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Although the national level seems to create
suitable conditions for Czech companies, the
organisational level of KM is still very weak in
achieved results. Only three problems as examples
will be introduced. Firstly, case studies in literature
highlight successful KM implementation in different
organisations. As already mentioned, many of them
are great companies with turnovers in millions of US
dollars. Such companies have usually only their
subsidiaries in the Czech Republic. The vast
majority of Czech companies are small or medium
size enterprises. Therefore, experiences and the best
practices available in these case studies are usually
very difficult to utilise. Secondly, KM is generally
perceived in different ways. The Czech business
environment is not an exception. Different
perceptions cause problems in communication and
cooperation. Regrettably, these perceptions are
usually based on substitution of a complex KM by
partial technological solutions. Of course,
technological support is necessary, however, KM is
not only about implementing advanced technologies.
The last problem is connected with implementation
of KM in single organisations. There is a lack of the
methodologies of KM implementation available in
the Czech Republic. Organisations have to either
utilise expensive services provided by consultant
companies, or if they want to implement KM
without any external help, use foreign
methodologies created in different environments
with different conditions. These methodologies
either do not reflect the needs and specificity of
Czech companies or are mostly not described in full
details with sufficient guidelines.
3 KM-BEAT-IT
To overcome these and other obstacles, a new
methodology called KM-Beat-It was created. The
design of the methodology was based on the detailed
analysis of existing methodologies (e.g. A. Tiwana’s
KM Toolkit, K. Wiig’s building blocks, Y.G. Kim’s
P2-KSP, Standardized KM Implementation,
APQC’s Road Map, M. McElroy’s K-Stream,
Ibermatica’s methodology, On-To-Knowledge,
PRORAD, CORMA, Nabla Per Partes, etc). The
process of creation was composed from several
stages. Activities that were performed in these stages
were, for example, the analysis of existing
definitions of KM, the identification of particular
strengths and weaknesses of existing methodologies
or the definition of basic attributes, which should be
possessed by the new methodology.
3.1 Particular Phases and Activities
The KM-Beat-It consists of several phases. The
description of every phase comprises of the main
goal, purpose and content, basic prerequisites of
initiation, a criteria of completion, key documents,
critical success factors, and activities and
relationship of these activities. It is obvious from
this description that every phase consists of several
activities. Since KM-Beat-It works with this level of
resolution, there is also the brief specification of a
single activity including the main goal and
description, inputs, outputs and examples of
utilisable methods, techniques and tools. In the
following paragraphs, there is a brief outline of
single phases. Detailed desctiption with resasoning
or concrete examples can be found in (Bureš, 2005).
Assembly of a realisation team is the initial
phase of the KM-Beat-It methodology. The main
objective of this phase is to acquire the support of
the top management and/or owners of the
organisation and assembly of a realisation team, that
will deal with, and will be responsible for the whole
process of KM implementation. In this phase, it is
necessary to conduct the following activities: 1)
creation of an interest about KM by top management
and/or owners of the organisation, 2) weighing up of
the real possibilities and capabilities to start up the
process of KM implementation, 3) decision about
implementation of KM, 4) nomination of team
members from the top management, employees and
external environment, 5) explanation of the presence
of single team members and definition of their team
role, and 6) definition of time of employment for
each member.
Analysis of the initial state is the second phase.
The main objective of this phase is to create an
integrated view on the current state in the
organisation from KM perspective and specification
of its strengths and weaknesses. The phase of
analysis of initial state comprises of the following
basic activities: 1) creation of a survey of knowledge
resources, 2) description of knowledge comprised in
identified knowledge resources, 3) definition of
knowledge processes, 4) analysis of current state of
knowledge processes in an organisation, 5)
description of organisational processes, 6) finding
out the current state of organisational culture, 7)
linkage of acquired results, and 8) analysis of
strengths and weaknesses of the current state in an
organisation.
The third phase is a creation of a knowledge
strategy. The main objective of this phase is to
create a knowledge strategy that will support the
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