Kimberly-Clark Australia: Knowledge Management Plan For Increased Sales And Revenue Essay.

Kimberly-Clark Australia (KCA) is one of Australia’s leading manufacturers, marketers and sellers of personal care, family care, health care and related products. KCA is entirely owned by the global Kimberly-Clark Corporation (KCC). KCA employs approximately 1850 employees across Australia and New Zealand. KCA creates, imports, and acquires knowledge in a variety of ways. R&D is particularly important for both product and process innovation and improvement and KCA can draw on the resources of KCC as well as their own local R&D activities.

The complete case study is provided separately. Ensure that you receive a copy from your trainer/assessor. This task must be completed during a designated session in presence of a trainer/assessor. Read the complete case study (Kimberly-Clark Australia: Source: Australian Business Foundation) as attached and answer the following questions.

1. What are the key forms of knowledge that KCA create and share across their business operations?
2. Explain KCA’s benchmarking process. How did the benchmarking process lead to cultural change at KCA?
3. Explain why KCA needs to constantly create and share knowledge
4. Explain KCA’s syndicate team approach for knowledge management development. What are the major benefits of the team approach?
5. In your view, what are key strengths and weaknesses of the system? Write your answers below;

Q1. Describe the concept of knowledge management in your own words.

Q2. List legislation, codes of practice, and national standards relevant to knowledge management.

Q3. List and briefly describe three key benefits of knowledge management.

Q4. What are the key organisational barriers to knowledge sharing? Briefly describe at least five such barriers in your own words.

Q5. What is the Australian Standard for Knowledge? Briefly describe key features of the standard.

Q6. Briefly describe the following terms, and where they might be applicable;

Q7. Give examples of existing and emerging technologies and how they can be used in knowledge and information management

Concept of Knowledge Management

It is very important for Kimberly-Clark Australia (KCA) to have diverse knowledge, as it a large organization which has various departments like manufacturing, marketing and selling the products. Thus, the business operations of Kimberly-Clark Australia revolves around these areas and its key forms of knowledge are interconnected. Hence, KCA's key forms of knowledge are listed below:

• Corporate knowledge
• Manufacturing knowledge
• Sales knowledge
• Marketing knowledge

This type of knowledge represents the information related to financial data, Human resource management and information related to management.

This includes the patents and licences on the following:

1. Processes and Technologies
2. Products
3. Supply chain data and information
4. Product and process innovation

It incorporates the knowledge of Customer relationship management (CRM), along with the knowledge of market share, customer requirements, some knowledge of the current trends and sales data.

This includes the knowledge and information about its marketplace, competitors, consumers, the social issues, customer requirements, community issues and environmental knowledge.

The benchmarking process related to knowledge management of KCA are listed below:

• For following a standard data collection and reporting method in all the plants, the KCA’s headquarter took initiative to develop the “Common performance measures.” It focused on the production process, performance and on efficiency i.e., delay, speed and waste. Thus, the Kimberly-Clark Corporation (KCC) headquarter checked, and certified the data collection method in all the plants.
• The globally present plants of KCC are permitted to access the consolidated data from the database that contains all the information of the equipment which each person in the plan are operating on. Thus, this access has facilitated the plants of KCA to benchmark the comparable plants, where it identifies the utilized equipment and production functions that are similar to each other.
• All the plants daily provide the performance data, which helps in generating the plant’s monthly report to show its performance. Thus, this performance report helps the managers and the team leaders to work on enhancing their plant’s potential.  
• The improvement of performance is attained by checking the operation of the team in a global performance basis. Thus, this helps in sharing the knowledge and techniques used in other plants, to complete the production operations.
• The experience and feedbacks are exchanged between the operation managers and the shopfloor workers. Thus it helps in improving on the drawbacks mentioned by the shopfloor workers, to implement effective change.
• The delays are reduced by contacting and sharing related knowledge through carious means of communication and from the KCC’s face-to-face meetings.

