Knowledge Management Assignment Analysing Case Scenario of Amazon

Question

Task:

The coronavirus pandemic has not only killed many people around the world, but it has also devastated the global economy, brought industries to a complete standstill, spurred mass layoffs and, in the case of retail, accelerated the slow-moving demise of already ailing department store chains.

But Amazon is one of the few exceptions. The e-commerce giant, with its seemingly endless selection and drive to deliver convenience and low prices, became the default retailer and an essential service for many consumers at the height of the coronavirus crisis.

The flood of online orders propelled Amazon to record sales during the second quarter. It then spent billions on coronavirus-related investments like safety gear for workers and its internal testing initiative, called Project Ultraviolet.

While there was a navigated widespread unemployment and economic turmoil, Amazon kept hiring. The company brought on more than 175,000 new warehouse and delivery workers between March and mid-April 2020 to be able to fulfil customer orders. Amazon added 36,400 people in the three months ended June 30, bringing its head count to 876,800, an increase of 34% year over year.

Amazon’s pandemic-fuelled growth is not expected to slow down soon, especially as it prepares for the back-to-back shopping rush of Prime Day in October and the holidays after that. In fact, Amazon is expected to exceed $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever in the fourth quarter, according to analysts surveyed by FactSet. That would make it one of the very few American companies ever to cross that threshold, alongside Walmart and Exxon.

But the question is- how does Amazon.com so effortlessly connect “zillions” of people with “gigabytes” of product information? The answer, in part, is through use of advanced knowledge management (KM) techniques. We in the eLearning field can learn a lot from how Amazon approaches the relationship between customers and information and enhances value by using KM principles.

From the beginning, Amazon determined that the user experience—the ability of its customers to find what they want, when they want it, quickly and easily—was a key to success. But that was not enough. If the system could help customers accomplish their goals in an intuitive and personalized way, it would add even more value to the experience. That is where knowledge management helps. Whether they call it KM or not, Amazon uses KM principles and practices to add significant value for their customers in many ways.

Based on the above case scenario, you must prepare a knowledge management assignment addressing the following tasks:

Task 1- Individual written Report in response to a given case/scenario-
You are required to produce a 3,500 word (+/- 10%) academic written report in a response to a given case (Amazon.com). You must attempt all the questions by applying academic knowledge management models, methods, and theories to examine information and knowledge management process for amazon.com.

a) Why are information systems being essential for Amazon?

b) What are the information systems implemented by Amazon and describe the input, processing, and output of such a system?

c) Discuss Amazon’s potential knowledge management challenges and offer recommendations to strengthen their knowledge management practices from the knowledge acquisition retention-transfer perspectives.

Task 2 - Evaluation of Proposed Knowledge Management Framework-
You are required to produce an A1 Poster with the aim of transferring explicit knowledge by text on the poster. You are expected to explain the key points you have uncovered in your written proposal/report regarding proposed Knowledge Management Framework with the demonstration of strong evidence of knowledge on the key areas mentioned in the report. You can use appropriate aids/tools to make your presentation more appealing. The poster presentation tests knowledge and understanding skills and transferable skills for life and professional practice. The poster presentation provides an opportunity to present and discuss the key findings and conclusions of the work, and challenges and limitations that would hinder the recommendations suggested for Amazon.

Answer

Knowledge Management Assignment Task 1
Introduction
During the covid19 pandemic, the suffering of the population got pushed to a level of immense trouble due to the lack of suitable and sustainable resources as well as the continuous consumption deterioration. As opined by Mahdi et al., (2019, p. 330), many retail brands went standstill and mass spurred layoffs. On the other hand, in this economically challenging situation, the only brand that came up as a service provider to maintain to sustain in the consumer market is the Amazon Company. The company being retail for the consumers received a huge level of sales in its 2nd quarter. Apart from fulfilling the consumer's requirement in the pandemic session, Amazon also tends to serve and ensure the safety of its workers and delivery men at a prior level. The company also served recruitment programs in the mid of 2020 by offering jobs to some 36400 people and also allocated jobs at nearly 175000 new warehouses all over the world.

