Paper Title: Content Management or Knowledge Management: Why It Matters To Customers?

Authors:  Oracle

Summary of Content of Paper

The paper discusses the importance of enterprise knowledge management in relation to customer experience.  The authors highlighted the impact of content management and knowledge management approaches to the needs of the customer and specifically mentioned that while enterprise content management is concerned with contents creation at the document level such as non-granular manuals and websites, enterprise knowledge management has its focus on the creation of snippets of knowledge including how-to instructions, procedures for troubleshooting, or answers related to specific products.  The position of the paper is in agreement with the work of Maedche et al (2003), Ndlela and Du (2001), Tiwana (2000), and Grudin (2006).  Further to this, the paper mentions that the quest for knowledge management extends from the users’ appetite for well-formed information, which is required for giving answers to numerous queries originating from daily transactions.  This is termed the findability of information, and is considered in the paper as a solution that provides a different experience with capabilities to help users locate the most-relevant knowledge.  In doing so, the paper posits that knowledge management gives room for automated and intelligence assistance in finding knowledge as also claimed by Aronson et al (2005).

A: Quality of the Research

Is the research question or objective clearly stated?

The paper raised very clear and vivid questions around enterprise content and knowledge management in relation to the customer experience, and the need to build intelligent and automated knowledge management systems to help me realising the findability of information at a granular level.  The approach to answering the questions raised is based on debating through practice, which provided for the analysis of concepts and assertions in order to realise the research objectives. The authors also placed much emphasis on case analysis to derive meaning and understanding of enterprise content and knowledge management in relation to meeting the research’s objectives.

Is the research question interesting and important?

Questions raised in the research are interesting and thought provoking in the perspective of discussing and understanding enterprise content and knowledge management, and its relevance to customers.  The relevance of the questions is also connected to the research’s aim to shed more light into the needs of customers in terms of sales and service interactions to enable companies to help users to quickly locate precise and rightful knowledge for enhancing customer experiences.

Is the work original?

The paper presented an original discuss, which considered the enterprise content and knowledge management of Oracle and its affiliates.  Citations were adequate for the work presented, and all assumptions clarified.

Is the background research clear and relevant?

The authors provided an extensive literature review, which gives the background knowledge for understanding the ideas presented in the paper.  This research background mentions the effect of information on customer experience as well as the key to successful customer experiences (Oracle 2011, pp. 3 – 5).  The paper conveys the general idea of enhancing customer experience through creating, managing, and publishing granular and non-granular information including pages and sites, snippets of knowledge, small-to-large articles related to customer inquiries, and so on.  This is in consonance with the works of Aronson et al (2005) as well as `Loucopoulos and Kavakli (1999).

Are there any ethical problems?

The work presented some ethical issues in terms of customer experiences though such issues were addressed in relation to best practices.

B: The Research Method

Summarise the research method:

The research is exploratory and through customer-based experiences in accessing contents and knowledge in the context of information findability.  The paper dwelt on the method to give credence to the ideas expressed in the work.  As discussed in Stigler et al (1999), exploratory research is pertinent in deriving meaning to a problem that has not been fully investigated, and as such is able to give an insight into the proper perspective of content and knowledge management as it affects customer experiences for an enterprise.

Does the research method seem appropriate for the research question?

The appropriateness of the research method cannot be overemphasised. This is evident in the detailed analysis given and the reference to a combination of factors in describing context and knowledge management in the context of an enterprise for assisting customers to enhance their respective experiences for sales and interactive services.

Are the methods adequately described?

The description of the methods was adequate in the context of the paper, and in relation to the stated research objectives.  Emphasis is laid on the symmetry of content and knowledge management to provide answers to users’ queries on information needs through intelligent and automated assistance throughout the search process.

Were the analyses done correctly?

The paper gave concise and vivid descriptions of customer information needs, and highlighted the relevance of customer experiences in order to fully assess the import of knowledge management for an enterprise.  The paper also gave a distinct differentiation between content and knowledge management as seen in the public domain, and gave a critical analysis of the essence of snippets of knowledge to achieving advanced search techniques such as natural language processing.

Are the conclusions supported by the data?

The conclusion given in the paper is based on the data given and used in the research, and is supported by the data.

C: Quality of Presentation

Is the work well presented?

The presentation of the work is suitable.  All elements of a well-structured paper can be found in the research.  The work is concise and portrays a high level of clarity.  However, the use of mathematical models to establish the correlation between content and knowledge management with customer experiences would have sufficed in place of descriptions.

Is the paper well structured?

The paper is well structured.  All the required details for clarity are comprehensively given, and citations of previous literatures give more credence to the structure of the work.

Are symbols, terms, and concepts adequately defined?

The paper highlighted and discussed relevant symbols, terms, and concepts adequately.  However, the use of mathematical models should have been more relevant in describing the relationship between knowledge management and customer information findability to propagate clarity in the presentation and understanding of customer experiences in enterprise-based systems.

Would additional tables, figures help to clarify the work?

The paper clearly requires more tables and figures to help in clarifying the work.  The single table and two figures used are too few for the work presented.

D: Additional Notes

The paper presented an interesting argument on content and knowledge management in relation to its relevance to customer experiences.  According to the authors, content and knowledge management systems have been in high demand in enterprises across the globe as a way of improving information findability, intelligent and automated assistance to user searchers, and the general creation, management and publishing of granular and non-granular information.  This follows that enterprise knowledge management can be enhanced through data quality, which define the granular nature of user query results in giving meaning to the information needs of customers (Loshin, 2001; McDermott, 1999). The position of the paper also agrees with the assertions of Cormican and O’Sullivan (2000) and O’Leary (1998).

 

References

O’Leary, D.E., 1998. Enterprise knowledge management. Computer, 31(3), pp.54-61.

Maedche, A., Motik, B., Stojanovic, L., Studer, R. and Volz, R., 2003. Ontologies for enterprise knowledge management. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 18(2), pp.26-33.

Tiwana, A., 2000. The knowledge management toolkit: practical techniques for building a knowledge management system. Prentice Hall PTR.

Cormican, K. and O’Sullivan, D., 2000. Enterprise knowledge management. In Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference of the Irish Manufacturing Committee.

Grudin, J., 2006, January. Enterprise knowledge management and emerging technologies. In System Sciences, 2006. HICSS’06. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on (Vol. 3, pp. 57a-57a). IEEE.

Loshin, D., 2001. Enterprise knowledge management: The data quality approach. Morgan Kaufmann.

Ndlela, L.T. and Du Toit, A.S.A., 2001. Establishing a knowledge management programme for competitive advantage in an enterprise. International journal of information management, 21(2), pp.151-165.

Loucopoulos, P. and Kavakli, V., 1999. Enterprise knowledge management and conceptual modelling. Conceptual Modeling, pp.123-143.

Aronson, J.E., Liang, T.P. and Turban, E., 2005. Decision support systems and intelligent systems. Pearson Prentice-Hall.

McDermott, R., 1999. Why information technology inspired but cannot deliver knowledge management. California management review, 41(4), pp.103-117.

Stigler, J.W., Gonzales, P., Kwanaka, T., Knoll, S. and Serrano, A., 1999. The TIMSS Videotape Classroom Study: Methods and Findings from an Exploratory Research Project on Eighth-Grade

Oracle Corporation, 2011. Content management or knowledge management: why it matters to customers. Oracle corporation world headquarters.

 

• Uncategorized