Business Strategy and Knowledge Management - Coursework Example

Running Head: BUSINESS STRATEGY AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Business strategy and knowledge management Date Business strategy and knowledge management Introduction Business strategy in a nutshell is the road map that any organization uses to ensure that they acquire a competitive advantage in the market over other companies in the same industry. For an e-Business strategy to be planed in any organization, the management has to familiarize themselves with the business expectations which will enable them to come up with better solutions (King, Marks and Scott 2002, pp.94). The foundation of an effective e-Business strategy is an understanding of the organization’s business goals rather than its e-Business goals. E-Business is a way to assist improvements in an organization’s processes, together with allowing the organization to expand market penetration and geographical markets. For this reason, the processes that will be integrated into the e-Business infrastructure have to be well vast and ready to be integrated into the organization system. It’s therefore evident that the implementations of an e-Business without putting in place the goals and objectives of the organization leads to failure of the e-Business as a whole (King, Marks and Scott 2002, pp.94). On the other hand, knowledge management is a range of exercises used in an organization to recognize, generate, represent, allocate and allow implementation of insight and understanding. These insights and understanding encompass knowledge, either personified in a person or rooted in organizational practice (Delen and Al-Hawamdeh 2009, pp.145). It has become one of the requirements for an organization in e-Business and its growing customer centric focus. For any organization to be able to operate in an e-Business environment, it has to poses good command of knowledge on its market, clients, method and process, regulatory environment, competitors, and the goods and services that they do offer to their consumers. This is attributed to the idea that organizations can, with the introduction of e-Business perform its duties electronically, seamlessly across the world through internet and via intranets which has resulted in the explosion of richness and reach of information and knowledge (Boon & Plessis, 2004, pp73-86). The knowledge management system is now necessary in every organization so as to make sure that value is extracted from knowledge both internal and external to the organization. Thus knowledge management goes hand in hand with business strategy as its efforts mainly focus on organizational goals such as improved performances, innovation, continuous improvement of the organization, competitive advantage and sharing of lessons learned. The article will focus on the way in which Amazon as one of e-Business organization in the world has been able to address the problem of supporting its strategic business goals with the introduction and ongoing management of its knowledge management. In order to accomplish the task, it will look at a number of factors such as; the strategic business goals of Amazon, the problems that the organization faces and lastly the way in which they have been able to address the problems in relation to its strategic business goals and knowledge management. Amazon.com, Inc is an American founded transnational electronic commerce organization. Founded back in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and later on launched online in 1995. The organization started off as an online bookstore but later on branched out its products to toys, apparel, computer software, electronics, music CDs & Mp3s and many more (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). It has been the leading e-Business organization worldwide thus gaining the loyalty of its consumers. They have provided online services without any incidences. The organization sells their products online and one is assured of receiving the ordered commodity at the stipulated time frame without any delay or fraud incidences (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). Amazon’s strategic business goals and business objectives According to Stahl, G. and Fowler, G. (2009) in their article in the Wall Street journal, the mission of Amazon’s company is to be able to provide an avenue which is online and linking information that is necessary for location and purchase of any product by its customers. They do this with the mind that what the customers want is not illegal or prohibited from purchasing or selling in the country or government. These authors further mention that, one of the objectives of Amazon Company which is at the top priority is to achieve better leadership in the market by establishing itself and obtaining a short term profit level (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). Although the company has been able to raise about one million worth of products every year, its goal remains making reasonable profits for investors. This objective is only possible if the company adopts the strategy of revolutionary merchandizing and proper distribution methods. Further, the success of the company is thought is thought to strategically rely on handling of the marketing strategies of the company. By doing things in a realistic manner because the company is one that deals with e-commerce, the company will be able to achieve success (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). The other goal that Amazon looks forward to attain is gaining trust from each client who purchases their commodity or services. The company expects to have multiple contacts with its clients and multiple transactions. For several years, trust has been the major quality that Amazon Company has tried to gain over the years from their customers in relation to its competitors. They have always put the priorities of the customers top so as they develop and build a strong reputation within the company (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). Amazon’s strategy has been aligned with the goal of building their brand name in the market in that whenever a client visits the web, they find it easy to identify themselves with the organization. This is mainly achieved through the quality of their goods and services. Amazon is therefore utilizing the website so as to be able to make its services and products to be accepted by many of its customers (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). Other than that, they have also improved on the way they deal with their client in such a manner that they feel free to share with them on what other people feel about their products. The customer care and personal relations departments have the necessary skills to handle every individual who visits the company either through their website or physically. When a client feels like he could give a contribution over the internet, the customer relations department answers these questions promptly (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). Proper introduction of quality control department in the organization and the use of the customer’s views about their products is another strategy that the company uses. This is the main reason why the organization publishes their customers’ views in the web as either contributing to either negative or positive views (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). Since there is no success without challenges, Amazon in the process of gaining success, has faced several ups and downs which have come into being through one way or another. Nonetheless, they have been able to handle some of the issue in strategic ways. The main problems which the company has been facing include the following. Problems encountered 1. Rival Emerging In the beginning, Amazon was the only e-book organization in the market. After some years, the emergence of other companies which produce similar products to this company, offered stiff competition in the market. The companies introduced the services e-book which was solely the idea of Amazon; some of the organizations include Barnes & Noble e-Bookstore and EBay. This forced Amazon.Com to come up with better strategies that will enable them to stand out in the market. One of the ideas was to improve its e-booking system so as to cover wider regions and also produce quality services. Due to the globalization factor, most organizations are moving to e-Business enabling them to reach most of its targeted customers globally without necessarily traveling to the geographic market hence saving time and money thus reducing the operation costs (King, Marks and Scott 2002, pp.95). 