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

Jamal El-Den and Xin Zhou
5. After testing weaknesses and strengths <strong>of</strong> processes.
6. Customer data
Organizational explicit knowledge is easily acquired by processing information using different data
mining technologies. In contrast, organizational tacit knowledge which is based on communication,
collaboration, and cooperation is hard to be shared and externalized and requires a proper
collaborative working environment and system. The KM system toge<strong>the</strong>r with a group-support system
for collaboration and knowledge externalization facilitate <strong>the</strong> release <strong>of</strong> ideas, opinions, thoughts,
expertise, and experience which are essential for <strong>the</strong> phases <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> BPR process. Consequently, this
leads to knowledge mapping <strong>of</strong> tacit into explicit knowledge which, combined with <strong>the</strong> results from
data mining form <strong>the</strong> basis for <strong>the</strong> to-be system being developed.
The Tiered Knowledge Management Model (TKMM) below demonstrates <strong>the</strong> above arguments.
Figure 2: Tiered Knowledge Management Model (TKMM)
3.3 Business/Project Environment analysis
BPR takes place not only based on “demands for change” within <strong>the</strong> organization but also as a result
<strong>of</strong> analysis <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> environment, competitiveness, buyers power, suppliers power, and rivalry among
competitors. Today, strategic planners and developers recognize that process change initiatives are
also highly dependent and driven by environmental competitive with factors such as deregulation,
globalization, technical obsolescence, demands for better customer service and past failures, ra<strong>the</strong>r
than merely <strong>the</strong> desire for internal productivity gains (William & James,1998). In this situation, KM also
acts as an enabler for better execution <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> processes/projects involved in <strong>the</strong> BPR phases.
Organization, under such constant pressures, cannot afford to change <strong>the</strong> way <strong>the</strong>y do business and
reengineer new systems, projects and processes constantly. They should quickly provide better
solutions and services for <strong>the</strong> processes based on existing knowledge/know-how/expertise <strong>of</strong> existing
processes and functionalities, hence <strong>the</strong> need for support from an effective and efficient KB which
provides <strong>the</strong> necessary knowledge about how, what, and who does what in <strong>the</strong> organization. These
act as an integral support mechanism for <strong>the</strong> developers or engineers.
3.4 Project environment analysis
The three driving forces behind this radical change are an extension <strong>of</strong> Porter’s (Porter, 1980, 1985,
1990) work on competitive advantage, and were summarized by (Hammer & Champy, 1993) as:
Customers who can now be very diverse, segmented, and are expectant <strong>of</strong> consultation,
Competition that has intensified to meet <strong>the</strong> needs <strong>of</strong> customers in every niche, and
Change that has become pervasive, persistent, faster and in some markets a pre-requisite.
Business intelligence applications are also used to ga<strong>the</strong>r and organize data and information existing
in internal sources (Luan & Serban, 2002). Some <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se applications, such as “MicroStrategy
Transactor”, can “collect data from back-end databases, Web servers, and enterprise resource
planning (ERP) systems, according to predefined criteria. It <strong>the</strong>n pushes that information out as
actionable content in eXtended Markup Language (XML) format, so a desktop computer with a Web
browser, a personal digital assistant, and even a telephone enabled with <strong>the</strong> Wireless Application
Protocol (WAP) subset <strong>of</strong> XML can receive it. A user who has received this information can send back
an action request which in turn prompts a back-end system to complete a transaction” (Gill, 2000).
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