2. An overview of knowledge management in e-commerce
In the new millennium, most companies are setting up or expanding e-commerce systems, and are therefore, seeking new capabilities for managing web-based interactions with their suppliers, partners, and customers. The primary use of such e-commerce systems is to provide effective coordination between (a) purchasing operations and suppliers; (b) logistics and transportation providers; (c) the sales organization and wholesalers or retailers who sell their products; and (d) customer service and support. One key ingredient for the success of these coordination requirements is the continuous availability, accessibility, and application of appropriate organizational knowledge within e-commerce systems. This include different types of knowledge such as business processes, business rules, customer profiles, product information, problem solving expertise, and expert insight.
Executives in leading organizations increasingly recognize that in order to maintain or gain competitive advantage, organizational knowledge needs to be managed and integrated into their corporate e-commerce systems [5], [6] and [7].
2.1. Definitions
In general, e-commerce include activities such as electronic exchange, delivery, and/or transaction of information, goods, services, and payments over telecommunications networks, primarily the web. But e-commerce activities also include establishing and maintaining on-line relationships between organizations and their suppliers, dealers/vendors, customers/users, strategic partners, regulators, and other agents related to or who support marketing, delivery, and distribution. These activities may be business-to-consumer (‘B2C,’ such as direct book sales to the general public by Amazon.com), business-to-business (‘B2B,’ such as corporate procurement or supply chain management using a secure extranet, similar to Covisint.com), consumer-to-consumer (‘C2C,’ such as public auctions at eBay.com), or within a business (such as an employee intranet or an enterprise resource planning system). These relationships enable organizations to reengineer their internal and external functions, increasing both efficiency and effectiveness [8].
Several studies have proposed definitions of KM, and these are summarized in Table 1. Newman defined knowledge management as ‘the collection of processes that govern the creation, dissemination, and utilization of knowledge.’ According to Newman, KM treats knowledge as a resource by exercising selectivity, imposing priority on information resources, adding structure and categorizing the organization and formulation of ill-structured information (such as insights, understanding and intuition of experts for solving specific problems) to increase its value, and proactively capturing information that might be useful in the future [9]. According to O'Leary [10], knowledge management is a business concept, which includes concerted, coordinated, and deliberate efforts to manage the organization's knowledge through the process of creating, structuring, disseminating, and applying it to enhance organizational performance.