The concept of Knowledge management cuts across the world. The theory enhances the transfer of information from one spot to the next in a well-timed approach. Besides that, the concept is adopted to facilitate the process of cracking problems, helps companies to run efficiently, as well as keeps and handles its knowledge employees. Knowledge employees are a vital element of management of knowledge. The following knowledge audit will talk about Wal-Mart and its operations.
WallMart was established in 1962 in Arkansas. It all began with one store but grew very fast in the subsequent years. As of now, the company has an estimated yearly income of more than 100 million U.S dollars and over 750,000 branches in the world. The estimated number of workers is 3,000 around the world. The business runs each and every branch from the items it retails. Wallmart uses an accounting system that is characterized by cross docking. This system allows constant delivery of goods to various branches within a single day without the need of recording them. Walmart retails its products at an affordable price but of good quality. The company is able to compete with several companies favorably and remain at the top of the game, just because of its fair prices.
Wallmart makes use of three major knowledge resources. The major knowledge sources include; external, group and internal knowledge resources. In external knowledge resources, the company gathers information from media, business journals, business forums and competitors. The company looks at the trends in the external environment including strategies adopted by its competitors to get knowledge to run its operations effectively. The group knowledge resources involve cases where the company holds general meetings with the public and discusses critical issues concerning it. Through such forums, the company is able to get knowledge that can help improve in areas that need attention.
However in its internal knowledge resources, the company convenes meetings with its staff to discuss general matters affecting it. In this forum, the top management freely shares with the junior staff to shed light on a range of issues. The knowledge gained can be used to improve the business’ operations.
Wallmart has invested heavily in modern communication platforms. It uses various methods to boost the flow of knowledge. The common methods include, smart boards in strategic places, weekly journals and flyers, signposts, media discussions and annual journals. All these tenets espouse the flow of information within the company.
The large workforce boosts the flow of knowledge, especially owing to the fact that the company has branches across the globe. This enables it to reach many people easily. However, some factors hinder the flow of this knowledge. Most of people are illiterate hence cannot read and understand the print material given out by the company. In other cases, people cannot interpret the signals conveyed by the symbols on boards printed by the company to give knowledge to the people.
There is a knowledge gap in both the top management and the junior staff. For the top management; the managers lack knowledge on proper hiring in terms of what to go for when recruiting new staff. In most cases, the managers only base their recruitment on academic certificates without looking much into values like talent, virtues and background. Another gap exists where the mangers only focuses on financial matters paying little attention to other matters.
On the other hand, the junior staffs especially the grounds men are not well trained on some gadgets. They hardly know how to use most of the basic safety equipment like fire extinguishers and protective facemasks. This knowledge gap exposes to danger since in case of any emergency of fire, the company will lose plenty of property.
This framework shows the relationship between the four components; data, information, knowledge and wisdom. In essence, data is any random aspect. When the data is analyzed, it gives some meaningful figures hence information, and then information is further processed to give knowledge. On further processing, knowledge results in wisdom. Wisdom is where you utilize natural thinking to resolve a problem.
The knowledge of Wallmart has one weakness, which is, the knowledge carries shallow information. This information is not sufficient to educate the public. Since the population has very little information on the products produced by Wallmart, the company should disseminate apt information in the journals and the periodicals it issues to the public. The strength of the knowledge is that when shared, it helps the company get more customers for its products. People get to learn about the products from the company and look for them. The company however has the chances of disbursing the information to more people by translating it into different languages. The threats about sharing the knowledge is a bottleneck to Walmart since other companies access it and use it to outdo the company or counterfeit its products.
Since it was founded, Wallmart has transited many phases. It started as a small company and grew bigger. Wallmart has utilized the best technology in sharing its knowledge to the general public. The company utilizes the best knowledge resources however with a few hurdles. Despite the few gaps in the knowledge, via the SWOT analysis, the information displays many strong aspects. Apparently the company is doing well and its future is promising.
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