Ritz Carlton staff record every encounter with a guest, from complaints to preferences such as their favourite wine. When the customer returns to the Ritz Carlton, this information is at the fingertips of the staff. The internal structure encompasses the patents, brand names, systems and procedures, as well as the culture of knowledge management. The internal structure includes online manuals and groupware, which are part of the internal processes or ways of sharing information. According to Sveiby the internal processes should improve services for customers or increase the quality of knowledge about customers.
Individual competence describes the educational level of staff and their collective skills.
The initiatives here vary from job swapping to creating teams to mentor new staff. HP has constructed an open office with few partitions to encourage sharing and other companies are addressing gender imbalances or giving their staff more information than they need to know to broaden their responsibilities. Sveiby points out that the flows of knowledge from staff and from customers are important. You also have to build a knowledge-sharing culture. According to Sveiby, if your office environment has rooms with doors, cubicles with doors, no windows, with the office coffee machine in the far corner, you have an office that is not conducive to knowledge sharing.