Knowledge management is an important tool for acquiring, disseminating, and utilizing knowledge assets for the business’ benefits. Many businesses have gained global strength that enables them to compete with multinational corporations due to their ability to manage knowledge.
For instance, Amazon.com an online business has utilized its knowledge to enhance the business performance. Knowledge Management is one of the sources of competitive advantage in the improvement of their services and dispatch of the products within a short time (Turban, 2012).
Many global firms, engaged in e-commerce are proverbial on an ongoing basis which takes into consideration the customers buying behaviors and attitudes in order to gain a large market share.
These firms employ most of their techniques and resources to analyze and manage the customer information at hand without leaking to competitors (Turban, 2012). It is, therefore, prudent to say that Knowledge management plays a vital role in integrating e-commerce with other internal processes aimed at increasing business productivity and efficiency in the long run.
Knowledge management in an e-commerce platform is a starting point for sharing of thoughts, lessons, and skills with the business stakeholders, which is aimed at increasing business efficiency and effectiveness in all the processes undertaken by the business. Moreover, instances of duplication of efforts and frequent mistakes will be a past issue as employees understand the processes and loopholes during service delivery. Therefore, high standards will be an eventual outcome in promoting the e-commerce and higher revenues in the long run.
Knowledge of business clients, business partners and their needs is extremely essential in building and strengthening a mutual and profitable relationship. Knowledge Management is vital in developing e-commerce services and contents to give the traditional marketing a correct direction, and allow customers generate their own contents and services.
With revolving e-commerce platform and internet connectivity, knowledge about customers’ tastes and preference is highly paramount. Understanding such tastes and preferences aims at delivering customer-valued products and allows customers to suggest their ideas. This will enhance the loyalty and trust within customers, which result in mutual benefits in the long run.
In e-commerce (EC) arena, Knowledge Management is an effective tool for improving the organizational internal processes. This will in turn help the management to reduce the overall operational costs if utilized efficiently. Moreover, a suitable content, description of the Knowledge Management assets transform a business to a cash cow. This is possible by retaining customers and gaining new customers from the competitors. At the same time, it provides information on demand and supply factors in the market (Turban, 2012).
Businesses conducting their trading activities through the internet find it necessary to acquire knowledge of their customers. They employ statistical methods such as surveys, questionnaires, and customers comments from the discussion forums. Businesses will also require information about other stakeholders such as the suppliers, rivals and the company internal processes.
Such information is highly vital for the growth and enhancement of the e-commerce platform and requires a lot of concerted efforts to manage and deploy information to relevant departments for analysis. Given the importance of the Knowledge Management in supporting e-commerce, Knowledge Management needs adequate measures and systems to ensure that information get to the right persons within the structure of the business (Turban, 2012).
In conclusion, without Knowledge Management, e-commerce would not experience either growth or expansion. This is attributed to the failure to consider the essential stakeholders and processes. Therefore, Knowledge Management is an integral to e-commerce growth.
Reference
Turban, E. (2012). Electronic commerce 2012: A managerial and social networks perspective. Pearson.