Knowledge and Information Management at Amazon: Report Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Amazon's knowledge and information management (KIM) system. It begins with an organizational profile of Amazon, detailing its main activities, locations, and staff demographics. The report then conducts a SWOT analysis of Amazon's Knowledge Management System, assessing its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Further, it critically evaluates the four areas of the Knowledge Management Value Chain (KMVC), and discusses the support systems (HR/IT) that interact with these. The report concludes with recommendations for developing and improving Amazon's KIM system, based on the analysis conducted. The report covers the importance of KIM in the context of Amazon's e-commerce business, emphasizing the value of information management and knowledge management for effective performance.

Knowledge and information
management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Task: 1: Provide an organisational profile of Amazon. This should include the main activities,
location(s), and staff profile (including demographics) of the organisation...............................3
Task 2: Conduct a SWOT analysis of the Knowledge Management System specifically at
Amazon.......................................................................................................................................9
Task 3: Critically evaluate the four areas of the KMVC and discuss the support systems
(HR/IT, etc.) that interact with these.........................................................................................10
Task 4: Compile a conclusion to the report, outlining the main areas for development in the
Knowledge Management System at Amazon, then provide recommendations based on this
conclusion.................................................................................................................................14
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................15
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................17

INTRODUCTION
Knowledge and information management is the most important part of organization
management system which deals and concern with the management of knowledge and
information in context to the performance improvement and to develop, acquire, share and
capture the knowledge in order enable the effective learning within the organization for effective
performance. Information and knowledge both are the very important element of business
because that helps the organization to work in right direction (Hwang, Y., Lin, H. And Shin, D.,
2018). Information management is involving the technological and managerial function to
collect, retrieve the market and customers information and protect the personal information of
organization. In other hand knowledge management is about making the research and
development approach which helps together the knowledge of new skills tools and techniques of
business, which can further retrieve, manage and share to the employees for productive work
performance (Orna, E., 2017) . Amazon is American multinational technology company, this
deals With The E-Commerce business activities such digital streaming, cloud computing and
artificial intelligence, this is the online shopping site. In this report the complete study of
Amazon and its knowledge management system is done within the application of different
analytical tools. Along with this there is a critical evaluation of KMVC. And then it’s including
the appropriate recommendation for organization knowledge management system improvement.
Task: 1: Provide an organisational profile of Amazon. This should include the main activities,
location(s), and staff profile (including demographics) of the organisation.
AMAZON overview
Amazon is an American multinational company which deals its business and e-commerce sector
this organisation was developed by Jeff bezos and now it's one of the best online selling
company this is a biggest internet based enterprise. Which sales vast range of products and
services through online platform, such as electronics, houseware, books music, movie, stationery
and many Other goods. This can be done directly or by the participation of middle man between
the other retailers and Amazon sellers. This is headquartered in seattle, Washington. Amazon is

including hierarchical organisation structure. Leadership style of the organisation is pragmatist
with this strong performance and work standards (Webb, S.P., 2017).
Main Activities- As Amazon is e-commerce company due to which it has to manage various
functions and operations related to their E-Commerce business. That is involving the activities
like merchandising of digital and physical goods, which used to make their products and
services visible on E-Commerce platform. Then another important activity is designing and
management of its platform, which should be easy and effective for the customers to get easy
access and make purchasing. Organisation is very big due to which it has two make very
selective steps and approaches for it supply chain management. To run this business at global
level organisation need to make continuous partnership with sellers and suppliers. Below is the
brief explanation of all these activities.
 Merchandising of digital and physical goods- Amazon is using various effective and
interactive digital merchandising methods which help to develop and manage all the
attractive and informative promotional and advertisement activities. Amazon is using
different modes of lead generation and brand awareness through the numbers of online
marketing channel. Such as company is managing their Facebook page for the promotion
of their products and services. Along with associate programs, sponsored search, email
marketing campaign and portal advertising.
 Development, designing and optimisation of its platform (website and app)- Each
and every online business organisation how to effectively manage their online platform
from where customers make there purchasing. In order to manage the online business
platform that is important to effectively co-ordinate with the information technology.
Amazon is effectively managing designing and optimising their online platform true
digital streaming, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and it is having the numbers of
IT department managers and team which co-ordinate with all the changing environmental
factors in order to effectively manag the Amazon app and online platform.
 Manage supply chain and logistics- it is clear to every one that, one of the most
important activity for online business is supply chain management (Carvalho, E.G.A.,
Blanco, C.J.C., 2020). Because it helps to prevent the wastage of investment and lead by
coordinating and interpretation the possible demand and supply. Amazon is using various
automation technology for their warehouse management and different fulfilment options