Why are information systems being essential for Amazon?
It has been acknowledged that Amazon follows the principle of Knowledge management (KM) to devise its functions and processes in the retail market. According to the views of Groenwald, (2018, p. 140), Amazon induces four sections in this principle that is people, process, content, and strategy. For the people's part, the company considers those who are involved in the knowledge sharing and building of the organizational task. For the process part, the company involves the knowledge gathering system that can be obtained and applied in the required area. Moreover, the third party that is the content involves the documentation for the FAQs as well as manual work form. Lastly, the knowledge management for the Amazon brand is fulfilled by the strategy section that involves the ultimate regulation of its tactical and sustainable work behaviour that is directly responsible for the company's progress.

Effectiveness of creation, sharing and storing, and integration of application
It has been reported that Amazon as a US multinational brand has developed itself as a leading retailer that offers cloud computing for its KM implementation. The growth of Amazon has been recognized through two of its major processes that got linked in its process. These processes are consumer management and the Information management system that qualifies all its strategies to be implemented (Tidd and Bessant, 2018). The IT infrastructure is the key factor for the Amazon retailer to manage its millions of seller activities that include queries and issues. Moreover, the company has also suffered issues regarding the storage of the credit details of many of its premium customers. It has been informed that consumer relationship management is the key module that has been utilized by Amazon in its enterprise management of resources. This is to store personal information as well as purchasing trends regarding its regular consumers that have been integrated into the targeted market.

As discussed by Chirumalla, (2018), it has been noted that the sales strategy in Amazon is very unique and reflects its Management Information System (MIS). Effective growth can be judged through its working mode that turns from an individual sales practice to a multiple sales commercial practice. The growth at prior levels was observed from the trade to customer models as well as from business to operational modes. During the Covid19 period, the emergence of e-commerce has offered a developed relationship between the consumers and the retail trade that forced Amazon to prioritize as well as customize its IT value with preferable consumer feedback. It can be stated that the MIS of Amazon has covered its business model with the positioning of its functions such as browsing, account management as well as shopping operations. The uniqueness of the MIS plays a vital role in each segment that has been discussed here. Also, it has been noted that Amazon has offered elastic cloud computing (EC2) as another vibrant mode of web servicing. The EC2 has been targeted with the employee to offer assistance to the developers working web scales of computing (Nisar et al., 2019, p. 270). It must be evaluated here that the advantage of the EC2 is that its avails time efficiency by ignoring the booting requirements at the new server.

On the other hand, the S3 factor is responsible for the storage activity for internet usage. This interface allows the end-users to utilize different modes such as saving, retrieving, data assessing from any irrelevant point, etc. The process allows the users to find the subject for purchase with any keywords they prefer. Here, the search agent is the reliable juncture offered by Amazon. The data mining procedure is used at this phase to allow the user to reach its preferable products with its availability in the online store of Amazon (Abubakar et al., 2019, p. 113). Also, there is a section provided for the seller to sell any product by advertising it on the seller's section. In this section, the sellers can upload images of the product or service they offer. For this concern, Amazon offers the brokerage model that enables the trade to trade and customer-to-customer transactional activity. In this strategy, Amazon charges fees against the usage mode by the sellers or consumers. Through auction brokers, Amazon operates to manage information and demand fulfilment in a bidding manner. This way, Amazon tends to offer a product to its customer from searching to a purchasing enhancement level.

Academic theories to check the effectiveness of knowledge and information management culture in the Amazon Company
It has been noted that Amazon has applied the KM principle to its functional modes to ease the personal and professional requirements of the organization. From the starting of its business operations Based on the Bureaucratic theory of management, it has been found that Amazon has kept on determining its customer needs and what they want and what they need at their preference calls. It has been observed that the customer accomplishment has been targeted through a more intuitive and personalized manner that could raise the experience to an upgraded nature. It has been observed that Knowledge management or MIS is the functional behaviour that has been accepted by Amazon that always helps the organization to regulate its new and existing reforms to favour both its personal and professional needs.

