Incorporating Knowledge Management into E-Commerce Applications

INTRODUCTION Knowledge Management (KM) is the process of critically managing knowledge to meet existing needs, identify and exploit existing and acquired knowledge assets and develop new opportunities (Quintas et al, 1997). With the emergence of knowledge-intensive industries, where organisations rely on knowledge of their staff for competitive advantage (Lustri et al., 2007), KM has become key for business success (Mu-jung et al., 2007). KM is now an integral business function (Zhou and Fink, 2003) in both traditional and internet-based businesses (Borges Tiago et al., 2007) to the extent that KM is now viewed essential for profit (Yang, 2008). It is widely acknowledged today that new technologies, in particular access to the Internet, tend to modify communication between stakeholders in the business world, such as relationships between the organisation and its clients, the internal functioning of the organisation, including enterprise-employee relationships and the relationship of the organisation with partners and suppliers. This integration to improve the functioning of the organisation to create value for all parties involved is referred to as Electronic Commerce (e-commerce, EC) (Turban et al, 2006). The main challenges facing organisational change and development are threefold. Firstly, knowledge discovery, secondly, corporate collaboration and thirdly, rapid decision making (Curley, 1998). Under the KM umbrella, EC can embrace this challenge, facilitating content creation, development , refinement and delivery, collaborative work practice within and external to the organisation and business/market/customer intelligence. This chapter will review how each of the three challenges identified can be incorporated into EC applications. As the internet is now the largest information resource globally many opportunities have been provided changing the way people shop, perform business dealings and communicate with each other. Taking into consideration four perspectives of EC, the chapter will present tools and techniques which should be incorporated into a fully functioning web commerce application.