for their third party sellers according to that seller can make choice from FBA and FBM.
Fulfilment by Amazon, under which seller can beal with Amazon’s to mange the product
sale by company. Then other options is FBM (sell using your own fulfilment) under
which seller handle the fulfilment of their products on Amazon marketplace by their own.
Build partnership with its suppliers and sellers- Another most important business activity of
Amazon is developing the new partners and sellers throughout the different location for
expanding their business and managing the supply and demand at that location. Such as Amazon
is using different strategies for sailors and partners development like giving the opportunity to
retailers for opening their shop at amazon seller market place. That is also working on Amazon’s

global selling under which company is giving chance to the new seller for selling with Amazon
(Cooke, P., 2020).
Location- all the Amazon work is completely e commerce based but there are some important
operational activities which conduct in offline platform related to its physical goods and services
management. Amazon is having where houses in different countries where it leads the online
selling of physical goods. According to the website builder experts information, this organisation
is selling its product in 58 countries and now it has to reached the greatest international internet
customers population that is 1.2 billion peoples. Now the organisation is working in in the
concept of Amazon global selling, which is having the objective to take the Amazon sellers
business into the global market E-Commerce expert program. What is including the goal of
achieving 200 million paid prime numbers and over 300 million customers globally. By targeting
to develop in 200 + countries and territories. Amazon is having its office location and almost 235
locations. Some of Amazon office location is illustrated below with the help of pictures (Levy,
K. and Barocas, S., 2018).

Staff profile- Amazon is bleeding in different countries and making higher revenue due to
which one of the most important resources, such as human resources organisation is approx.
1271000. And at present organisation is having various job vacancies related to different job
profile, 37, 811 approx.
Demographics- this term demographics used to represent statistical data of population in the
range of different groups and characteristics. That involves the calculation of population in terms
of age and gender. In the entry level and middle corporate workers, from the workforce off last
year there were the 31% of women employee. And another hand black and Latino were 7%.
White workers made up to 47% of workforce and Asians are 35% in corporate employee
workforce. Below is comparison of demographics in context to top leading company work
forces (Calegare, M.G.A. and Higuchi, M.I.G., 2018).

Task 2: Conduct a SWOT analysis of the Knowledge Management System specifically at
Amazon
Amazon is involving almost every business functions and operations at online platform accepting
the, warehousing and transportation. So in order to manage all those operations and functions
effectively. That is important for the organisation to have best knowledge management system.
Knowledge management system is a type of information technology system, which Store,
retrieve and manage knowledgeable information. Which play very important role in
collaboration, process alignment and improve understanding. As that is very important to have
effective knowledge management system, so in context to that another important thing is it’s
SWOT analysis which help to analyse the potential and capability of Amazon KMS, in terms of
strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (Jain, N. and Gupta, V., 2019).
SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis is one of crucial analytical or strategic planning framework, which helps the
individuals and businesses entities to make the brief analysis of their selective function or
Business unit. In terms of strength weakness, opportunity and threat. Which further help to make
action plan for improvement and development.
Strength- Amazon effectively connect with its global customers without any complications
through to the help of advanced knowledge management techniques. This organisation is
Managing their online platform efficiently with the application of KM principles which add
values for their customers.
 Such as Ambone is having one portal one interface with help of effective KM system.
 The organizations consistent presentation modular and distribution upstream contents
effectiveness is representing the KM strength of organizations.
 Amazon is having almost medical personalization strategy for customer by the effective
use of customers history knowledge.
Weakness- this factor of the framework is involving the analysis of the key selected business
system weaknesses. That means evaluating the system particular area at which it’s not effective
and require improvement.
 The major Amazon knowledge management system is that they can not easy monitor the
third party sellers for improvement in context to the collected knowledge and information
from the customer side.