Figure 1: KM framework

(Source: Brown et al., 2018, p. 740)

How it can help in managing effective customer relationships
There are several modes to conduct effectiveness that can be considered to evaluate the customer relationship based on the functional behaviour at Amazon (History & Facts 2021). One portal, one interface: Applying Scientific Management Theory Amazon offers a single portal for all its purchasing and selling purposes. It can be stated that the portal, as well as the user experience, are all the same at a point. Such operational behaviour offers familiarity as well as comfort to the end-users by allowing anxiety-free exploration at every site. This implies that a single interface is enough to avail common and familiar as well as easy to access gateway for all work form to the end-users.

Modular content: The profile content on Amazon is very much attractive for the end-users to access. The easy-to-read feature has been offered in its visual presentation (Brown et al., 2018, p. 740). It has been acknowledged by Amazon management that people get bored while reading detailed PDFs, hence, for this reason, the system has been availed with a clear and short description that offers brief but efficient knowledge of both purchasing as well selling a product.

Crowd sourcing: For this purpose, Behavioural management theory states that crowd sourcing is the best implementation that has been practiced by Amazon management. The process includes acknowledgment through previous purchases of the clients that help in segmenting preferences for future recommendations. With this application, Amazon generates acknowledgment among the clients and customers. It has been noted that many shopping sites that are now working on an online basis due to Covid19 have started emulating Amazon and its archetype practices. This implies a community sense without any formal community placement in its workplace.

Feedback: According to Human relation theory, the reason behind Amazon's zillion successes is due to the relationship it maintains with its clients and customers based on quality feedback that it receives daily. Amazon has been reported for giving prior importance to its customer's feedback. This feedback helped Amazon to standardize its product and services based on customer preferences (North and Kumta, 2018). It can be seen that feedback is placed on the front side of the product that can be read and acknowledged by new customers positively. This feedback maintains transparency between the product service and customer retention. Moreover, the feedback helps Amazon to enhance its technology and product services and also allows the partner companies to manufacture their products in a more customer-friendly manner.

The performance-centred: The most favourable section that has been created by Amazon is by offering a transparent and free customization space for the customers to add to their shopping functions. Customers can take self-actions while purchasing, like they can manage their delivery dates, return features, manage payment modes, return or refund features, etc. This implies that the functional aspect for Amazon has been easier due to the performance-centred behaviour (Bedianashvili, 2018, p. 35).

Amazon’s potential knowledge management challenges
Some of the challenges which are faced by Amazon are

Lack of Time management: Time management is a common issue that is faced in a large company like Amazon. The managers of the company are responsible to see their team members and also looking after the communicating with other department members. Lack of time management within Amazon brings up the consequences that often make it impossible to finish a project on time. Thus, time management affects the performance of the productivity of the company.

Poor teamwork: In a large company like Amazon, some conflicts affect employees and these results in losing focus over the collaboration at the time of spending a lot of time in completing individual tasks (Barley et al., 2018, p. 300). It is also regarded as when the team does not properly function, and then the employees lose motivation to do any task and thus increase conflicts. The company has challenged better communication. This also increases the lack of focus; these are especially a big problem that creates issues informing the proper team.

Lack of communication: Lack of communication is one more challenge that has been addressed in Amazon within the employees as this oversees teams and helps in ensuring effective communication. The team members of the company have managed to have personality differences. There is also a chance for miscommunication from time to time (Bergström et al., 2019). Moreover, poor communication in a company results in having "friction", "frustration", "concussion" and an "extremely tense environment". The employees when not motivated to are much more productive. Moreover, lack of communication does not inspire the collaboration of Amazon with other companies. The lack of communication can spill over how the staff members can relate to the clients and also the potential consumers.

Decrease in the performance levels: Employees of Amazon sometimes have the experience with the period where the employees are not as productive as usual. These initiate the decrease of productivity as these affect the productivity and the performance levels of the employees in the company. This also provides an impact on the team members and in the overall goals, this also initiates in promoting and helping employees to feel motivated and energetic to complete the provided task (Hirsenberger et al., 2019, p. 220). The increase in the performance levels of the employees also initiates the increase of a negative environment that lowers the morale and has a reduction within the productivity of the company.