1. To sustain the increasing competition.
2. To improve the business’s efficiency and compatibility.
3. To meet the customer expectations.
4. To have efficient utilization of information.

The above mentioned criteria facilitates KCA to share internal and external knowledge with the organization, retailers and customers. Thus, sharing helps in focusing on the specific areas to maintain the organization’s name and fame. Because, integration of knowledge is a strategy that does wonders for the organization.

Mt. Eliza In-house Management Development Program was initiated in 2002, by KCA. The knowledge management development program is KCA’s approach for providing support, and to improve the communication and knowledge sharing among the organization’s main employees. This program gives structured business management training and knowledge, which provides MBA level qualification. During 2001 in Australia, all the nominees were called by KCA for participating this program form various organizations. This program has been helpful in information development and in sharing the learnt practices with the support of the syndicate team. The syndicate team is provided with a particular problem which deals with KCA. Further, this team works on the provided problem with its other team members for developing the solution. The solution is used as a direct practical application to KCA. Thus, the answers to the problems are provided.

The key benefits of the team approach, towards the knowledge development management are mentioned below:

1. The team works by following the practiced knowledge sharing method.
2. The management training and experience is utilized by KCA.
3. Sharing knowledge of the team helps in improving the process and discards the future problems in the organization.
4. Provides reasonable solution for the identified issues in KCA.
5. Enhanced responsiveness to meet consumer satisfaction.
6. Helps to have better understanding about KCA, with participation in problem solving tasks. Because, it helps them to understand the effects of their decisions.

1. Continuous investment in product marketing and innovation.
2. Effective team management.
3. KCA clearly focuses on the dimensions like delay, speed and waste.
4. It helps in providing innovation from the other similar plants available globally.
5. Effective marketing and advertising of the products to ensure effective brand identification.
6. Initiates corporate contributions and provides knowledge management development operations.
7. The knowledge management development program is helpful to get solutions to the problems.
8. It helps to have teamwork and supports in reorganizing the plant’s maintenance operation.  
9. This ensures to have performance growth.
10. KCA successfully handles the knowledge of sales and marketing.
11. The engagement of employees help in providing progressive business performance.
12. It supports the organization which has very low turnover from the worker. Because, if the workers consider the organizational knowledge system as a motivational device then it supports them to improve both professionally and personally.
13. KCA enhances its sales by increase in knowledge and data, by its employees.
14. It helps KCA to increase the demands of knowledge and leads it towards success.

Weaknesses of the System

• The system is quite complicated.
• The complexity demands large amount of investments for the employee training.
• It is not sure that the training can help all the employees to gain knowledge on management.
• It is difficult to sustain the performance of the system.

The provided dataset for marketing and statistics is provided below:

The above data represents that, the volume of sales at the base case is 500 units but, after the implementation of a strategy where the fixed cost is decreased to 30 percent and the variable cost is increased to 6 percent, the sales volume has just decreased to 6 percent, i.e., 470 units. On the other hand, the dollar change in profit from the base case is only 3500 from 3,900, and the percent change in profit from the base case is only 10,9 percent from 12, 2 percent.

Legislation, Codes of Practice, and National Standards for Knowledge Management

The above provided data is analysed in the below sections, to take right decision for KCA and to increase its sales and revenue.

Figure: Sensitivity Analysis Graph

Therefore, the fixed cost must be managed within $12600 to get the desired net cash.

Figure: Long-term trend Analysis Graph

The trending is varying around 70 percent, on a monthly basis.

Analyzed for a single unit

Figure: Short to medium term trend analysis Graph

The trending is varying between 20 to 23 percent, for a single unit.

Figure: Break-Even Analysis Graph

Therefore, to increase the profit, it is required that KCA must set its unit price more than 92.