 Organisation is not as much stronger to force the third party sellers regarding the
improvement of their selling and services according to the collected information.
Opportunity-
The ISO standard 30401 is a kind of opportunity for Amazon knowledge management system.
As it helps to make more improvement on existing knowledge management by implementing a
management system which can promote and enables the value creation. Through best knowledge
and information management (Yasir, M. and Majid, A., 2017).
 Ikon science, is platform which is designed to provide geoscientist and engineers with
better access to knowledge and information. That is the opportunity for the Amazon to
collaborate with this platform and improve knowledge management system.
 A developing technology is the opportunity for Amazon knowledge management system,
such as mobile friendly knowledge management systems help the organisation to make it
more easy use of the knowledge for task and customers management. By facilitating
easily access of the employees to KMS to utilize that (Qi, C. and Chau, P.Y.K., 2018).
Threat – This factor of the framework involves the analysis of upcoming risk related selected
business unit or function.
 Due to the higher technological development and easy access of hackers to it increases
the risk of information loss and duplication.
There is a possibility of higher competition due to the higher chances of KMS adaptation by the
other competitors (Barros, F.B., de Sousa, F.F., 2021).
Task 3: Critically evaluate the four areas of the KMVC and discuss the support systems (HR/IT,
etc.) that interact with these.
Knowledge management value chain
This one of the powerful management tool developed by the Mathieu Weggeman. As
knowledge management is focus on the development, transfer, dissemination and application of
the knowledge throughout the organization. It consider as one of the important factor in context
to management of which these tool is developed (Mahdi, O.R., Nassar, I.A., 2019). In this model
knowledge get more valuable when it move from 1 to 5. According to this knowledge

management value chain organizations should organize their different process and function in
KMVC, in the best effective way through which the production factor knowledge efficiency can
effectively use to make befits (Thomas, E., Valdivia, J., 2017).
Four area of KMVC
This model is having four important areas which should be effectively cover by the
organizations to manage the knowledge along with the other connect Activities of Business
(Strange, R. and Humphrey, J., 2019).
Knowledge Acquisition- This is first initial step of knowledge management value chain under
which organisation make different approaches to obtain information from external sources. This
is the initial step of knowledge management according to which organisation should make their
best efforts to gather the knowledge from external sources related to the import factors of
Business. Such as in context to the Amazon knowledge acquisition is collection of the customers

information from market through marketing research campaign (Attia, A. and Eldin, I.E.,
2018).Which helps to collect the important knowledge related to the customers preference,
demands and trends. Amazon is at the best position in the e commerce Business industry due to
their best efforts and strategy of knowledge acquisition. Which further proceed with the
knowledge management system to make effective decision by considering the knowledge. The
main objective of Amazon is the continuous improvement of the customers experience by the
effective approach of knowledge acquisition which aid to make the right decision for customers
service improvement. One of the best example of Amazon knowledge acquisition approach is
there single platform approach due to which each and every knowledge of the customers
preference, needs and requirements along with the location is collected by the organisation into
the safe knowledge management system of company. Which further use to make effective
practises and decision regarding the product, services and platform improvement in order to give
the best experience to customers. Knowledge acquisition this can be done by the organisation by
involving the different modes of information extraction such as documentation of the
information through internet network management system, documentation of employee
experiences. Tracking of sale, payments, inventory and customers some other external sources of
knowledge is can be newsfeed, government statistics, legal opinion, newsfeed and industry
report.
Knowledge Storage- once the acquisition of information and knowledge is done in the right way
then the next important step of the knowledge management is storage. Once the expert rules,
documents and patterns get collected by the organisation, then knowledge can we store in order
to effectively retrieve that which can be any time available for this support of employees.
Generally storage of the knowledge is done by making the sequence of data bases. In order to
make a effective storage community of the expertise is required. Another important of
knowledge storage is that organisation should support the development of planed knowledge
storage system. According to this tool of knowledge management organisation should use
effective strategy of knowledge storage under vegetation encourage Their employees for giving
their time to share their experience and the information gathered, then encourage Their
employees to give their time for updating new information and knowledge in knowledge system.