Lack of workplace culture: The employees and the team members in Amazon are not connected with the rest within the workplace. These can also be experienced for the decrease in the motivation of the employees and the team members. A weak culture within an organizational culture is that company values that are no longer strong vans are also not accepted by all the employees and the company (Draghici, 2020, p. 470). Weak culture results in instability and also the lack of these innovations, lowering customer focus and also having high attrition. Amazon experienced a lack within a workplace culture that led to the lack of leadership and also in getting done in allowing neglectful attitudes for the propagation.

Recommendations to strengthen their knowledge management
To enhance and strengthen the knowledge management system Amazon can apply the following segments to its further developing programs.

Product Sorting and intervention by availing anti-phishing: Concerning the customer relationship, Amazon needs to avail consumers of certain options for sorting their products through reviews and rankings. Technical issues are the most restraining factor that causes primitive demands for new and unique implementation. Moreover, Amazon has been facing many phishing issues that appeal to the consumers for accounting user information in Amazon. For this reason, there is a need to address vigorous interventions of anti-phishing approaches that can promote customer awareness.

Website integrating into social media: Amazon requires developing the synergy that generates the outcome for integrating the informative source from its advertising areas, sales as well as post-sales activities (Shujahat et al., 2019, p. 445). The Amazon MIS must offer to aid its customers at touch points. Amidst the customer relationship activities for marketing purposes, Amazon must generate integration to its entire website activities. By offering integration to the shopping experience, the regular promotion of the product and its services can be upgraded. Moreover, by using the resources in the enterprising tools, Amazon can share reviews and responses of customers as well as sellers on social media that can enhance the trust factor among the consumers.

Engaging customer relationship in the Amazon business: It must be acknowledged that consumer relationship must be devised by Amazon to enhance its operational modes regarding its logistic functions. This developing model can offer more human resource allocation for the expansion in the unexplored targeted markets (Stonehouse and Konina, 2020, p. 5). Amazon management can apply the studies that have been taken through previous data, aiming at particular market areas and its consumers. This could help in increasing the potentiality of the workforce at the targeted market. It is required to consider that the aging population always grows higher than the youth in the generation. Customer segregation is required to be done, based on the ethics that can avail aid to the web exclusives to different end-users with different linguistic backgrounds. Further, the usage of MIS can be extended in brand analysis. It can just be considered that analytics forms informative culture in the system of Amazon due to which the company will get aided not only by the customers based but also from the business perspective.

Implementing AI systems: Another usage of the technical assistance that can be enhanced in the management system by Amazon is the implementation of the AI tools. With the use of this technology-driven AI, the future of Amazon can be aimed at a more progressive format that can produce its management to deliver a proper format (Wolf et al., 2018, p. 190). Virtual intelligence can pave the platform for human interaction that will ultimately showcase the progressive work form within a short span. The AI intelligence must be required to be implemented at the supply chain, customer relationship, operational management as well as human resource managerial activities. Virtual intelligence can help Amazon to rely less on customer-centred services and also get opportunities to cut off wastage costs on human resourcing.

Conclusion
This report has offered a productive examination of contemporary infrastructure as well as the process based on the information system of Amazon. It can be concluded that there are plenty of factors that can be evaluated as productive measures to counter the present issues that are causing hindrance to the informative section in the Amazon. The theories have been discussed to evaluate the scenario of how the company is approaching in the pre and post Covid19 period. Based on the AI demand in this technology-driven generation, the recommendation has been concluded in the favour of Amazon.

References
Abubakar, A.M., Elrehail, H., Alatailat, M.A. and Elçi, A., 2019. Knowledge management, decision-making style and organizational performance. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 4(2), pp.104-114.

Amazon.com | History & Facts (2021). Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Amazoncom (Accessed: 10 December 2021).

