A Framework to Structure Knowledge for Enterprise Systems

Enterprise Systems (synonym: Enterprise Resource Planning systems) are customizable business operating systems that support the core processes and the main administrative areas of various industries in an integrated way. Selecting, implementing, using and continuously changing Enterprise Systems (ES) requires a great amount of knowledge and experience. The lack of inhouse ES knowledge and the high costs of engaging experienced implementation consultants have led organizations to realize the need to better leverage their knowledge resources. As the necessary knowledge is comprehensive, different kinds of expertise are required at different points in time during an ES project. This paper proposes a framework which structures the knowledge required to manage Enterprise Systems. This framework is derived from a comprehensive literature analysis and is applicable to organizations seeking to identify the relevant knowledge and to manage the knowledge resources. Based on the framework, this paper suggests how knowledge can be modeled in the ES context in order to identify the relevant knowledge during different stages of an ES project. The Need to Manage Knowledge Resources Implementing comprehensive IT applications like Enterprise Systems is a knowledge-intensive task as it requires a great amount of experience from a wide range of people such as representatives from business departments, the IT department and project managers within the organization to external business and implementation consultants. Recognizing this, Knowledge Management seeks to deal with the problem of leveraging knowledge resources in an organization. There is strong motivation for better leveraging ES implementation knowledge and making this knowledge available to those involved in the ongoing management of the system. “Having made costly errors by disregarding the importance of knowledge, many firms are now struggling to gain a better understanding of what they know, what they need to know, and what to do about it” (Davenport 1998). This paper proposes a three-dimensional Knowledge Management framework to identify and structure the knowledge, which is required to manage an Enterprise System. This framework focuses on the identification of the knowledge and the management of knowledge throughout the ES lifecycle. While most existing ES literature have focused on the types of knowledge, methodologies and critical factors required for the implementation of ES software (Bancroft 1996, Clemons 1999, Kirchmer 1999, Mahrer 1999, Scott 1999, Slooten, Yap 1999, Sumner 1999), it is noticed that they have not taken aspects of knowledge management into account. Knowledge resources can be better managed by having the transparency about what knowledge is required at which point in time during the implementation phase and where the knowledge resides. With this knowledge at hand, managers and implementation consultants can more effectively implement the system. Furthermore, the ES vendors could provide a better guidance throughout the implementation process. This paper demonstrates how this flux of different kinds of knowledge can be structured to gain a positive influence over the entire success of the project. Henceforth, a suggestion will be made for how extended ES-specific reference models can be used in order to explicitly describe the required knowledge. Motivation for the Development of a Framework for ES Knowledge In order to structure the knowledge, which is required for the management of Enterprise Systems, a threedimensional framework is proposed. This framework has derived from a comprehesive literature analysis(See References). Knowledge required in an ES project can be classified along these three dimensions, which are: • The stages of the knowledge lifecycle: identification, creation, transfer, storage, (re-) use and unlearning of knowledge • The phases of the ES lifecycle: selecting, implementing, using, and changing the ES • The types of knowledge required (the knowledge content): business, technical, product, companyspecific and project knowledge. Figure 1 shows the principal design of this framework with the three independent dimensions.