Business Report: Managing Communications, Knowledge, and Information

This report delves into the critical aspects of managing communication, knowledge, and information within a business setting. It begins by outlining the range of decisions at strategic, tactical, and operational levels, emphasizing the importance of up-to-date information, competitor analysis, and both internal and external data sources for effective decision-making. The report then explores stakeholder involvement, detailing how to develop business relationships, involve stakeholders in the decision-making process, and implement strategies for improvement. The third task focuses on the communication process, suggesting ways to enhance appropriateness and implement improvements in communication systems, including personal skill development. Finally, the report addresses the collection, formatting, storage, and dissemination of information and knowledge, proposing changes and strategies to optimize these processes. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and recommendations for improved business performance.

Managing
Communications,
Knowledge and
Information

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Range of decisions................................................................................................................1
1.2 Information needed to ensure effective decision taking.......................................................2
1.3 Internal and external sources of information........................................................................2
1.4 Recommendations for improvement.....................................................................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
2.1 Stakeholders for decision making process............................................................................3
2.2 Develop business relationships with stakeholders................................................................4
2.3 Involve stakeholders in decision making process.................................................................4
2.4 Strategies for improvement...................................................................................................5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................5
3.1 Process of communication....................................................................................................5
3.2 Ways to improve appropriateness.........................................................................................6
3.3 Implement improvements in communication system...........................................................7
3.4 Personal plan to improve communication skills...................................................................7
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................8
4.1 Approach of collection, formatting,storage and dissemination of information and
knowledge...................................................................................................................................8
4.2 Changes to improve collection, formatting, storage and dissemination of information and
knowledge...................................................................................................................................8
4.3 Strategy to improve the system.............................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Managing knowledge and information in an enterprise is one of the important task. It is
very essential for an enterprise to have sufficient dataabout all the changes that take place in the
business environment in order to make necessary changes (Yates and Paquette, 2011). Relevant
data helps the firm owners in taking effective decisions. Present report is based on a case study in
which a person is facing many business related problems and many recommendations are given
to him in order to run all the activities in an effective manner. Decisions taken by enterprises on
various levels including strategic, tactical and operational level are described under the report.
What type of data is relevant for business owner in taking important decisions are also
discussed under this. There are large number of internal and external sources which provide
useful information to the owners.
TASK 1
1.1 Range of decisions
A large number of decisions are taken on various level of business whether business is a
small entity or a large enterprise. Decisions are taken on basically three levels including
strategic, tactical and operational level. In order to set up a coffee shop in the business David has
to take a long range of decisions. The decisions taken by the David include the following:1. Strategic level: This is one of the most important and top level of a business, all
important decisions are taken under this level. All the decisions taken under this level
have long term impacts on the business activities. For coffee shop strategic decision can
be how much to invest in the business whether remain in the coffee business or not.2. Tactic level: All the set strategies are implemented under this level of business. Under
this level medium term decisions are taken by the business owners. For a coffee shop a
tactical decision would be whether to open the coffee shop early in the morning to attract
large number of people or to open it at late nights or in evening.
3. Operational level: Day to day and routine decisions are taken under this level. All these
decisions are mainly managed by junior managers of enterprise (Holsapple, 2013). For a
coffee shop a tactical decision includes whether to give an order to buy extra coffee in the
coming week.
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1.2 Information needed to ensure effective decision taking
A lot of data are needed by any enterprise to take effective decisions. (Holtshouse, 2013).
In absence of proper content or relevant data effective decisions cannot be taken by the firm and
to deliver good products and services to the customers, it is very important for a firm to take
effective decision and for that decisions following contentinformation are needed: Up to date datainformation: It is very important for a business to have up to date
information about the business environment and about the changes that take place in it.
Because business world changes very fast so it is very important to have the information
about it.
 Information about competitors: A business owner or a company should have all the
contentinformation about its competitors to deliver better services than its competitors.
Same as with the David, he should have the proper and relevant subject
matterinformation about coffee shops that already exist in that area and what are the trends that
are changing place to deliver better services to the people and at the same time to attract large
number of customers.
1.3 Internal and external sources of information
Data can be collected through number of sources from which some can be internal or
some can be external.
1. Internal sources: Internal sources of the enterprise or a business firm include the
following: Financial datainformation: This contentinformation are available through the financial
statements of the enterprise including profit and loss statement and balance sheet. Manufacturing information: This datainformation include the data related about the
production, raw material cost, distributors and many more. Personal and administration information: Under this all the personal and background
contentinformation of employees comes. Marketing informationcontent: This include content related with the products and
services offered by the enterprise to its customers.
