Introduction

This assignment requires you to demonstrate knowledge and skills you have acquired throughout the course of this module by producing a fully referenced, academic report that addresses the issues described below.

Assignment

You are required to produce a 3,000 word academic report employing material including models, methods and theories to examine information and knowledge management for a case organisation.

Your chosen case organisation should be a provider of professional services of some sort. The organisation should have an established CRM policy in addition to an eStrategy. Examples include the following:

Accenture (accenture.com). A provider of consultancy, I.T. and related professional services. Dentons (dentons.com). A provider of legal services. Delloite (delloite.com). A provider of accountancy and audit services.

You should use web resources to enable you to appreciate organisational context. You may use subsidiary and national based websites for additional detail. The case organisation should be used to illustrate your understanding of academic material from the module and its application to the organisation. Do not limit yourself to web based sources of information. You should use academic, industry and other sources as well. You may choose any suitable organisation that is a professional service provider that can help you answer the tasks given below.

In your discussions of strategic information needs and knowledge management, focus on information necessary for the management of resources, support of customers, efficient and effective use of professional knowledge and support of management decisions at all levels.

Task – 100 Marks You are to produce an academic report that covers the following tasks:

a) Critically discuss the strategic use of information and knowledge in your chosen case organisation. Provide examples of both information and knowledge, making clear the external and internal factors that influence what information and knowledge is needed to run the organisation and which systems and management approaches are used to provide these. (30 marks)

b) Using appropriate academic models and frameworks, critique the development of eStrategy in your chosen case organisation in terms of the academic models/frameworks that you have studied. Propose and justify extensions to the strategy that would add business value. Explain and justify any assumptions you make about existing eStrategy.

c) (i) Critically appraise the statement “CRM (customer relationship management) is intimately connected to knowledge management within an organisation”. (10 marks)

(ii) Discuss the contribution of CRM to the management of information, and both tacit and explicit knowledge. Use the case organisation to provide examples supporting your discussion. (20 marks)

d) Based upon your understandings developed in this assignment, what do you consider to be the most important strategic information or knowledge priority for the case organisation to achieve their business mission? Justify your answer. (10 marks)

e) References section (all cited works only)