Knowledge Management Strategic Plan

QUESTION 1

a) Key objectives of plan and how they integrate with organisational goals

A knowledge management strategic plan helps the company in managing information, data and knowledge in such a way that the efficiency and productivity of company gets improved. These plans need to be formulated in such a direction that company goals and objectives are achieved within the set deadline while using resources of company. Woolworths Ltd is a large Australian company that deals in retail, hotels, liquor, general merchandise and everyday services (Tseng, 2014). The company is on its journey of becoming a purpose-led organisation by grouping various purposes in order to provide high satisfactions to customers by focusing more on their experience. It is important that company use the information, data and knowledge of all its groups in such a manner that it can provide maximum benefits to all its stakeholders. The chosen company aims at providing customer-centric goods and services so that their brand image can improve and customers put Woolworths first over all the other companies. It also aims at bringing improvements in all its products and services so that the changing needs and wants of customers can be efficiently met. Order assignment help from our experts! 

Objectives

• To provide training to employees for enhancing their current level of knowledge in order to manage the organisational knowledge.
• To develop an effective system of sharing information to achieve better co-ordination among different departments in order to create innovative products as part of knowledge management.
• To provide effective knowledge about building healthy relationship with customers in order to make them highly satisfied.

The above-mentioned objectives of the current knowledge management plan of Woolwoths which is properly integrated with its main objectives. The first objective of KM plan is about imparting necessary information to the existing employees for making them more capable to carry the tasks appropriately. This can be achieved through training which will be given to those personnel who have potential to handle the pressure and contribute in strategic decision-making (Bosua and Venkitachalam, 2013).

Second objective being designing and development of a system free from errors so that flow of information does not get interrupted. It is significant as all the units can synchronise with each other only when there is proper sharing of information.

The last objective is providing useful and right guidelines to the management for establishing strong relationships with customers. This is going to help Woolworths in retaining them for a long time. Ultimately, all the above objectives are going to provide it competitive advantage leading to remarkable position in the market. This can be reflected in the profit and sales.

b) Strategies, tools & methods required to achieve objectives & type of personnel involved

The above mentioned objectives of Woolworths can be achieved by proper implementation of strategic knowledge management plan so that all its data, information and knowledge can be efficiently stored and utilised. The strategies, tools and methods which can help in achieve the above mentioned objectives of Woolworths are:

Objective 1- Training to employees for developing team with strategic capabilities

Training is the process through which helps in human resource development. It is useful in building new skills together with enhancement of existing ones with a view to improve (Pfeffer and . et. al, 2013). It is important for Woolworths to make its staff aware about the changes that have taken place for carrying their job effectively. For this purpose, it has opted for on-the-job training in which employees are going to be given training at the workplace. The main benefit of this is that every individual in the company can attend it without any excuse which makes it easy for the management to explain things at one place. Apart from this, technology-based learning is also going to be used by Woolworths for making the employees understand the practical scenarios. Since, it is a new way of teaching the staff by showing them how the activities are going to be carried. This is going to help in clear division of activities on the basis their existing as well as new skills resulting in development of strategic capabilities. For this purpose, human resource manager should be assigned who is the authority to manage the employees, determine their needs and provide training for their development. It is going to be the responsibility of HR manager only to implement plan. With this, Woolworths can have better management of knowledge the workforce can have the adequate information for undertaking the tasks assigned to them (Cohen, and Olsen, 2015).

Objective 2- Development of effective system of sharing information

Information is the key to success in every task. Without proper guidelines and details, it is impossible for the management to have a system through which information can be exchanged. It is useful for long term success as everything depends upon the system which can be used for extracting the necessary information. The main use of this is to make decisions which may be strategic as well. The structure adopted by Woolworths is network structure in which every team and employee is given their own portal through which the head of every department are going to co-ordinate. Network structure assists in developing decentralization in the organisation where there are managers for controlling and co-ordinating. It is going to use e-mail and videos for having communication from one location to another (Farsani and. et. al 2014). The manager of every department is going to be held responsible for the implementation of knowledge management plan. In addition to this, IT department will make the information system by mitigating the errors. These tools are going to be beneficial for various departments for communicating in a better way so that existing knowledge about the internal activities can be put at one place. This can be used by the heads of department resulting in good knowledge management.

Objective 3- Guidance to management for building healthy relationship with customers

Customers are the valuable asset for every organisation which help in increasing the sales and profit. They have certain expectations and demands which should be met by the companies in order to provide them high satisfaction. There should be proper guidance to the management for helping it to formulate policies for engaging the customers. For this purpose, it can provide special offers to target consumers in order to attract them to buy the products of Woolworths. Every individual look for promotional offers before buying things from a store (Karamitri, Talias and Bellali, 2017). The person responsible for this is top management who should develop appropriate policies which are to be used by rest of individuals. There can be a separate section for this purpose. Also, higher authorities are going to be the one for the implementation of knowledge management plan. The benefit of the same is that target customers can be attracted to the goods and make the purchases on a regular basis. Also, there can be different analysis for gathering the information about customers' choices and preferences on the basis of which various strategies and policies are to be developed. This is the way in which Woolworths can attain success in every tasks. Having the right knowledge about customers can help the company become successful as compared to its competitors.