2. External sources: These are outside sources of the enterprise and provide valuable
datainformation to business owners about the changes that place in the outside world
(Kebede, 2010). This information can be collected through various sources including
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government agencies, third party agencies, libraries, private information providers and
many more.
David can collect the important content through various external sources to take effective
decisions for staring and running the business activities.
1.4 Recommendations for improvement
There are number of recommendation which can be given to an enterprise for
improvements. Improving the current knowledge management system can help in increasing the
overall business performance. Using computerised decision support system help in taking
decisions at a fast speed. Competitor intelligence system can give useful information to the
enterprise about the major steps taken by the competitors and then firm can do necessary changes
in its strategies.
Timely up gradation should be done in system to make information relevant for solving
the issues or problems. Relevant information of all the departments should be included in the
information and knowledge system.
TASK 2
2.1 Stakeholders for decision making process
Stakeholders are the one who play an important role in the development of the enterprise.
They are the one who are interested and can affect the activities of the business. Stakeholders can
be of two types: Internal stakeholders: Internal stakeholders are the one who play a big and important
role in the development of the enterprise. Internal stakeholders include the employees and
managers of the enterprise.
 External stakeholders: External stakeholders include government, clients, investors,
local communities, groups, private enterprises, customers and many more.
Every enterprise should make good relations with all its stakeholders in order to get their
maximum contribution in the growth of the enterprise (Dalkir and Liebowitz, 2011). It is very
important to include stakeholders in the decision making process and listen each other's point of
view. This will help the firm in reducing the conflicts and to take better and participatory
decision. Involving stakeholders in the decision making process helps in avoid the conflicts and
issues and encourage the collaborative learning. It helps in creating a shared vision and helps in
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achieving creative solutions to the complex problems. Every enterprise should identify its
stakeholders and assess their importance.
2.2 Develop business relationships with stakeholders
Maintain good relationships with stakeholders is very important for every enterprise.
Good relations with the stakeholders help the enterprise in getting desired results (López-Nicolás
and Meroño-Cerdán, 2011). Relations with the stakeholders can be maintain through the
following: Identify the stakeholders: An enterprise can have large number of stakeholders. It is
important for every enterprise to gather more information about them about their interests
and their ability to influence the activities of the business. This will help the business
enterprise in taking appropriate decisions. Prioritize: In large number of stakeholders there will be some who will be main
important for the enterprise to achieve its objectives so all those important stakeholders
should be prioritize, so that enterprise can achieve its goals and targets easily. Understand needs: It is very important for every enterprise to understand needs of its
stakeholders. It is the duty of the manager to evaluate what content is needed by the
stakeholders and provide them the same. Engaging: Two-way communication is one of the vital element of every successful
enterprise. Every business firm should try to find the innovative ways or communication
tools to communicate with the stakeholders.
 Monitor: Relationship with the stakeholders should be properly monitor. Encouragement
should be given to the feedback from the stakeholders.
2.3 Involve stakeholders in decision making process
Stakeholders provide important data to enterprise so it is very important to allow them to
take part in the decision making process of enterprise. This will help the business firm in
reaching at a better decision. Shared decision making is important for doing the collaborative
projects (Choi, Lee and Yoo,2010). Participatory decision making process will help the
enterprise in understanding the organisation's situation. Involvement of stakeholders helps in
taking corrective action. Involvement of stakeholders in decision making process provide various
useful messages to the enterprise and helps the enterprise in getting positive feedback.
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Participation of employees in the decision making process helps the business entity in
increasing the quality of their decisions. Including different perception of many stakeholders in
the decision making process helps the enterprise in reaching at good decisions.
Stakeholders have interests and ability to influences the various business activities so it is
very important for every enterprise to include them in the decision making process (Lankes,
2011). Involvement of stakeholders in the important decisions will not increase the quality of the
decisions but helps the enterprise in achieving competitive position in the market by delivering
better services to the customers.
