Why benchmarking in knowledge and information technology management?

Citation

Gunasekaran, A. (2001), "Why benchmarking in knowledge and information technology management?", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 8 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/bij.2001.13108caa.001

Why benchmarking in knowledge and information technology management?

Why benchmarking in knowledge and information technology management?

Benchmarking helps companies in improving their business processes and in turn performance. The purpose of benchmarking is to measure the performance of an organization against the best-in-class performing companies with the aim of identifying suitable best practices.

Knowledge and information technology management has been emphasized both by researchers and practitioners for companies to compete in a global market. The development of information technology/information systems has greatly contributed to changes in operations paradigm of manufacturing and service organizations. The role of knowledge and information technology management has become critical in the sense that there is a need to understand business and operations strategies, and then information technology would contribute to knowledge management and vice versa, and hence to the overall competitiveness of an organization.

There are reports in the literature on the management of knowledge and information technology in a networked manufacturing/service environment. However, most of them deal with information technology management from the perspective of achieving some improvements by investing in information technology.

If companies want to compete in a global electronic market, then there is a need to improve flexibility and responsiveness of organizations by focusing on human and social dimensions of knowledge and’information technology management. These include adoption, diffusion, education and training, teamwork, information technology transfer, and cultural issues and their implications. Considering the role of human and social aspects on knowledge and information technology management, researchers and practitioners need to benchmark the human and social implications on information technology management in the knowledge economy and in turn for an improved competitiveness of organizations.

It is essential for an organization to invest in knowledge and information technology management to compete in the global e-market. At the same time, the investment should be properly utilized for improving the performance of a business. For example, many companies invest in training and educating their employees in new information technology and management concepts. Investing in information technology alone will not improve the performance, but rather to invest in human knowledge capital. Most companies lack skills and ideas concerning knowledge and information technology management and to achieve world class performance in a global market.

The following are the challenges that companies face in managing knowledge and information technology:

• •

  developing technology management strategies;

• •

  best practices of human resource management;

• •

  international human resource management strategies and techniques;

• •

  customer relationship management strategies and methods;

• •

  management of enterprise information systems;

• •

  managing people in virtual enterprises;

• •

  role of the Internet and multimedia in executive education;

• •

  creativity, innovation and knowledge transfer in E-Business;

• •

  learning organizations;

• •

  information technology management and system development;

• •

  application of Internet powered multimedia in training and education; and

• •

  evaluating the return on investment in knowledge capital.

There are three major areas in knowledge and information technology management:

1. 1.

   information technology management;

2. 2.

   human knowledge management; and

3. 3.

   learning organizations.

Knowledge management and information technology management complement each other for improved communication, teamwork and for wealth creation. Traditional techniques of benchmarking can be applied to this field, but need to integrate the characteristics of information technology and learning management systems. Also, various benchmarking strategies and methods need to be developed for the E-Commerce environment.

Benchmarking in the aforementioned areas involves several intangibles and non-financial performance measures and metrics. Therefore, benchmarking in knowledge and information technology management is a challenging area for’research and applications. Benchmarking the business practices and their performance in knowledge and information technology involves looking at a’range of industries that could be either in manufacturing or services. The application of a broad range of benchmarking exercises with the help of information technology tools will help to identify best practices of knowledge and information technology management.

BIJ invites contributions on benchmarking strategies and techniques in knowledge and information technology management. Empirical research, analytical models and case studies addressing benchmarking tools and practices in knowledge and information technology management are welcome.

A. Gunasekaran