Knowledge Management

Module 5: Knowledge Management

Assignment 2

Consistency and efficiency drive savings. Each in their own way, Nestle, Pella, and Volkswagen were delinquent of this. They were self-impaired by their current processes (or lack of) and legacy systems. All three recognized the opportunities by investing in a new Knowledge Management system. They would be able to integrate the current systems which would bring transparency and visibility to the entire business.

Nestle had 200 operating companies and subsidiaries in 8 countries, all running independently. Redundancies such as the different coding and 29 different prices of vanilla demonstrated this and the opportunities that would benefit Nestle in becoming one highly integrated company. They wanted to leverage these and introduce economies of scale. By implementing common systems, they would create savings through volume buying and facilitate data sharing.

Pella had aging, incompatible IT systems which were unreliable and becoming expensive to maintain. They desired full visibility of the company: an end-to-end integration of business processes.  By replacing their incompatible legacy systems, Pella’s vision was to harmonize sales, service, and manufacturing. Integration across the entire business would allow visibility across the entire organization resulting in optimization and synchronism between the departments.

Volkswagen was a global company with highly localized and departmental processes and systems. The lack of common processes and information design was impairing their ability to take full advantage of their resources in an extremely competitive industry. They needed to maximize employee productivity, shorter cycles, and lower costs while being able to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Their success was directly related to their ability to be responsive and make quick decisions.

Each company took a different approach on implementing their knowledge system. Nestle started with the...