The Technological Change Of Frito Lay Information Technology Essay

The Technological Change Of Frito Lay Information Technology EssayThe aim of this report is to perform a cognition scrutinize of Frito Lay, by gathering info, analyzing the catch outings and making suggestions for the best possibility of intimacy to be utilized in an brass instrument. This report primarily highlights the main outside factors that affect the organization, inside intimacy culture which craps an organization social organisation, technological change and some important points on fellowship workers and attractors.The major finding in this report is that the knowledge management is a key to achieving some(prenominal) scal powerfulness and business optimization. fellowship management is an attractive concept to umpteen organizations. It helps in understanding the needs and gaps in knowledge by simple abstract and helps in coping up with the globalization. Moreover, the knowledge leaders and workers get out help to put the theories and ideas from papers to real world.FRITO LAYIntoductionScopeThis report mainly foc c on the wholes on knowledge audit about the external influences on the organization and how knowledge culture enhances the organization structure. Moreover, this report mainly highlights about the technology and how it ordain revolutionize the confederations culture.BackgroundFrito Lay sales force is facing an issue with finding and integration of organization data and customer sales account data. microphone Marino, vice president of customer development, stated that knowledge is trapped in files everywhere. Many sales people would ask the accompanys marketing and feat faculty the equivalent information over and over. And the staff has to perform the same task for endless times. For this reason microphone Marino, integrated a Knowledge entre in incarnate intranet. This portal opens gates to all sales staff with same information. This information can be sh atomic number 18d and updated at the same time moreover it will be available to any one for any location. This portal was tested with a sales pilot squad and passed with flying colors.This report does knowledge audit on the knowledge needs and gap in Frito Lay organization. Identified and pull up stakesd few knowledge audit tools affaird to gather present knowledge from an organization. mending(a) tools have been mentioned which could be helpful for the vitrine study.PurposeThe purpose of this report is to generate a knowledge report by studying the important external factors that influence the organization, knowledgeable knowledge culture in an organization, technology change in an organization and some highlights on knowledge workers and leaders.Current Knowledge placement of the Frito LayIn current knowledge position of Frito Lay has no centralized body and its sales team is not able to merge data of the corporate and the customer account information.Purpose of the organizationFrito Lay falls under a private sector enterpris e. A private sector company mainly looks for profits for their stakeholders while long lasting sustainability in the commercial market. Their main aim is to take advantage of their opportunities and consider profits as the just about important result. The main funding is done by the stakeholders, to enhance the development and growth of the company. The key culture for Private Sectors Company is to make a off strike out among long term sustainability and short term profits. The CEO of the company is mainly responsible for creating a vision to the organization generally he/she would be a highly experienced person in field and is responsible in the success of the business (Debowski 2006).The purpose of the Frito Lay is to focus on one private mission to become worlds leading products company for the consumer who focus on convenient foods. They try to offer better opportunities for growth and improvement to their employees, business and the in communities where they work. Moreover, whatever they do, they struggle for honesty and integrity. Frito lays main vision is to improve all their features in which they operate- environment, social and economic. They try to implement this vision by programs and concentrate on environmental stewardship, steps that benefit society and building a good relationship among stakeholders. Moreover, they not only focus on financial success of the company only also in reducing environmental footprint by protecting natural resources and using re unusedable energy in order to reduce virulent emissions.The knowledge environment in which the organization exists external contextWhen organizations ar exposed to external environment, it will go through more changes. There are numerous an(prenominal) factors same technological changes and globalization have brought many opportunities and caused threats in the marketplace (Debowski 2006).Globalization has provided an opportunity for businesses like Frito Lay to gain entrance mone y all over the world but also brought international organizations to the home market which poses a threat to separate companies. Globalization allows customers to check prices, serve and look backs of the product from many providers before selecting their suppliers. Even if the supplier is at another end of the world could be located and contacted through tele converses to impact customer requirements (Debowski 2006).Like discussed