research, U.S. companies spent $73B on knowledge management software in 2007, and spending will grow nearly 16% to an average of $1,224 per employee in 2008.

As a growing number of needs and initiatives are left unsupported by established enterprise applications, the demand for KM technologies has increased, leading to record-level activity in knowledge management; content management; navigation, search, and retrieval; and collaboration platforms.

Almost all research companies like AMR have written something or the other (like above)about the kind of investments that are going in KM applications worldwide but another area that is still relatively less researched and emphasized is the power of sharing knowledge within the organization

Traditionally, companies have been following few methods of creating, spreading and sharing knowledge and have got a decent level of success with them. I keep on getting lot of queries on how knowledge management contribution can be maximized. Also, people want to know about the different ways to jot down their contributions and what exactly should be the content structure in those different ways.

There are few traditional methods and then some of the new and more interactive methods of knowledge sharing that can help people putting in their contributions. The traditional ways are:
1. White Paper - This is the oldest and the most used form or knowledge sharing and still remains the favorite of a big number of research analysts across the world. It has its wings spread from business transformation to hardcore technology operations to research publications. The term white paper is an offshoot of the term white book, which is an official publication of US national government. A white paper is a report or guide that often addresses problems and how to solve them. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions. Like all Knowledge sharing techniques, It is always a re-usable document. 2. Best Practice - The world knows that Six Sigma was devised by Motorola but GE perfected it and reaped much more benefits from it than Motorola. This is the power of best practice sharing. Best Practice asserts that there is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. The idea is that with proper processes, checks, and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications. Best practices can also be defined as the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people. 3. Case Study - Chrysler was almost bankrupt when Lee Ioccoca revived it and the company rose to the 3rd biggest car manufacturing company among all car companies in the USA in 1960s. How could he achieve this stupendous success? What are the steps he took and what were the difficulties he conquered in his quest for reviving the company? Everybody is interested to know the details of a success story so that the learning can be applied elsewhere. This full process is called a case study. A case study might not be a complete story of a successful venture or a project but it will have the bullet points that will provide substantial knowledge about the project’s success factors. 4. Training - DocumentsTraining documents have become part and parcel of all the projects and these days these are primarily used for knowledge transfer from an outgoing member to an incoming project member. These are also used to share knowledge with other team members generally within a team/track to let them know about a latest development in process/technology. 5. Knowledge Sessions - This is actually a cusp between traditional and new methods of knowledge sharing and the reason I classified this into traditional methods is that it is very similar to the earlier seminar and presentations modes of knowledge transfer. These sessions are a great source of knowledge since the interactive mode of these sessions allow the audience to clear their doubts within the session itself, which makes these much more useful.

Some of the New Ways to Share and Spread Knowledge are:
1. Crossword - This is one of the newest and the most attractive forms of sharing and spreading knowledge that has a fun content also attached to it. Not only it excites the audiences for solving the teaser and in process getting the knowledge content into their heads but also is a payful manner for creating knowledge content. This is becoming hugley popular these days. 2. Quiz - Quiz, as we all know has the power of learning with fun and has been regarded as one of the best tools to teach and remember things. Its use in knowledge management though is quite in nascent stage still. It helps the knowledge seeker by not providing content heavy rich documents but still has the power to communicate the crux of any functionality or a concept. It also generates a competitive environment among the readers and challenges them to find the answers themselves. 3. Newsletters - A newsletter is a small piece of information that is required to be shared in a team or an organization that generates excitement about the subject. They are best used as teasers for a white paper or a best practice or a knowledge session and can be very handy or people who want to get certain insights on the subject before committing their time to the actual event. Newsletters can also be used to send frequent updates on the changes or new developments in a technology or a business so that people can leverage from the information on time. 4. Did you know statements - Another teaser that is hugely becoming popular these days is “Did you know statements” format where a less known fact or an out of box thinking idea or an efficiency improvement tip is shared with the audience. This became a quick hit in small time and helps generate interest in a topic or subject. A series of these statements can also be used to share knowledge in one or other areas.

With the increasing focus on KM, the list is ever increasing. The next wave after KM content creation is to store and search relevant content within a repository which will actually realize the potential of KM fully and I will not be surprised to see specific products coming in market from companies like google or microsoft where they offer search engines that can sit on companies KM data and help retrieving relevant content for reusing it.