POSSIBLE PROBLEMS 

 

Nestlé is a company that follow a codification-based strategy. It means that all knowledge within the group is stored into a huge central database and managed by dedicated applications that allow all employees located across the entire globe to use information stored into the central repository. 

 

There are some problems that can occur in this kind of organisation. The number of information that a company like Nestlé has to manage daily is so huge that providing an efficient central repository is a challenge for the information department. But a so important system involves for sure very big costs: it has to be continuously updated with new software that can make it work better, it need a daily maintenance. To these direct costs there should be added the indirect costs: who can quantify how many € does Nestlé  looses for every hour of inefficiency of its central database? There are damages in orders missed, products and services not delivered, losts in the image of a brand.

 

Central codification is very expansive. But there is another risk connected with such structure, that can seem more philosophical, but that can be extremely dangerous for every company. Structure different from the headquarters of Nestlé can start to think at the core of the business only as a place where they can find information they need to do their tasks: Vevey-abroad office: one way road. If it happens, the company can loose a fundamental resource: new information. If the strategy, all focused on knowledge sharing and using, let the knowledge cycle miss the essential step of knowledge acquisition, there will be no possibilities for the company to achieve  the innovation goal, an aim in which direction all company that want to survive in nowadays trade market have to direct to.

 

The big opportunities that a central codification represent, should in the end let knowledge managers aware that there are some initiatives (like invest in technology that support the repository, make the data as safe as possible, continue the data gathering and the knowledge acquisition from the worldwide dislocation of the company)  that have to be taken.

 

  

 

 

Connected with the codification-based strategy, there is another problem that Nestlé managers have to pay attention to. Data mining is an essential part of the knowledge evaluation: but databases are very often so boring that people have a lot of problems in working with them. If a so huge amount of information needs an information system, the latter cannot work at his best without a human resource that give him the right logarithms: computer can be very good in searching, but only if they know what they have to look for.  

  

And in the end, last but not least, the information have to be presented in the right way to the manager that have to take decision by it. The process of data analysis can bring excellent results, but if this new knowledge is not delivered to the right people in the right form, all the work will became useless. Because of different skills that different employees have, the easier solution to this problem is to invest in collaboration between technical and decisional manager. A junior manager can help a data engineer in presenting correctly his results; than, when the junior manager will became a senior, he will have the skill to understand and interpreter data analysis report that maybe are not offered to him in the best way.