before, Globalization provides both opportunity and threat. The threat could be an increase number of competitions means customer are exposed to a wide range of products and services. Then we can scratch that customer wont stick to one supplier as there are many, so customer loyalty cannot be trusted. Since costumer is exposed to many varieties of products, it will in turn increase the stress on organizations like Frito Lay to be more creative plus more responsive to the be set by the competitors (Debowski 2006).The other external factor that affect s organization is the pressure from the stakeholder. Since the investment become global, there will be continuous demands from stakeholders to improve market shares, cost reductions and increase in profits. Even technological change is a main factor that effects on business and also helps developing quickly. In case of Frito lay, the Globalization is forcing business to update their technology in order to compete in the market (Wimmer 2004). Technology has become a foundation to many organizations and work tasks, and allows sound communication and management (Debowski 2006).The organisational structure including the internal knowledge cultureAccording to the Oliver Kandadi (2006 p.6) knowledge culture is A room of organizational life that enables and motivates people to create, share and utilize knowledge for the benefit and enduring success of the organization. This culture was seen in Frito Lay organization which was implemented by Mike Marino, vice president of customer develop ment. The company bought a tool called Autonomy from navigator transcriptions, a search engine that allows users to search information and explore new ideas through intranet sites. By the help of navigator system, new innovative ideas and solutions were developed through combined efforts. Once the system was centralized, knowledge sacramental manduction became jacket exercise between staff members with the help of supervisor and leaders. After the implementation, employees are kept up to date about the issues, events and innovations. This internal culture has encouraged a regular communications all over the organization which helped openness, honesty and concerned for others is promoted. Knowledge culture allows employees to work together by manduction and learning from their peers and supervisors (Oliver Kandadi 2006).Organizational structure is an influencing element in creation and development of knowledge culture. It defines the way power and responsibility is performed in an organization and also distributes knowledge in a way that it will be easily adopted by the firm. Organizational structure allows employees to be grouped according to their functions or division or both. In Frito Lay, the company grouped sales team as a pilot team for the portal, which helped the firm to understand the new system (Debowski 2006).Knowledge workersAccording to Debowski (2006, p.31) knowledge workers use their heads more than their hands to produce value. Knowledge workers mainly work with their own knowledge to resolve issues or problematic situations. They try to learn new information to reshape their existing knowledge, by doing so they can apply these skills in a variety of areas to resolve issues, generate ideas, or develop new services and products (Prince, 2010). Their job mainly deals on the mental rather than muscle power and is characterized by non respective tasks. They use different methods to solve issues and they also have chest of drawers to decide w hich technique to use in order to achieve the success (Prince 2010).In the case study, Frito Lays vice president of customer development, Mike Marino and Price had many types of organizational knowledge (Debowski 2006).Knowledge that may possess many features, characteristics and value of different sources or systems that may be found in the Frito Lay organization.Knowledge that can identify people, groups and organization and techniques to link them.Understand how to carry out difficult task which require analytical skills such as researching, testing and innovating.An ability to observe, estimate and access counteract knowledge sources.The sales pilot team was dispersed all over the country to collect information from the customers and analyze it with correct resources and then fed back it to the sales people in the organization. This flow of knowledge from knowledge workers to the organization will empower them with superior customer knowledge and competitive intelligence.Knowle dge leadersKnowledge leaders are the pillars to the organization and restrain of knowledge management in a firm. These people provide the encouragement, set goals and vision to transform the knowledge concept in to a reality. By the circumstances of the organization, the knowledge leaders roles and responsibilities are designed. Knowledge leaders help to build an effective knowledge community. Their roles require them to understand the complex framework of the knowledge operations and ways communication and teamwork is built and strengthened (Debowski 2006). The generic attributes of knowledge leader were they contribute some important attributes which depend on understanding of forge, systems and peopleThe main concepts identified within the case study are disciplines of knowledge leadership, like willingness to share knowledge because it is seen as a power and also collaboration