The type of personnel that will be required to implement the strategic KM plan are the HR manager and leaders of the company who can by their efficient management and leadership can integrate the KM plan in company (Ooi, 2014). Democratic leadership style and participative management can help the company in implementing the KM strategic plan in an efficient manner. It is important that the employees are involved by managers and leaders in making efficient decisions as their opinions and views can also be involved. This can help in increasing the involvement of employees and encouraging them to accept changes so that implementation of plan can be efficiently done. It is also important that competencies and skills of employees must help the company in implementation of law in an appropriate manner. If the employees lack required efficiency and skills, then they must be properly trained so that plan can be implemented effectively. Necessary training, seminars and workshops can help employees in becoming more equipped and ready for integration of KM plan. Need example assignments, Talk to our experts! 

C) Evaluation and monitoring of plan implementation

Monitoring plays an important role in efficient implementation of plan in desired manner and also measuring the results that are expected to be achieved. This is important so that any problems that are faced while plan implementation can be eliminated so that integration of plan can become smooth and effective. It is also important that the effectiveness of plan after getting implemented is evaluated on a regular basis so that positive results can be drawn and company can be benefited from it (Lee and. et. al., 2016). On the other hand, evaluation is the process of measuring the actual output with the standard in order to determine the variance. This help in implementing and integrating the plan with existing processes so that the objectives of strategic KM plan can integrate with the organisational objectives. Monitoring and evaluation of implementation of Knowledge management plan of Woolworths are as follows:

Objective 1- This objective of KM plan is concerned with the training of employees with a view to develop skills which can further help in building strategic capabilities. For the purpose of monitoring this, Woolworths is going to conduct an examination of whatever they have learnt in training sessions. The results of such exams can be helpful in tracking the extent to which the skills and techniques are used by employees in strategic operations. In addition to this, evaluation can be done by applying the Kirkpatrick's Four-Level Training Evaluation model. This model analyse the effectiveness of the training provided in the organisation. It is specifically designed for trainings offered in the corporates. In the context to Woolworths, with the use of this model reaction of employees is going to be assessed and to what extent they will be able to learn the things. The current level of knowledge will be measured with the new level of knowledge so as to judge the capabilities of the staff. Furthermore, their behaviour is going to be considered by looking, whether Woolworths sees a positive change or not. This will reflect the true picture of the employees about the knowledge gained by them. Followed by this, results obtained with the use of this model can provide some helpful information on the basis of which improvements in upcoming training sessions will be carried (Liu and Lee, 2013).

Objective 2- According to this objective, the main target is to focus on building effective information system to be used in the organisation for smooth flow of information. This is going to be monitored by conducting system audit. It helps in ascertaining the errors or defects with a view to reduce them. It gives real time information on the basis of which existing system can be adjusted. On coming to evaluation, the Kirkpatrick model can be used in which the reaction of managers of every department will be observed. This will present a view of the level of acceptance by the managers as they will provide guideline to employees for using the system. Learning factor of this model will assist Woolworths to examine that every head of the unit has understood the utilisation of information system. Positive outcomes can be obtained by making them familiar how to operate them. Behaviour can reflect the extent to which employees will show the resistance to change. If the system is easy to use, there will be positive outcomes and vice versa. Furthermore, the results obtained with this can help Woolworths to simplify the information system in order to make it successful for the company. In this way, Woolworths can use the outcomes for making a decision whether to stick with the same information system or build a new one. This can be judged on the basis of time taken in obtaining the knowledge which is to be used in making decisions (Merat and Bo, 2013).

Objective 3- The third objective is related with providing guidance to organisation’s management and employees so that they can build health relations with customers. This objective is related with the concept of Knowledge management as it requires sharing of knowledge from managers to employees regarding the ways in which customer relations can be effectively build. This objective requires the strategy of promotional offers to be achieved. The strategy of promotional offer includes coupons and discounts due to which customers will be attracted towards the products of Woolworths and ultimately an effective relationship with customers will be build. Ask for marketing assignment help from our experts!    

The above mentioned strategy of promotional offers requires extensive monitoring and evaluation. The model of Kirkpatrick evaluation has four levels which are reaction, learning, behaviour and results (Sigala and Chalkiti, 2014). For the evaluation of promotional offer strategy, the level of behaviour and results can be effectively utilised. In the third level of behaviour, the management of the company will evaluate the behaviour of their customers in regard to identify whether customers are satisfied by the given offers. In the last step of this model, the results of this strategy will be analysed. If the sales and brand equity of Woolworths has enhanced, then it can be said that the strategy of promotional offers has been effectively implemented to achieve the objective of providing guidance to employees to build good customer relations.

CONCLUSION

From the above report it can be concluded that in order to utilise the intellectual and knowledge based assets of company it is important that a strategic knowledge management plan is implemented so that company objectives are achieved efficiently. It also helps in improving the way in which information flows in company thus enhancing effective communication which improves the motivation of employees thereby increasing their productivity. Also KM plan help in utilising information efficiently and improving business processes so that company goals are effectively achieved.

Read Also - Network Segmentation and Security on Shared Infrastructure

UPTO50%

Avail The Benefit Today!

To View this & another 50000+ free

Enter Email

Submit