Page 359 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling
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Well-selected metrics serve as guidelines, indicators and instruments and are decisive both for the requested KM strategy and the further development of the KM system. The target should be the production of some, considerably hard metrics, applicable for direct input in the day-to-day operations, in contrast to a number of weak, uncontrollable outcomes, which cannot be confirmed. It should focus on the knowledge, which is the most valuable for the organisation, hard to copy, rare and difficult to substitute when making decisions and selecting for types of metric variables to apply, as well as should emphasize on the integration of internal and external knowledge to be measured by instruments, with impact on results in future.
- A good comparative instrument is benchmarking, implemented and used as a starting point, but not as a metric with strategic implementation value and limited suitability for the comparison with other organisations, inside and outside the own organisation’s line of business. On the internal, organisational and operational level benchmarking is not a strong guide to the development of the internal KM and KT systems.
- Another instrument is the Quality Function Deployment (QFD), defined as a method for developing a design quality aiming at satisfying the client and then translating the client’s demand into design targets and major quality assurance points, to be used throughout the production phase (Akao & Mazur, 2003, Lockamy & Khurana, 1995). QFD is able to integrate all stakeholder’s input to provide focussed directions for the improvement of the organisation’s KM system. There is software, readily available in the market, to automate QFD’s to a high degree. Strategic targets can be transferred to dedicated tasks, followed by the decomposition into measurable and manageable activities.
- The Balance Score Card (BSC) method is really useful to combine KM with technology competitiveness and strategic goals for providing metrics (Lee, Lee & Kang, 2005). The BSC assists in the translation of the KM vision into activities, the bottom-up communication of the KM strategic goals, the validation of the presented metrics and the option to analyse the long-term results of KM. The application of BSC in the organisation’s KM system will establish a sturdy and close link between profitability, clients, markets, employees, outcomes and the system.
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