What Are the Benefits of Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management is a new kind of management thought and method emerging in the era of knowledge economy. It integrates modern information technology, knowledge economy theory, business management ideas and modern management concepts ^[1] . Knowledge management is an important content of business management. The mainstream business management courses such as EMBA and MBA all include "knowledge management" as an essential skill requirement for managers.

In management concept

Knowledge management truly reflects people-oriented

Knowledge management should follow the following three principles: (1) the accumulation principle. Knowledge accumulation is the management basis for implementing knowledge. (2) Sharing principle. Knowledge sharing means that the information and knowledge within an organization should be made as open as possible so that every employee can access and use the company's knowledge and information. (3) Communication principles. The core of knowledge management is to establish an organizational structure and cultural atmosphere conducive to communication within the company, so that there is no obstacle to communication between employees.

Knowledge accumulation is the management basis for implementing knowledge; knowledge sharing is to enable every member of the organization to access and use the company's knowledge and information; knowledge exchange is the key link to make knowledge reflect its value. Is at the highest level.

To carry out knowledge management in accordance with the above principles, we must first clarify that knowledge management involves all levels and all departments of an organization. The key to an organization's effective knowledge management is to establish a systematic knowledge management organization system. The functions implemented by this system mainly include the following aspects: the organization can clearly understand what kind of knowledge it already has and what kind of knowledge it needs; the organizational knowledge must be able to be timely transmitted to those who only need them in their daily work People; organizational knowledge must be accessible to those who need them; continuous production of new knowledge and access to people throughout the organization; control over the introduction of reliable, living knowledge; and regular organization knowledge Detection and legalization; knowledge management is made easier through the establishment and incentives of corporate culture. ^[5]

The ubiquitous knowledge in an enterprise is an important factor that determines the success or failure of an enterprise and the company's sustainable competitive advantage. It is more important to build a knowledge management system and manage the company's knowledge assets than other assets of the company. In a nutshell, knowledge management is the management that provides a new way for companies to share codeable explicit and tacit knowledge. The purpose is to improve the organization's resilience and innovation ability through knowledge sharing and the use of collective wisdom, and improve the core competitiveness of the enterprise.

The reasons for enterprises to implement knowledge management can be divided into:

The effectiveness of knowledge management can be evaluated from the following aspects:

1. Human capital training expense organization to learn employee loyalty management experience

2.

What is the relationship between knowledge management and content management? What is the difference and connection between them? I think we need to make a comparison between the two. Let enterprises have a clear understanding of the two, and help companies choose whether to use knowledge management or content management, and when to implement knowledge management and content management.

Knowledge management should not be viewed narrowly. It involves many related research areas. Such as it can be related to learning, innovation, education, memory, culture, human resource management,

Three points:

Improve

Establish knowledge management department

In order to promote the effective implementation and normal operation of knowledge management, enterprises need to set up corresponding knowledge management departments and staff with corresponding skills, and give them corresponding management powers and responsibilities to specifically promote the implementation of knowledge management, otherwise knowledge management will be difficult to adhere to in the end . Under normal circumstances, the organization of the knowledge management department will take the knowledge management committee as the leading and implementing organization, and a leading cadre of the enterprise will serve as the leader of the committee, and will be fully responsible for the work of the committee. The part-time manager is responsible for implementing knowledge management and application promotion, identifying 1-2 full-time or part-time knowledge management members, and is responsible for specific implementation work. Knowledge management is a work involving all members of the company. It not only requires the organization of a knowledge management committee to promote the development of knowledge management, but also the participation and support of every employee of the company ^[6]

Practical application of knowledge management

Knowledge management applications

Knowledge management as a management concept is an activity that requires long-term adherence and efforts to form a culture. From this concept, it is clear that knowledge management is not a project, so it cannot be managed in accordance with the organization and operation of project management. But this is not to say that the ideas and methods of project management cannot be applied to knowledge management. As the meaning of project management is recognized by more people, some ideas in project management have gradually evolved into universally applicable management concepts. These ideas also apply to knowledge management.

