Lotus Notes: A Client/Server Database Application
1. In the mid-1995, HP took various types of knowledge management initiatives which include (Andrea, 2016),
i. A series of workshops were held by Bob Walker who is HP’s CIO and Vice President and Chuck Sieloff who is Manager of ISST abbreviated as Information Systems Services and Technology. The core concept of such workshops was to create a friendly environment for diverse group of people and make them sit together to share their knowledge management skills with each other through discussions, unofficial meetings and by managing plans for knowledge management.
ii. Joe Schneider, an ISST staff member prepared a series of many HP sites whereby one or the other type of dedicated knowledge management was in progress.
iii. Approaches to knowledge sharing for HP educators were worked upon.
iv. A project named “The Company’s research arm” was proposed by the library business within HP laboraties to arrange a counsellor for human resource knowledge inside HP laboraties and to different departments of the company.
v. An almanac of HP professionals named as Connex which was developed by Tony Carrozza adapted a Web browser which was blended with relational database. This relational database contains expert people’s profiles and guides along with best skills of individuals who are brilliant in respective topics. By searching in this database the searcher can easily ink to that expert’s home page.
vi. A group named as PPO knowledge management group initiated knowledge Links, which is a Web-based compilation of product advancement intelligence from different PPO activities.
2. The knowledge administration initiatives made a great impact on HP. Some of the impacts were,
i. By workshops, people got to know about the different aspects of knowledge and knowledge was shared between people.
ii. With the help of Connex it was easy to find a particular expert of the required area and hence the work would be done easily resulting in good profits for the company.
iii. By having a list of HP sites where knowledge exchange was in process it became easy to learn the key concepts of knowledge management from those sites.
iv. The project “company’s research arm” explained the human knowledge resource available which was a help to understand the latest resources in use. The employees got an idea of the resources which are used in the company.
v. The PPO knowledge administration group initiated knowledge links which included knowledge from reporters and editors which resulted in overall knowledge of the employees and hence the knowledge gazed was maximum.
Training Review: A Consumer Detail Compilation
3. Lotus Notes is a client/server database application which share information in the form of email, messages. Lotus notes has built-in template which can be modified easily. It contributes an overall framework which is required to set up, evaluate, use and regulate scattered applications. Lotus notes makes the modification of the document easy for the user as it is easy to embed graphics, mathematical tools and many others things in the document. The computer based systems can be accessed by lotus instead of WWW browser. Lotus notes are useful in establishing a knowledge base as the exchange of knowledge becomes easy. Along with this ideas can be exchanged in innovative ways and knowledge base becomes more interesting (Burke, 2003).
The basic importance of knowledge base in knowledge management is that it Improves the decision-making abilities of the people (exchange of knowledge improves decision making in one way or the other).Another important factor is that it makes learning routines of the organizations. It also encourages cultural and traditional changes and modernization.
4. Training Review was a sort of consumer detail which was a compilation of evaluation of guidance basics. Training Review never succeeded because the trainers were not able to believe the value of course hand outs or foreign workers online. Along with this there was no policy to attract participants by rewarding them. So, as a result it was merged with Trainer’s Trading Post. The educators were not much aware of the idea and they were not able to believe the concept as proper information was not shared with them.
Karney could have explained the worth of the course more precisely not only offline but also by conducting workshops and presentations so that the educators come to know the core concept of the project. This can help employees to get familiar with the process. Along with this, he could have taken steps to reward people even for their participation which would not only motivate them but the quality of the review would have increased. He could have made it mandatory for each HP educator to participate. Feedbacks from the educators on the consumer report must have been taken. The educators who were part of this consumer report can discuss about the experience they gained. They can also share their reviews with other educators.
5. Karney followed various creative approaches so that he gets distinct papers to the expert system. The very first thing he did was that he gave out complimentary synopsis authorization to few advised users. After this he did promotions of the new knowledge base which elaborated contributions, questions rising and answers to those questions were given. Whenever an advanced expert system was entrenched, he again provided 3,000 freebie airline miles for the prime 50 readers along with 500 miles for anybody posting a submission.
