Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Ettore Bolisani, Marco Paiola and Enrico Scarso
Conversely, <strong>the</strong>re is apparently a direct relationship with <strong>the</strong> characteristic <strong>of</strong> services provided: as
one would expect <strong>the</strong> more services are standardised, <strong>the</strong> more knowledge is reused.
Table 10: Level <strong>of</strong> knowledge reuse by type <strong>of</strong> services delivered
Type <strong>of</strong> services
delivered
Reuse classes (% <strong>of</strong> reused knowledge)
0-24% 25-49% 50-74% ≥75%
Total
Ad hoc 79.5% 69.0% 55.1% 28.2% 66.7%
Standard 20.5% 31.0% 44.9% 71.8% 33.3%
4.6 Use <strong>of</strong> ICT
In this context, it was not appropriate to talk about <strong>the</strong> use <strong>of</strong> sophisticated knowledge management
systems. However, <strong>the</strong> study aimed to understand <strong>the</strong> intensity <strong>of</strong> use <strong>of</strong> ICT systems as a possible
prerequisite for <strong>the</strong> adoption <strong>of</strong> more advanced tools or methods.
Table 11: Use <strong>of</strong> ICT tools by KIBS subsector
Use <strong>of</strong> ICT tools
KIBS subsector
Total
(% <strong>of</strong> positive answers)
ICT D&C PFS
ERP 27.9% 4.4% 28.0% 20.0%
Groupware 11.0% 11.4% 19.1% 13.8%
DSS 10.4% 1.9% 10.8% 7.7%
Datawarehouse and data mining 31.2% 6.9% 23.6% 20.5%
E-learning 12.3% 3.2% 11.5% 8.9%
Intranet – LAN 57.1% 28.5% 65.0% 50.1%
Supply chain management 11.7% 0.6% 2.5% 4.9%
Electronic Commerce 20.8% 6.3% 1.9% 9.6%
Website 43.5% 34.1% 42.7% 40.0%
ICT systems are not diffusely employed, with two remarkable exceptions: intranet and local networks
on <strong>the</strong> one hand, and company websites on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r hand (Table 11). In any case, <strong>the</strong> situation is
variegated, and in particular D&C companies are less advanced than <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>rs. Each subsector
shows different attitudes towards different technologies. For example, ICT companies use ERP
modules and Business Intelligence systems more intensely than <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r KIBS, which probably
reflects <strong>the</strong> fact that <strong>the</strong>se firms have a more industrial organisation.
The use <strong>of</strong> ICT systems considerably grows with size for all kinds <strong>of</strong> technology (Table 12). The large
majority <strong>of</strong> companies with more than 9 employees use Intranet/LAN and website. This confirms <strong>the</strong>
fact that <strong>the</strong> use <strong>of</strong> internal email and file exchange as a method <strong>of</strong> internal communication is popular,
especially among <strong>the</strong> largest companies.
Table 12: Use <strong>of</strong> ICT tools by size class
Use <strong>of</strong> ICT tools
(% <strong>of</strong> positive answers)
Size class
1-4 5-9 ≥10
Total
ERP 9.6% 34.7% 42.1% 20.0%
Groupware 6.9% 27.3% 21.1% 13.8%
DSS 2.4% 14.9% 19.3% 7.7%
Datawarehouse and data mining 11.0% 34.7% 38.6% 20.5%
E-learning 5.1% 14.0% 17.5% 8.9%
Intranet – LAN 36.1% 72.7% 73.7% 50.1%
Supply chain management 1.7% 9.1% 12.3% 4.9%
Electronic Commerce 6.5% 9.9% 24.6% 9.6%
Website 29.5% 50.4% 71.9% 40.0%
It is also possible to classify ICT applications based on <strong>the</strong>ir capability to automatically handle highly
structured data (i.e. ERP, DSS, DW, SCM, Electronic commerce) ra<strong>the</strong>r than support unstructured or
varied communications (Groupware, e-learning, Intranet/LAN, Website). The data confirm that 65.2%
<strong>of</strong> companies use at least one unstructured ICT system, and 33.7% at least one structured.
Apparently <strong>the</strong> kind <strong>of</strong> service <strong>of</strong>fered has no influence here.
4.7 Knowledge protection
Since protecting <strong>the</strong> owned knowledge is ano<strong>the</strong>r important issue in <strong>the</strong> KM field, we also investigated
<strong>the</strong> level <strong>of</strong> use <strong>of</strong> knowledge protection mechanisms.
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