Knowledge management research institutions are mainly divided into several categories, one is a state-owned research institution (such as a social science research center), one is a joint venture research institution (such as Burt Consulting), and the third category is an international research institution (such as SHRM). Relatively speaking, state-owned research institutions are more academic, joint venture research institutions are more pragmatic, and international research institutions are more future-oriented. ^[7]

There are many goals for knowledge management, such as passing the right knowledge to the right people at the right time, improving the organization's competitiveness, promoting organizational innovation, protecting the organization's knowledge assets, and avoiding the loss of knowledge with the loss of talent , Get more business benefits, and more. When your organization decides to implement KM, it may be to obtain all or some of the benefits listed above, but they cannot be the goal of guiding specific knowledge management practice activities. Because all of the previous statements are not in line with the SMART principle of project management, that is,

S-Specific

M-Measurable Measurable Results

What A-Attainable can achieve

R-Realistic is reasonable, it can be combined with actual work

T-Trackable

What kind of knowledge management goals are in line with SMART principles? For example, to improve the competitiveness of an organization, it can be embodied in market share, user acceptance rate, profit improvement, etc. according to clear and measurable principles. However, these indicators are affected by various factors, and they cannot accurately determine which ones are brought by knowledge management. Moreover, this target is not targeted and instructive to knowledge management practices, and does not conform to the principles of R and T. , So it's not an ideal goal. As a management concept, knowledge management needs to be implemented through specific activities. The ideal goal should also be combined with specific activities. Just like a person who says he often participates in sports activities, he may often go to the gym, or he may run or swim frequently. No matter what he does, his sports activities must be reflected through a specific activity. He participates in physical activities for physical health, but health is not a good goal. People who use physical health to guide their exercise may in most cases be formal. The real goal must be combined with specific activities, such as daily fitness. 30 minutes, 5000 meters and so on. This is also the case for knowledge management. When discussing research, you can say how knowledge management is. When it is really going to be implemented, you can't just talk about culture and ideas. It must be implemented in specific activities. For example, IBM has e-workplace. , HP has connex, HP China has a book club (although the recent departure of Gao Jianhua has caused some doubts about the role of the book club), Siemens has shareNet, Accenture has Knowledge Xchange, and so on. Knowledge management goals that conform to the SMART principle should also be combined with specific activities and set for specific activities. The goals we listed earlier are actually more suitable as vision rather than goals. Therefore, the process of an organization starting to implement knowledge management can be like this. Defining your own vision is the problem you most want to solve through knowledge management; choosing one or more specific activities that are suitable for your situation; formulating these activities A goal in line with SMART principles; then the process of PDCA begins, which is planning, execution, inspection, and action.

Overview of Strategic Project Management

Enterprise strategic project management is a new concept of project management. It is a project management method serving corporate strategy and requires the participation of every employee from the top to the grassroots level. With the support of a comprehensive project management information system, a systematic thinking method is used. To solve enterprise-wide project management issues, and to integrate the concepts and methods of corporate strategic project management into corporate culture.

Proposal of Strategic Project Management

Knowledge management practice background

From a practical point of view, the current status of project management in most Chinese companies is not optimistic. Field surveys of many companies have found that the current project management activities of Chinese companies have the following characteristics: There is no special person or organization to conduct enterprise project management activities. Individuals or departments often take some countermeasures independently for the tasks (projects) in their work, lacking a systematic and overall nature. Furthermore, some enterprises and departments do not have the concept and awareness of project and project management at all; project management in enterprises is basically a passive management, and the common phenomenon is temporary, one-time coping activities; project management activities in enterprises are often Transient or discontinuous, there is no corresponding summary accumulation after the event; lack of systematic and scientific guidance of the project management theory and method at the overall corporate development strategy level. Therefore, compared to the project management life cycle module, functional area module, and method and tool module, the development of enterprise project management, which is an important content of the project management public knowledge module, is still in its infancy in China, and it is a weak link in Chinese project management research. It is an urgent need to strengthen the link.

In practice, almost all large companies in the West have departments and project managers who specialize in project management, and SMEs also cooperate with project management consulting companies or experts to manage their projects through different forms. For example, the chairman of Flnorz summed up his experience in the project environment in the past 20 years and pointed out: "When the project manager has the greatest rights and responsibilities, the task team concept is the most effective way to achieve the project goals; although Fluorz has established the basics Project management principles, but it did not design a single standard project organization and project procedures to apply well to more projects. "By the end of the last century, many American companies finally realized that between strategic management and project management The relationship between them and their importance has shifted from a simple emphasis on strategy formulation to equal emphasis on formulation and implementation, recognizing that project management principles can be applied to both operational plan implementation and strategic plan implementation. These practical activities have made them realize that enterprise project management should not manage several independent projects in isolation. The effectiveness of enterprise project management activities must be measured from the perspective of the enterprise as a whole, and companies are increasingly aware of the strategy from a system perspective. The importance of project management activities.

