Knowledge Management Plan and Technology

- Current situation and background: H&LPA was a company with less than ten employees for over twenty years, it has only been during the last ten years that the company grew its operation demanding more employees for a current total of 38 by 2022 and potentially more in the upcoming years. 


H&LPA used the basic tools provided by Microsoft during its first twenty years and updated to use SharePoint since 2013 as the volume of documents required better tools. 

Furthermore, the warehousing system was recently updated in 2022 as the business operation grew during the pandemic due to higher online sales and there was the need to store more stock. 


SharePoint is H&LPA’s main tool for all the activities in the KMC as it was previously identified and new challenges are likely to arise as the company just moved into a bigger warehouse expecting the business operation to keep increasing as well as the size of the team.




 - Objectives and expected results: The main KM objective for this plan is to encourage the creation of content with expert knowledge from the employees of the company to make processes more effective, replicable and widely used. 

Following some of the lessons from EY company, which KM success is based on the way people voluntarily share their knowledge and interact with the KM tools (Rao 2021). 

The second core objective is to provide the instruments for the organisation to keep improving the KMC and it includes training, creation of policies and ultimately an impact on the culture for sharing and optimising knowledge. 


The results expected from this plan are to obtain the highest benefit in terms of KM in the middle and long term by implementing policies, guidelines and training the staff. 

It will be reflected on the volume of content available in the KM system and valuable in terms of usage, replicability and participation.



- Activities and technology: This plan proposes activities for the first year with the objective of replicating it during the second and third year while adjusting changes as per necessary. 

These are the activities to focus on during the first quarter of the year: elaborate a questionnaire and obtain feedback from all employees regarding their experiences and points of view for the KM systems of the company.

Match those results with the current core objectives and update objectives if necessary, develop the policies for good practices while using the KM systems, create documents with explicative content in video, make training available to employees.


For the second trimester of the year, monitor results from the training and complement efforts by encouraging employees to update the description of processes with their specific expert knowledge from experience. 

Use gamification tools together with social network, recognition and rewards to encourage participation. Third and fourth trimester, monitor progress, structure repositories with email information and threaded discussions. 

Finally, generate quarterly reports and update findings to evaluate during the next annual meeting. 


During the years two and three, continue efforts, monitor social networks, update wikis, blogs and evaluate how suitable can be the implementation of chat bots as it is one of the products offered by Microsoft SharePoint.



- Roles, budget and process evaluation: Consultants, project managers and leaders will lead by example, constantly updating the KM system. 


The budget for this plan is a total of $760 per month which allows 38 coworkers to work collaboratively using the tools for social networking, blogs, wikis and analytics (Saa Sworth 2022). 

Use quarterly reports and SharePoint analytics to identify trends and evaluate success in the objectives. Share findings, update plan as necessary and iterate.




            CONCLUSION

The company H&LPA uses the tool SharePoint for its main Knowledge Management Systems, it allows its 38 members to do activities for each component of the Knowledge Management Cycle; Identify and / or create, store, share, use, learn and improve. 


H&LPA’s main strengths in their systems are the effective collaborative work, compatibility of content across several systems and the leader's willingness to keep improving as the company experiences fast growing. 


On the other hand, H&LPA’s main weaknesses are the lack of defined vision, plans, processes for the KM systems in the middle and long term and the current inadequate use of tools. 

Thereby this analysis recommends the use of gamification tools, wikis, blogs, trainings, annual meetings to discuss quarterly reports, trends and a plan for three years describing the objectives, roles, activities and budget with the purpose of improving H&LPA’s knowledge management systems in response to its fast growing pace and projections.





Written by Sergio Quintero, 2023, student of Master of Business Administration, 
Kaplan Business School, Melbourne, Australia.



REFERENCES

AIIM 2022, “What is SharePoint?”, Association for intelligent information management, retrieved 04 December 2022, <https://www.aiim.org/what-is-microsoft-sharepoint>

Davenport T., Prusak L. 1998, “Technologies for knowledge management”, Working knowledge: how organisations manage what they know, Harvard Business School Press 1998.

Evans M., Dalkir K., Bidian C., 2014, “A holistic view of the knowledge life cycle: the knowledge management cycle model”, McGill University, EJKM, volume 12, issue 2. 

Garfield S, 2016, Knowledge management technology components, Quora, retrieved 3 December 2022, <https://stangarfield.quora.com/Knowledge-Management-Technology-Components>

IFAD 2020, “Knowledge management plan”, International Fund for Agricultural Development, retrieved 02 December 2022, <https://ifadkmcentre.weebly.com/knowledge-management-plan.html>

Microsoft 2022, “SharePoint service description”, Microsoft, retrieved 04 December 2022, <https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/sharepoint-online-service-description/sharepoint-online-service-description#available-plans>

Rao M. 2021, “Discovery, delivery, delight - how EY harnessed knowledge management and became one of the two most outstanding winners of the Mike award”, Your Story, retrieved 02 December 2022, <https://yourstory.com/2020/08/cii-knowledge-management-ey>

Saa Sworthy 2022, “Comparison knowledge management prices”, Microsoft SharePoint, retrieved 04 December 2022, <https://www.saasworthy.com/product/microsoft-sharepoint/pricing>

Zyngier, S. 2022, ‘5 Knowledge Management Strategies in Australia: Analysis of uptake and understanding’, University of Wollongong Press, Australian Studies in knowledge management (pp.487 - 521).

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