2. Customer-Relations Problem /Privacy Policy This emerged amongst the customers’ relations of whom they could share their shopping habits with others. This forced the organization to come up with new policies which would restrict other consumers from getting access to other people’s information in the web. To add on that, there were differences in prices the consumers paid on the same commodity. This brought more irate shoppers who needed their refund for the extra money that they had paid earlier. Due to online shopping there is no much customer relation as the customer simply relies on the information on the web and decides whether to purchase the product or not. Incase the customer is not satisfied with the product; it becomes difficult to look for the seller to claim back his money. This therefore can lead to lack of customers since they don’t have enough trust on the internet. 3. Kindle Problem In 2009 July, Amazon was reported to have deleted some books from their clients kindle. This brought up controversial issues on their contract of action on their customers. It seemed to be more hurting to some customers especially students who were using the products such as the Animal farm as they could no longer be accessed to the information that they needed. The clients felt disrespected by the management of the organization, as they were neither notified nor asked for their permission before deleting their copies (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). In regard to the way of e-Business advertisement, many organizations have ended up adapting the same way of advertising their products and services to their targeted customers. This has given Amazon difficult time as they have to spend more time and finances to come up with amore distinct way of advertisement compared to that of their competitors in the market (Stahl and Fowler 2009, p. 5). Solutions to the problems To be able to address the problem in the market, Amazon came up with better policies that enabled them to gain back the trust of their customers in the market. As defined earlier, knowledge management is a range of exercises used in an organization to recognize, generate, represent, allocate and allow implementation of insight and understanding; it has been incorporated in their policies so as to attain their strategic business goals back. This is to the fact that knowledge management system makes sure that value is extracted from knowledge internal and external to the organization (Delen and Al-Hawamdeh 2009, pp.143). To start with, Amazon publishes their customers’ views in the web. This has enabled them gain back their customer trust as they feel they are recognized as part of the organization. Other than that, the views also help them to judge what their customers feel about their products and thus being able to come up with better products in the market. This was through the incorporation of customer relationship management which enables organization to be more efficient and effective in delivering products and services to its clients, thus establishing consumers delight, knowledge on consumers will have to be administered to make sure that the services that they offer are those that will address customer needs. In order to retain back the trust of clients after the kindle problem, the organization strategically decided to win their customers trust by returning their purchasing price and an offer of Amazon gift certificate or a check of $30. This was after the management had resolved to implement a new perspective of knowledge management so as to fit in this ‘new world’ of e-Business. There has been a need to develop and improve the understanding of knowledge management in most of the organization due to the paradigm shift in the businesses where most businesses are now turning their heads to the e-commerce. By developing an accurate and better knowledge management, it acts as an enabler of the information strategy for this e world of business. Amazon mainly uses knowledge management to focus on how the organization can effectively manage, store, retrieve and enlarge important properties of the organization and this is what is required mainly in this field of knowledge management (Boon & Plessis, 2004, pp 73-86). This problem of customer relation, the organization came up with the customer care department whereby all the customers who had complains, received there services and were satisfied. This was incorporated with the introduction of the suggestion place where every customer was free to give his commend depending on how he was served and if he was satisfied with the product. This was a credit to the Amazon Company as most of the comments were positive thus attracting more customers to purchase their product. One of the customers was asked during the market research why he had bought this book called, ‘knowledge management’ and he simply said that he had read a customer’s commend and that drove him too to buy. This policy did not only solve the customer relation factor but also in a way markets the company and is building the brand name. They also implemented privacy policy that fully eradicated the problem of kindle e book deletion (Boon & Plessis, 2004, pp 73-86). To address the issue of advert, the organization came up with different web for each state thus making it difficult for other organization in different state to duplicate their method. To this, they also forward some of the new products to their clients either in their mails or their kindle to those who have. Conclusion In conclusion, it is evident that for any organization to attain competitive advantage in the market, they have to embrace knowledge management in relation to its strategic business goals. This has been the only Amazon’s key to success in market (Delen and Al-Hawamdeh 2009, pp. 142). Knowledge management is the key to success for every organization as it enables them to familiarize themselves with what is going on in the market and thus planning ahead. It gives an organization the light to know what is ahead of them at any given time. Together with consumer relation management in place, it gives an organization good opportunity to be able to come up with better strategic business goals for their organization. Reference: Delen, D and S. Al-Hawamdeh (2009). A Holistic Framework for Knowledge Discovery and Management. Communications of the ACM, vol.52 (6): pp.141-145 Drew, S. (Jan. 1999) Building Knowledge Management into strategy: Making Sense of a new Perspective, Long Range Planning vol. 32 (1): pp. 130-136 King, W.R, Marks, P.V., and McCoy Scott 2002. The most important issues in knowledge management. Communications of the ACM, vol.45 (9): 93-97 Stahl, G. and Fowler, G. (2009) Corporate News: Amazon Shares Hit Record As Profit Triggers Frenzy, Wall Street Journal. New York, N.Y.: Oct 24, 2009. pg. B.5 Read More