Strategic focus area for Knowledge Management in an organization

Every organization has many areas to improve or give better result. It is known that an organization exist for customers but the way to achieve this may not necessarily be same for all. After returning from a conference one member of KM team has proposed to develop customer profile in an improved & new manner. He was influenced by a success story of a mobile service provider who has substantially increased its customer base by understanding customer and providing a better service. This customer centric approach is to be copied and applied in a manufacturing company. However in reality the company products were in high demand and there is always shortage at market. The company was expanding its production capacity. Because of high capital cost and delay from equipment manufacturers and long installation process the expansion was getting delayed. Here in this case a faster completion of capacity expansion would serve the customers interest better than providing a better customer profile or service. The KM team has missed the focus area to improve and got carried away by some other success story which has worked in a different industry.

Every organization has its unique strategic focus area. By focusing in this the KM team gets maximum impact.

What are the strategic focus ( or strategic ) areas the KM team must identify. In a broad way there are three areas and one of these three are to be the key ( or strategic ) focus area for the organization.

1.Internal Process improvements or optimize operational efficiency
2.Fast & innovative product development
3.Customer centric approach.

Let us take example of a pharmaceutical company manufacturing drugs. A new molecule or fast to introduce a new drug can give better revenue to the company. Here the new product development must be the focus of the KM team.

Now let us take the example of a mining company who supply raw materials to big integrated industries. A high level of operational efficiency is what can give the organization an edge over the others.

Now for a mobile service provider it is the customer centric approach which will help it to gain more business in a congested market.

Keeping these three focus areas in mind we can try to map different industries to one of them. Once we identify the strategic focus area let us think on how to design our KM platform to help the organization to achieve its objectives.

Please think
Does the key focus area remains same ( constant ) all the time for an organization ?

Key Focus area for Knowledge Management