Knowledge Base: Improving Learning Routines
The consequence of these approaches was that more than two-thirds of the settled educator association had scanned partially one posting. Apart from this, more than a third acknowledged a posting and a remark on their own. But in spite of this Karney was not happy as he expected more out of his initiatives. Also he felt that that regardless of his experiments of complimentary miles and email and his voice encouragement, he realised that there was very few fresh contributions to his knowledge base. The participation needs were very less. The participants were also very less in number and the popularity of knowledge bases was very less and hence few people got to know about the initiatives of Karney.
6. Karney made an announcement that there was an uncertainty with this knowledge base as nobody knew what actually was going on. The educators complained that they don’t know what is happening in the company. And hence Karney concluded that if people will not be having any idea about the knowledge base they won’t be able to participate in the event and hence less papers will be uploaded and there would be few discussions. Apart from this Karney made up his mind that this knowledge base would be a flop when he took so many good initiatives but still the result was not what he expected.
He made groups of different communities so that they can share different knowledge base tools. He even made contribution to knowledge base collection a mandatory thing and even gave free rewards to the participants. Karney established three different knowledge base out of which Trainer’s Training Post was the only offering for the future. Trainer’s Trading Post was an analysis directory on training cases. Gradually it was concluded that the educators can attach material to the submissions which were already a part of Training Post, the educators came to know that knowledge base is a dominating medium.
7. The PPO knowledge executive association created Knowledge Links, which was Network-based compilation of product development ability with respect to distinct PPO objectives (Alle, 2012). Knowledge Links contained intelligence which can be shared by expertise reports and revisers from various interviews. The same concept was used again and again with the PPO customers to make them understand what is the core concept of knowledge management. Along with this only the summarization of the system was given to the customers but the system was never built .The goals of briefing knowledge across PPO was overly ambitious which was the main reason why the system was not build. It was not an easy task to create it. And as the Links were accessed by more and more PPO customers their expectations with the system went high which the company was not able to fulfil. Also the company did not have such educators who can build up the system exactly in the way it is required.
8. Lately, the PPO knowledge management group is engaged into three programs. The basic description of the projects is as follows,
i. The first project consists of competitor information for HPs Components group. The major risks involved with this project are that it is against the laws to get competitor’s information. It is considered unethical and can affect the company’s reputation and can also lead to expel of the company.
ii. The second project incorporates creation of a technology-based combination of fundamental and alternate research material. By the creation of web-based interface it would be easy for the competitors to access the research information for HP by accessing that interface. This could be solved by using different knowledge base papers and get an idea of the knowledge involved with these technologies.
iii. The third project will manage international marketing intelligence(Muhlbacher, 2006). The difficulty in implementing this project will be that all of the international marketing intelligence will be difficult to capture. And it will not be an easy task to find out the best one. As a result, if this intelligence is used in knowledge bases will be easy to find the best expert.
Reference
Alle, V., 2011. The Knowledge Evolution. 3rd ed.UK: Routledge.
Andrea, B., 2016. Knowledge Management Initiatives and Strategies in Small and Medium Enterprises. 4th ed. USA: IGI Global.
Calabria, J. and Burke, D., 2003. Lotus Notes. USA: Que Publishing.
Duff, T., 2008. 7 Things IT Managers Should Know About Lotus Notes, [online] Available at: <https://www.cio.com/article/2431837/enterprise-software/7-things-it-managers-should-know-about-lotus-notes.html> [Accessed 9 December 2017].
Holsapple, C., 2004. Handbook of Knowledge Management. 2nd ed. Germany: Springer Science & Business Media.
Mertins, K., Heisig, P. and Vorbeck, J., 2013. Knowledge Management: Concepts and Practices. 2nd ed. Germany: Springer Science & Business Media.
Montano, B., 2005. Innovations of Knowledge Management. USA: Idea Group Inc. (IGI).
Muhlbacher, H., Leihs, H. and Dahinger, L., 2006. International Marketing: A Global Perspective. 2nd ed. USA: Cengage Learning.