of their work with other organizations. Mike Marino acted as a Change Agent as he identified that kno wledge was dispersed in various systems across their organization which created complexity for employees to obtain data freely and there was inconsistency in data too. They solved this problem by sharing the knowledge all over the organization by developing a centralized system (KM portal) for all of their business processes (Debowski 2006).Another model that is clear in case study is generic attributes of the knowledge leader, for instance selecting an appropriate sales pilot team and displace them with knowledge management portal support across 10 different cites to by measuring up their surgery with the normal teams which displays the qualities of strategic visionary and knowledge executor attribute of the knowledge leader (Debowski 2006).TechnologyTechnology is a main factor that brings out a huge positive difference in an organization and also helps developing it growth rapidly. In case of Frito lay, due to no integration between business process for finding and merging data of join and customer account information. After the implementation of Knowledge management system (KMS) it become a basic foundation to the organizations and work tasks by providing an effective communication and management (Debowski 2006).KMS provides a unified and functional platform in an organization on which many other knowledge activities flow and interconnect. It offers knowledge capture and sharing freely, readily and openly to all the stakeholders across the organization. Moreover, it also offers a channel to an individual user to acquire a document, send, share and create knowledge to meet the priorities of the organization. Basically there are quatern components in KMS Business process management, Content management, Web capability management and Knowledge application management. In case of Frito Lay, they have built knowledge management portal on the corporate intranet. It acts a centre point of access to various sources of information and offers individual access to o. This type of system falls under content and business process management (Debowski 2006).The content management system is an intellectual content in KMS. It allows users to retrieve knowledge on particular theme and topic from the KM portal. It allows a wide range of strategies of indexing, storing and organizing the knowledge that are linked in KMS. Business process management defines the processes that are needed for an organization. Like in Frito Lay, these systems are linked to a knowledge management practices so that employees of the company have the access of ideal and up to date data to build up their knowledge (Debowski 2006).Knowledge resources and knowledge-sharing practicesOne of the core practices in knowledge management is knowledge repositories and knowledge sharing (Debowski 2006). Typically, knowledge repository outlook is like another web-based index. It provides many options to the users to explore with the main menu that offers wide range of access to the recog nized knowledge resources from internal and external to the organization. Repositories act as a connection between the user and the core knowledge, working as a single point of entry to support users finding required information across the organization and also other organizations (Annunziata Levant 2002). Through repositories knowledge is shared among users, sharing knowledge has become commit and ends up becoming a part of the routine daily life (Barnes 2002).The repository system used by the Frito Lay sales force was Autonomy. This system was acquired from a consultancy, Navigator systems from Dallas. This tool enables users to search all the way through various repositories like internet sites, spreadsheets and power point presentation (Huysman Writ 2002). It supports many salespeople to get all significant information from a variety of sources which allow them to achieve all the different data sets through one picture. Furthermore other features that we can see in this tool are it links the organization data with internal sources and outside too, it is a search service that helps people to find data that is required and it also help to record solutions and best practices of other so that it can be shared with others (Barnes 2002).Knowledge needsThe main goal of knowledge needs is to identify accurately about the knowledge the organization, its team and its people need at the moment and the knowledge they might need in the feature to achieve their goals and objective. The future strategy of an organization is enhanced due to knowledge needs analysis. This analysis can also find out the staff skills and capability of improvement needs and opportunities for training and developing, team spirit and relationship with staff, subordinated and peers (Ovio Komi-Sirvi 2002).Knowledge gapsA gap between the ideal world and the existing knowledge world is known as knowledge gap. Gaps may obstruct innovations, opportunities for organization improvement or impede te chnology implementation Often, the first task is to review the about the existing knowledge in the organization and then analyze who has it, where it is and which jobs the knowledge is used in. Moreover, when knowledge gaps are visible then it gives a say-so in decision making. It is important to identify knowledge gaps of two forms of knowledge, explicit