Knowledge management theory background

From a theoretical point of view, although the history of mankind can be said to be the history of project management in a broad sense, the term "project" was actually proposed and researched only in the 1940s and 1950s. The huge success of project management in the "Manhattan Plan" in the United States has aroused widespread concern in the theoretical community. Since then, research on project management has gradually become systematic and specialized, and project management has finally become an independent discipline in business management. , And widely used in many industries such as IT, finance, services and engineering. Project management maximizes the internal and external resources of the organization in terms of thinking, operating methods and management modes, fundamentally improves the management staff's workflow, and greatly improves operational efficiency. Although there have been many mature theoretical achievements in project management so far, in terms of enterprise project management in a highly uncertain environment, foreign research has only a history of more than 20 years.

Since the 1980s, with the breakthrough of project management theory in western developed countries, its application has become more and more extensive, extending from the traditional "engineering project" to a wide range of "one-time tasks" in various industries. Although the "one-time task" became the object of project management at that time, there were inconsistent factors between it and long-term organizations (as opposed to "project" temporary organizations, such as enterprises or government departments). The focus of the "single project" project management method is on the realization of the "single project" itself. Therefore, when conducting multiple projects in the same organizational context, various conflicts will inevitably occur. Each "single project" pursues the realization of its own goals, and the result may be that although some of the "single project" goals have been achieved, the goals of the entire long-term organization have not been achieved; The mutual restraint between them cannot be realized. It can be seen that a long-term organization lacking a project management operation platform cannot effectively implement project management, and the requirements of project management survival call for the emergence of enterprise project management. But for long-term organizations to provide support for project management, it is necessary to establish an organizational management system that is compatible with project management, so that long-term organizations can provide the "temporary" and "flexible" requirements required for project management. It is required to provide an effective implementation platform for project management within the enterprise. Enterprise project management is a management method and model for long-term organizations that is gradually formed with the widespread application of project management in long-term organizations (such as enterprises or government departments).

The early concept of enterprise project management is based on project-based companies, which refers to "managing projects throughout the enterprise", that is, focusing on the realization of overall strategic goals at the enterprise level and managing many projects in the enterprise. For example, Microsoft researchers have proposed EPM solutions, which are specifically designed for enterprises to centrally manage and share project information. The solution can achieve three types of goals: centralized storage of internal standardized project and resource information to achieve efficient project information sharing, analysis, and management; decision-makers can use it to obtain a broad view of company-wide activities and corresponding status, thereby Perform portfolio analysis and risk management and make sound operational decisions; project managers and project team members and project partners can create project plans and track, report, analyze, and control projects through a web-based collaboration interface.

With the development and change of the external environment, the widespread application of project management methods in long-term organizations is no longer limited to the traditional "project-based companies". Traditional production and operation-oriented enterprises and non-enterprise organizations such as government departments are also widely implemented. Project management. As international project management research pays more and more attention to enterprise project management research, enterprise project management has gradually formed its own system, which includes three subsystems: "multi project management", "portfolio management", and "program management". At this point, enterprise project management has become synonymous with a long-term organization (not limited to enterprise organization) management approach. The essence of enterprise project management is gradually shown as a long-term organizational management method centered on "projects". Its leading idea is "management by project". Its core is an organization management system based on project management. It has transformed the management of long-term organizations from "function-oriented" and "process-oriented" management to "object-oriented" management, and has become an important area of international project management research.

Knowledge management applications

At the IPMA Global Conference in Berlin, Germany in June 2002, Enterprise Project Management (EPM) was one of the six seminar topics. Project management experts from the United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, Germany, Spain and other places exchanged research on the fields of multi project management and portfolio management, fully showing the status of enterprise project management as an important area of international project management research.

Therefore, to date, the theoretical community has applied theoretical knowledge of natural sciences and social sciences such as systems engineering, technical and economic analysis, fuzzy mathematics, cybernetics, computer science, and psychology, and has proposed more systematic project planning, progress, and control. The theoretical method, however, the systematic project management theory also focuses on the project level, and analyzes the specific project in isolation and adopts coping strategies. However, scholars have also begun to study the "integrated management" of projects at different levels of the enterprise from different angles, put forward theories of project group management, and conducted useful explorations in the IT industry, and gradually developed the project management theory at the enterprise level. The research on "strategic perspective" of enterprise project management mode has not yet proposed the corresponding system integration theory method. In other words, under the background of the rapid development of enterprise project management, there is a lack of research on corporate strategic project management, and scientific theoretical methods are urgently needed to guide project management activities under this model.