LEGO GROUP

LEGO GROUP

LEGO is a privately owned farm that owned by Kirk Kristiansen and was founded in the year 1932. The company is located in Billund, Denmark. The company’s one of the flagship product are the interlocking plastic blocks. These blocks are interconnected to make different types of toy figures (Lego.com, 2018).

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE

The term knowledge management came into existence in the late 1980. The term came in to forefront through the business journals and the several books published during that period. The development of computer improved the framing of the improved database management system for the effective storage of data (Liebowitz & Frank, 2016).

The e-commerce website at the same time came in to the picture with the advent of better HTML programming and coding. The concept of e-commerce gained momentum with the option of buying software, books, music from the online stores. These e-commerce websites delivered the packages within the time frame of 48 hours (Mata & Quesada, 2014).

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge management (KM) is systematic way of managing the knowledge assets of an organization with a purpose of meeting the strategic and the tactile requirements as well as creating values. It involves the systems, strategies, processes and initiatives that will both enhance and sustain the creation, refinement, sharing, assessment, storage of knowledge (Dalkir & Beaulieu, 2017). 

Organizational KM theory is of two types-

• Ecological KM theory- it focuses on the learning communities, relationships and people. It also includes interactions between the organizations and the individuals. This theory also deals with the external and the internal factors that bring people together in order to share their knowledge.
• Techno-centric theory- this focuses on the designing process technology and its enablers. This helps and promotes the storage of information and the flow of knowledge. This theory also gauges the impact of technology, process and people on the sharing of knowledge (Ackerman et al., 2012).

• Types of knowledge management

  Explicit knowledge- it is sort of knowledge that can be written down and captured in the documents and the databases. The best example of explicit knowledge is: research findings, lessons learned, best practices, written procedures, instruction manuals.

  Tacit knowledge- this sort of knowledge is held by people in their head and is less explicit than the explicit knowledge (Fao.org, 2018).

• Organizational knowledge management has the following significance

  • Helps drive strategy
  • Diffuses best practices
  • Solves problems quickly
  • Improves knowledge that are embedded in the services and products
  • Cross-fertilizes ideas and increases the opportunities for innovation
  • Enables organizations to stay ahead of the competition
  • Builds organizational memory (Omotayo, 2015).

  • IMPACT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ON LEGO

  • The LEGO company has a strong cultural background and the cross cultural knowledge transfer has played a major role in cross-cultural knowledge management. Through the knowledge management, the Danish designers and the producers created an exchange program with the traditional wood plastic toys, producers of the software games and the British designers (Barbaroux, Attour & Schenk, 2016).

• RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PERFROMANCE IMPROVEMENT

• Recommendations-

  • Performance improvement can come only at the cost of the employees who are skilled.
  • Out of the box thinking for the development of new products
  • Proper training for the enhancement of the skills of the employees
  • Development of products in accordance with the knowledge exhibited by the adolescents.
  • Proper advertisement of the newly released products to increase the sale of the products (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013).

• E-COMMERCE

• E-commerce is a term which is used for any kind of business or a commercial transaction which involves the flow of information through the internet. E-commerce can be categorized into 6 major types:

  • Business to business
  • Business to consumer
  • Consumer to consumer
  • Consumer to business
  • Business to administration
  • Consumer to administration (Niranjanamurthy et al., 2013).

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE

Benefits of the e-commerce

• Easy to find products and also faster way to buy and sell products
• 24/7 option of buying and selling products
• Lack of any sort of geographical barriers and easy reach to the customers.
• Low cost of the operations and the better quality of the services
• Easy to start and manage business (Niranjanamurthy et al., 2013).

• Disadvantages of the e-commerce

  • There is no guarantee on the quality of the product and the descriptions as well as the images can be misleading.
  • Mechanical failures can be unpredictable and can affect the total process.
  • Minimum chances of consumer getting in direct access with company.
  • Hacker look for opportunities for exploiting the payment gateway and the service loop holes (Niranjanamurthy et al., 2013).

  • DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND BIG-DATA

• The digital technology is constantly changing the human perspectives and habit of buying products. Among all these, there are challenges that include discovery of the customers, evaluation, purchase, usage of the products and the return of products. The Omni channel retailers that integrate both the physical and the digital players bring a customized experience to the customers. The implementation of the Big data for the effective analysis of the customer is now a day spelling as a blessing for the companies that have an inclination towards the selling of products via online websites (Provost & Fawcett, 2013).

• IMPACT OF E-COMMERCE ON LEGO

• The LEGO website is one of the top ten sites for children. LEGO has a brand recognition which is helpful in gaining a competitive edge over the other market players, like Nintendo, Mattel Hasbro Sega. Although the LEGO website has a list of all the products that are available for the children to view and access the features. The company generally earns around 5 % of the total sales from the sales of the catalog. Considering the fame and popularity of the LEGO website, and e-commerce platform will definitely help the company (Schlagwein & Bjørn-Andersen, 2014).

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT

Considering the fact that LEGO website is free for access to search for the newly launched products and the product description. Being on the top 10 list of toy websites, LEGO group can effectively implement the e-commerce on its website to increase both the sales and the revenue earning from sale of its products through the website. Visiting the offline stores and finding for the exact product might be cumbersome at certain points. However, an e-commerce website is capable enough to raise the sales.

Thus, from the presentation it can be concluded that, both the knowledge management and the e-commerce revolutionized the business entities over the world. For our study, the LEGO is seen to be effectively implementing the knowledge management, however it lacked an e-commerce website. Regarding the popularity of the LEGO website, building it on an e-commerce platform will provide the company with an added benefit of selling product direct from its website.

Ackerman, M. S., Dachtera, J., Pipek, V., & Wulf, V. (2013). Sharing knowledge and expertise: The CSCW view of knowledge management. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 22(4-6), 531-573.

Barbaroux, P., Attour, A., & Schenk, E. (2016). Knowledge Management and Innovation: Interaction, Collaboration, Openness (Vol. 6). John Wiley & Sons.

Dalkir, K., & Beaulieu, M. (2017). Knowledge management in theory and practice. MIT press.

Fao.org. (2018). Fao.org. Retrieved 1 February 2018, 

Huang, Z., & Benyoucef, M. (2013). From e-commerce to social commerce: A close look at design features. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12(4), 246-259.

Lego.com. (2018). The LEGO Group. Lego.com. Retrieved 1 February 2018, from https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/lego-group

Liebowitz, J., & Frank, M. (Eds.). (2016). Knowledge management and e-learning. CRC press.

Mata, F. J., & Quesada, A. (2014). Web 2.0, social networks and e-commerce as marketing tools. Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research, 9(1), 56-69.

Niranjanamurthy, M., Kavyashree, N., Jagannath, S., & Chahar, D. (2013). Analysis of e-commerce and m-commerce: advantages, limitations and security issues. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(6).

Omotayo, F. O. (2015). Knowledge Management as an important tool in Organisational Management: A Review of Literature. Library Philosophy and Practice, 1.

Provost, F., & Fawcett, T. (2013). Data science and its relationship to big data and data-driven decision making. Big data, 1(1), 51-59.

Schlagwein, D., & Bjørn-Andersen, N. (2014). Organizational learning with crowdsourcing: The revelatory case of LEGO. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 15(11), 754.