and tacit knowledge (Debowski 2006).According to Lin, Yeh Tseng (2005 p.3) knowledge gaps can be viewed in four different thoughts strategic aspect, planning aspect, perception aspect and implementation aspect.Strategic aspect This type of knowledge is necessary for the improvement of the organization competitiveness.Implementation aspect Implementation of knowledge management.Plan aspect The plan of knowledge managementPerception aspect To improve the organizations competitiveness as perceived by the top managers and employees.QuestionsWhat categories of knowledge do you use in your organization?How do you use each of that know ledge?From how many sources can you acquire the knowledge?Apart from yourself, who else use this knowledge?Is a specific knowledge is restricted to specific users?JustificationFor the first question, it was important to know how knowledge was divided into the firm and how many categories are present for the employees and teams in an organization.For the second question, how organization utilized that knowledge, for instance whether there are any restrictions or no restrictions.For the third question, how does the organization acquire knowledge, like internal and externally.For the fourth question, apart for the organization and its people, is that knowledge is utilized by other organization? Or it is used by the suppliers or other external factors.For the final question, are there any security constraints in the company, if there are then why those constraints.Knowledge audit ToolsAccording to Ramalingam (2006 p.13) knowledge audited account offers a framework for gathering data, sy nthesising findings and making suggestions about the best way forward for knowledge and learning initiatives against a background of the broader structural and policy factors poignant an organization.In Frito Lay, the sales team has been given access to portal with different content as well as research abstracts, which was called as a performance scorecard (Chowdhury 2006). It is to evaluate the performance of the account. This tool comes under the balanced scorecard approach for measuring the performance on the four key aspects financial investment, internal process, customer/stakeholders expectation and focus on learning and growth. This tool will help in measuring the performance of the employees and help in providing results on how effective the company is operating.The tools of knowledge audit areKnowledge Gap analysis This tool shows the gaps that hold back technology implementations and hamper opportunities and block innovations.SWOT analysis It is a strategic planning techn ique that is applied to calculate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats included in a project or an organization.Knowledge Taxonomy it regulates a construction of knowledge map by describing an organizational knowledge and relationship.Exit Interviews When an employee is leaving a company forever, then he/she will be taking knowledge along with them. So this tool will help to document that knowledge so that it can be utilised by other employees.Questionnaire A research in conducted with a series of questions for the purpose of gathering data from large number of respondents.RecommendationsKnowledge portal has made a huge difference to Frito Lays sales team. The portal acted as a central point for the whole organization by providing multiple resources as it provides an essential way to capture information. The implementation of portal has brought a lot of profits and made their work easy. However, this is the beginning stage of the progression and still a lot to come.S ince the portal is implemented in only to team it is recommended to add its functional to other employees across the 3 divisions. Moreover, it would be better if this is added to their customers like supermarkets as it would help them to synching their knowledge with the organization for co promoting and co merchandise of products together.In future, the organization might implement other knowledge management systems like Web Content Management and Knowledge Application Management. Web content mainly deals with building an effective website structure through which users may access to the KMS Frito Lay can have advantage with this system as it will provide a direct communication with the client side. It will provide an easy user interface and it would even benefit the consumers too. Knowledge application management system would provide users with applications like word processing and emails. These applications will help the staff creating knowledge.ConclusionIn conclusion, knowledge management is the key to every organization for possible action a door full of opportunities and possibilities. KM portal has become a PepsiCo project as it has helped in improving employee retention rates and the efficiency of the companys operation too. Frito Lays sales team is able to capture the specific information of the corporate and customer sales account information from any location. It has reduced inconsistency and gemination of data which reduced the performing of same tasks over and over.Knowledge management is an attractive concept to many industries. It helps understanding the needs and gaps in knowledge by simple analysis and helps in coping up with the globalization. Moreover, the knowledge leaders and workers will help to put the theories and ideas from papers to real world.