Barley, W.C., Treem, J.W. and Kuhn, T., 2018. Valuing multiple trajectories of knowledge: A critical review and agenda for knowledge management research. Academy of Management Annals, 12(1), pp.278-317.

Bedianashvili, G., 2018. Knowledge economy, entrepreneurial activity and culture factor in modern conditions of globalization: challenges for Georgia. Journal: Globalization and Business, (5), pp.32-37.

Bergström, E., Lundgren, M. and Ericson, Å., 2019. Revisiting information security risk management challenges: a practice perspective. Information & Computer Security.

Brown, T.L., Potoski, M. and Van Slyke, D.M., 2018. Complex contracting: Management challenges and solutions. Public Administration Review, 78(5), pp.739-747.

Chirumalla, K., 2018. Managing Product Introduction Projects in Operations: Key challenges in heavy-duty vehicle industry. The Journal of Modern Project Management, 5(3).

Draghici, A., 2020. Changes and challenges of human systems management during and after the pandemic. Human Systems Management, 39(4), pp.469-72.

Groenwald, S.L., 2018. The challenges and opportunities in leading a multi-campus university. Knowledge management assignment Journal of Professional Nursing, 34(2), pp.134-141.

Hirsenberger, H., Ranogajec, J., Vucetic, S., Lalic, B. and Gracanin, D., 2019. Collaborative projects in cultural heritage conservation–management challenges and risks. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 37, pp.215-224.

Mahdi, O.R., Nassar, I.A. and Almsafir, M.K., 2019. Knowledge management processes and sustainable competitive advantage: An empirical examination in private universities. Journal of Business Research, 94, pp.320-334.

Nisar, T.M., Prabhakar, G. and Strakova, L., 2019. Social media information benefits, knowledge management and smart organizations. Journal of Business Research, 94, pp.264-272.

North, K. and Kumta, G., 2018. Knowledge management: Value creation through organizational learning. Springer.

Shujahat, M., Sousa, M.J., Hussain, S., Nawaz, F., Wang, M. and Umer, M., 2019. Translating the impact of knowledge management processes into knowledge-based innovation: The neglected and mediating role of knowledge-worker productivity. Journal of Business Research, 94, pp.442-450.

Stonehouse, G.H. and Konina, N.Y., 2020, February. Management Challenges in the Age of Digital Disruption. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Emerging Trends and Challenges in the Management Theory and Practice (ETCMTP 2019), Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research (Vol. 119, pp. 1-6).

Tidd, J. and Bessant, J., 2018. Innovation management challenges: From fads to fundamentals. International Journal of Innovation Management, 22(05), p.1840007.

Wolf, M., Semm, A. and Erfurth, C., 2018, June. Digital transformation in companies–challenges and success factors. In International Conference on Innovations for Community Services (pp. 178-193). Springer, Cham.

Knowledge Management Assignment Task 2

Purpose of poster presentation 

The purpose of this poster presentation is to acknowledge the present scenario of the Amazon Company. It has been evaluated through the case study that certain aspects are there that got left behind the discussion factor. These are the competitions that the company might face in the future by the involvement of AI projection in all of its competing retailers. The post Covid19 period has led the world to induce the AI pattern in all its managerial activities. This has led to the requirement of enhancing the KM principles to implement more in an advanced manner to keep Amazon a competitive leader in the post covid days (Ferreira et al., 2018). 

KM challenges of Amazon and recommendations to strengthen knowledge management 

In this section, the discussion is based on the challenges that have been faced by Amazon for acquiring managerial concepts for Knowledge management to be implemented in the company’s transformation. Here are some of the uncovered issues that have been problematic factors for the company. 

Obsolete technology:It has been observed that technology with time has kept on modifying. This has caused a competitive concern among Amazon management. Moreover, the technology that has been in use needs to be enhanced with AI implementation. The competition has found many retailers to continuously induce several modifications that can help them beat Amazon on a management basis (Chugh and Joshi, 2020, p. 750). The current MIS function has been cumbersome and the result is graphically a little lower. 