The Knowledge Management Plan is developed, after the completion of analyzing the provided data set for Kimberly-Clark Australia. The analysis is carried on the losing market shares of KCA for its household products segment. This analysis helps to analyze the future sustainability of KCA. The objective of this report is to help the organization decide an effective marketing strategy for better and improved sales. Thus, a well-planned Knowledge Management Plan is provided to increase the sales and revenue of KCA.

Kimberly-Clark Australia requires an effective Knowledge Management Plan to improve its sales and revenue. Based on the analysis of the data of KCA, the decision on the Knowledge Management Plan will be implemented. The Knowledge management ensures that the organizations can increase its efficiency, decrease its costs and meet the demands of the customers.

The aim of this report is to have understanding of knowledge management plan and improve KCA’s sales and revenue.

The objectives are listed below:

• To help the organization decide an effective marketing strategy for better and improved sales.
• To provide Knowledge Management Plan.
• To improve the sales and revenue.

Knowledge management is referred as the capacity of managing the knowledge. Moreover, knowledge management comprises of all the activities that concentrate on the organization’s knowledge gained both from others and from its own experience.

Necessity of Knowledge management in KCA includes (Frost, 2017):

• It will help KCA to learn from its mistakes.
• It will help KCA to accomplish success.
• It will help KCA to have a long term concentration, just to develop the appropriate competencies and skills.
• It will help KCA to discard its outdated knowledge.
• It will help KCA to enhance its innovating ability.
• It will help KCA to secure its key knowledge and competencies, either from piracy or from losing it.

The analysis of the provided data in the Part A determines that the fixed cost must be managed within $12600 to get the desired net cash. Then, the long term trending varies approximately with 70%, on a monthly basis. Whereas, the short to medium term trend varies from 20% to 23%, for a single unit. Hence, to increase the profit KCA must set its unit price with more than 92 and it must not be less than this value.

The prices of KCA need to be set appropriately, to gain increased revenue. Thus, KCA and its plants can implement ERP as a need, for sharing the knowledge of sales and its fixed and variable costs (Frost, 2017).

In KCA, harnessing and sharing increases its performance, productivity and competitiveness. The knowledge can be used by having workers who have best-quality knowledge and KCA must consider itself as a knowledge-based organization (Amir and Parvar, 2014).

Knowledge is created by sharing the experiences of others and their own experience, which must be practiced directly in the workplace. Thus, interaction and experiment is important for knowledge creation (Frost, 2017).

The learning and development plan for the staff can have the following (Blogs.rrc.ca, 2017):

• A set of exercises and self-directed tests.
• A list of developmental Activities to boost the staff.
• A library to borrow the resources, to increase their knowledge.
• Assessment cards for the staff, to help them know their stance.

The knowledge management techniques and resources are listed below (Frost, 2017):

• Teaming up with cross-functional project teams.
• To provide knowledge management training and education.
• To mentor their practice.
• Utilizing storytelling method.

KCA can increase its potential with the assistance of knowledge management. The limits can be the uncertain changes in the business plan. These changes can be managed with contingency plan with a rigorous investigation and develop the business solutions for such changes. The possible measures for the organization is to stay updated with its technology, because it will help to stay competitive from its rival companies.

Evaluation of Knowledge management of any organization is challenging. The COBIT 5 framework is helpful in evaluating both the knowledge and knowledge management of an organization (Delak, 2015).

References

Amir, R. and Parvar, J. (2014). Harnessing Knowledge Management to Improve Organisational Performance. International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, pp.31-38.

Blogs.rrc.ca. (2017). Staff Learning and Development / Employee Development Plans. [online] Available at: https://blogs.rrc.ca/stafflearning/current-employees/development-plans/ [Accessed 14 Sep. 2017].

Delak, B. (2015). How to Evaluate Knowledge and Knowledge Management in the Organization Using COBIT 5. ISACA Journal, 3.

Frost, A. (2017). Why is knowledge management useful?. [online] Knowledge-management-tools.net. Available at: https://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/why-is-knowledge-management-useful.html [Accessed 13 Sep. 2017].