Case study

You’ve worked with the Dirt Bikes case study to think about their infrastructure. Now that you’ve read the chapters on knowledge management and business intelligence, you will explore the opportunities for this level of IS support at Dirt Bikes.

Senior management has started reading about knowledge management and has asked you to explore opportunities for improving knowledge management at Dirt Bikes.

Taking the role of a consultant reporting to Carl Schmidt and Steven McFadden, address their interest in the form of a business memo. Your memo for this assignment will focus on identifying the knowledge assets, knowledge needs, and knowledge management opportunities, particularly:

What are the most important knowledge assets at Dirt Bikes? What functions and employee positions are responsible for creating, distributing, and using these knowledge assets? Are all of these assets explicit knowledge?
What knowledge from outside the organization is required by the company?
Are there other knowledge assets that are needed but not currently available?
How could the following employee groups benefit from knowledge management: designers and engineers, product development specialists, marketing specialists, sales department staff and representatives, managers?
Describe the kinds of knowledge management systems that would be most valuable for each of these groups. What information would each of these systems provide?
Of course, they know the organization well. But your consulting memo should start with the context, a very brief overview of the company, highlighting features that will relate to your analysis.