Recommendation: The current information storage has been threatened and the brand has been reported to fail in securing the data for its customer retention services. There is a need to clear the old decentralized structures of information storage. Amazon must apply AI functions to ensure the benefits of knowledge management.       

Employee motivation: Another factor responsible for the poor servicing of the knowledge management in Amazon is the demotivation factor among the employees. It has been observed that the depression has caused the population to suffer the burden of the pandemic. Moreover, the existing employees in Amazon are experiencing the least interest in performing their functions in a long-practiced manner (Donnelly, 2019, p. 350). Lack of motivation and self-actualization sense among employees is a matter of concern that must be developed with time.

Recommendation: For a proper recommendation to be applied for retaining employment at Amazon, it requires a series of communicative factors to be implemented. The leaders must communicate the organizational goals with employees and associates. The leaders must guide and allocate inspiring duties to the managers to assign new AI implementations and offer proper monitoring of the preventive measures (Wood and Bischoff, 2019). Moreover, the employees must be offered incentives and special rewards to dedicatedly assist the organizational goals in post-pandemic situations.      

Accessible information:This section requires a bearable repetition in the case of Amazon. It must be acknowledged that it is very necessary to find and allocate informative resources otherwise there will be no means to keep the desire to acquire knowledge management. Amazon requires it to evaluate the present issues that are inaccessible in its management functions. The absence of resources that are required, the knowledge management of the consumers and clients, the website management, etc. must be analyzed (Ferraris et al., 2019).

Recommendations: At this point, it can be recommended that Amazon requires a portion of its capital for hiring the best managerial experts who can deliver the best work for ensuring modification and development in the knowledge management of Amazon. With the goal set to progress organizationally, Amazon is also required to focus on its competitive factor that can ultimately lead the company to come up with the best management tool for knowledge-based applications.          

Drawbacks and benefits of the knowledge management framework 

In this section, discussions are based on the advantages and disadvantages of the KM framework. Acknowledging the pros and cons can be productive for Amazon to implement the utilities of their KM framework. 

Advantages of KM framework 

By applying the application of the KM framework, Amazon can easily collect the business tools that can offer relatable strategies to overcome the issues and earn business goals to be achieved. The latest technologies such as AI can be very productive for the management system to acquire knowledge and apply it to resource stimulation. With the right training and proper monitoring, the information flow can be smoothened inside the organization without the fear of leakage to the external competitive market (Aslam et al., 2018). This can help the employees to share information in the right productive order.

Disadvantages of KM framework

In Amazon, the KM tool might appear to be complex to the employees, which can lead them to bear the high cost of the training necessities. The improper usage of the KM tools might cause trouble for the employees to suffer insufficient use of time and money. It must be considered that this issue might be brutal to the company’s survival in the targeted market. Moreover, acquiring KM principles without any vision might misguide the organizational work behavior. This might lead to the under utility of the KM framework and an ultimately useless rendering of the subject tool can cause dissatisfaction among the employees and the Amazon associates.  

Reference

Aslam, U., Muqadas, F. and Imran, M.K., 2018. Exploring the sources and role of knowledge sharing to overcome the challenges of organizational change implementation. International Journal of Organizational Analysis.

Chugh, R. and Joshi, M., 2020. Challenges of knowledge management amidst rapidly evolving tools of social media. In Information Diffusion Management and Knowledge Sharing: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice (pp. 745-760). IGI Global.

Donnelly, R., 2019. Aligning knowledge sharing interventions with the promotion of firm success: The need for SHRM to balance tensions and challenges. Journal of Business Research, 94, pp.344-352.

Ferraris, A., Mazzoleni, A., Devalle, A. and Couturier, J., 2019. Big data analytics capabilities and knowledge management: impact on firm performance. Management Decision.

Ferreira, J., Mueller, J. and Papa, A., 2018. Strategic knowledge management: theory, practice and future challenges. Journal of Knowledge Management.

Wood, G. and Bischoff, C., 2019. Challenges and progress in integrating knowledge: cases from clothing and textiles in South Africa. Journal of Knowledge Management.