What is
Business Knowledge?
Owning and operating your own business
involves so much more than simply selling your products or services. In
addition to working on your company in a certain way, you need to constantly
work on developments. This exists almost in every stage of business cycle and
is a fundamental process during the growth phase.
Knowledge in your business isn’t
necessarily about thinking about creating new products or services or new ways
of selling them. It’s much straight forward. Useful knowledge that already
exists in your business can be found in
- Experience of employees
- Designs and processes for your goods and
services
- Your files or documents
- Your plans of future activities
All businesses have access to a pool of
knowledge, whether its understanding the work environment or customers’ needs,
skills and experience of staff etc. The way organizations gather, share and
exploits this knowledge can be vital to its ability and development.
Basic sources
of knowledge
Sources of
business knowledge could include
l Customer knowledge- By understanding your customer needs you
might be able to develop products or services that would
meet their needs.
l Employee and Supplier Relationship- You can seek the opinion of employees and
suppliers as they have their own impression of company’s performance. You can
use formal surveys to get opinions on informational basis.
l Market Knowledge- Watch development in your sector. Have a
check on new entrants in the market, your competitors’ performance and learn
about new product launches if any.
l Knowledge of the Business Environment- Keep yourself informed about various
outside factors that could impact your business like developments in politics,
the economy, technology, society and the environment. You can set up a team of
employees to monitor the changes in the business world.
l Professional Associations and Trade bodies- Academic publications, government
publications, reports from research bodies, trade and technical magazines keep
a track of them.
l Trade exhibitions and Conferences- They can provide an easy way to find out
what your competitors are doing and find latest innovations in your sector.
l Product Research and Development- Scientific and technical research and
development can be vital a source of knowledge which helps you in creating new
products or services retaining your competitive edge.
l Organizational Money- Find formal ways of sharing your employees’
knowledge about best ways of doing things. You can create procedural guidance for
the same.
l Non-Executive Directors- They can be a good way to bring on board
specialized industry benefit and experience from ready-made contracts.
Improve your Business Knowledge with
ONPASSIVE
In order to manage the collection and
exploitation of knowledge in your business you need to build a culture in which
knowledge is valued across the business. ONPASSIVE does the same. One of the
ways ONPASSIVE does this is by providing incentives to staff that provides
useful market news or suggest ways customers can be better served.
As a part of knowledge management ONPASSIVE
makes sure that any intellectual property owned by the business is protected so
that the competitors cannot copy it and it also allows you to profit by
licensing your business knowledge. ONPASSIVE makes sure to keep the business
knowledge confidential by creating proper employment policies. It gets all the
staff members sign the non-disclosure agreement or confidentiality agreement
when they join the company. This ensures that they understand the importance of
confidentiality from day one.
Use of IT to gain and manage knowledge at
ONPASSIVE
Information Technology offers powerful
tools that help you gain and make best use of business knowledge. It helps you
choose systems that fit best for your business and helps in improvement of your
growth.
Types
of informational technology
Databases- They organize information so that it can be easily
accessed, updated or managed. For instance, you can have a database on
customers consisting of their contact information, their orders and
preferences.
A Data Warehouse- It is a central storage area used to store
wide range of information in different digital formats. Many companies
including ONPASSIVE use them to store, manage and retrieve the information. It
is technically a complex area and sometimes you may need to consult IT technician for task management.
Data Mining- It is a process which determines the patterns of
data collected. For example it can tell which products are most popular based
on the customer needs.
Reporting and Querying Tools- They let you create reports interpreting
data in a particular way. Business intelligence portals are websites that bring all sorts of potential information such as
legal issues for a research.
The Internet and Search engines- These are powerful sources of knowledge
to check the credibility of your information source.
Customer-Relationship Management Software- CRM They help you build a profile of your
customer database and enable you to target them through email or telephone.
Website log-file Analysis- This helps you analyze customers usage of
your website so you can improve effectiveness of your website.
ONPASSIVE identifies value of knowledge for
business and uses it for financial gain by getting a larger market share,
developing new products, coming up with innovative ideas, selling or licensing
protected intellectual property to others by ensuring it fits to the overall
business plan.
Concluding words
ONPASSIVE uses business knowledge in a
right way that helps you run your business more effectively, decrease risks
involved and exploit opportunities to the full. Depending on your knowledge
base they help you get the knowledge advantage to the fullest in order to
improve your business. They make sure that knowledge management, acquisition
and distribution is a continuing process so that it becomes central to your business
strategy. ONPASSIVE also makes sure you have systems to analyze and file
customer letters, suggestions, emails and call responses. This enables you to
spot trends, improve customer service and develop new products, services and
systems.