2.4 Strategies for improvement.
It very important for every enterprise to manager good relations with the stakeholders and
this can be achieve adopting various strategies. The strategies which can be used by an enterprise
to increase the relations with stakeholders, includes the following: Customers: Providing good shopping experience to the customers is one of the main
responsibility of every enterprise. An enterprise should provide a large number of
products range and all the issues and complaints of the customers should be resolved at a
prior basis. Employees: All employees should well know about the terms and policies of the
organisation. Healthy and safe environment should be provided to the employees and at
the same time proper opportunities should be there for growth of the employees (Peter
and Donnelly,2011). Timely feedback should be collected from the employees on various
matter. Exit interview of employees should be done in order to get any recommendation
from them. Communities: Eco-friendly products should be manufacture by the enterprise. Suppliers: All transactions and deals with the suppliers should be done in an honestly and
ethically way.
 Government: Timely tax payments should be done by the enterprise.
TASK 3
3.1 Process of communication
Communication: Communication is a process of sending a message from one person to
another. It is a process of exchanging thoughts. Sender and receiver are the main components of
every communication process.
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 Sender: Sender can be an individual or a group. Sender is the one who sends the
message to the other person. Effectiveness of the communication process depends on the
attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and skills of the sender. Sender can choose a written or oral
method of sending the message. Encoding: To convey message sender finds the appropriate words to send it to the
receiver. Under this sender use symbols which will help the receiver in understanding
the message (Schwalbe, 2015). To maintain the effectiveness of communication process
sender should use only familiar symbols which can be easily understood by the receiver
of the message. Transmission: Under this sender use a medium to transfer the message to the receiver.
The medium can be oral or can be written.
 Feedback: Feedback is collected from the receiver to know whether the message has
been understood by him or not.
3.2 Ways to improve appropriateness
Communication is important process in any enterprise and it is very important that it
should be well executed in business firm. Following ways can be used to improve effectiveness
of communication: Repetition of important messages: Important messages can be repeat so that message can
be send to every employee of the enterprise. Listening focus: Active listening is one of the important part effective communication
process. Active listening will help the receiver in well and better understand the meaning
of the message. Message get across: After messaged is deliver to the receiver the same should be taken
across and in this openness and honesty should be follow. Issue should be solved: All the issues arising during the communication process should
be well addressed to maintain the quality of the message (Smith, Dinev and Xu 2011).
Problems or issues which can arise during the communication process include conflicts,
misunderstanding cultural differences between the sender and receiver and many more.
 Elimination of obstacles: During the process of communication all the obstacles should
be eliminated for example noise.
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All these factors can help in increasing the effectiveness of the communication processes
and deliver message to the receiver in a better way.
3.3 Implement improvements in communication system
Communication is a process done to inform or persuade a person (Trkman, 2010). A lot
of improvements can be done to increase the effectiveness of communication process. For
effectively sending the message from sender to receiver communication planning should be done
which includes the following: Understanding the situation: Research should be done to understand the internal and
external situation of the enterprise. Objective and goals: All the goals and objectives and what are the main purpose of
communication process should be well define. For example, focus should be given on
why, who, when and why. Target audience: All the communication message should be define after keeping all the
target audiences in the mind. For this analysis of audiences can be done in groups.
 Key messages: Key and main message of the communication process should be well
formed to increase its understanding among the audiences. Message should be simple and
specific rather than complex (Best and Holmes, 2010).
All these improvements can be implemented to increase the effectiveness of
communication process.
3.4 Personal plan to improve communication skills
Communication skills are needed in every field and it is very necessary to have some
basic skills and these skills can be enhanced or improved by the following:
 Modify skills of listening: Active listening is one the main and important communication
skill number of tools and techniques can be used by receiver to understand meaning of a
message without any confusion (Bélanger and Crossler, 2011).
 Positive attitude: Sender and receiver both should carry positive attitude during the
process of communication.
 Stress minimize: Stress can be a major barrier in the process of communication so it
should be minimised or eliminated.
 Solving conflicts: All the conflicts should be addressed as they arise.
All these can be used to improve the process of communication.
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TASK 4
4.1 Approach of collection, formatting,storage and dissemination of information and knowledge
To increase the effectiveness of communication process it is very necessary for both
sender and receiver to understand the main purpose or objective behind the process. Once they
will understand the process of communication more they can contribute or perform well during
the process (Jennex and Olfman,2010). First data should be evaluated against the organisation's
objectives and goals. Problems faced by the receiver during the communication process should
be addressed and all the relevant messages related with that topic should be collected. Number
of data can be used like statical, analytical and other important information. After collecting this
content can be formatted by the enterprise according to its needs and objectives. After that data
can be updated a stored in the enterprise for future purposes. Messages can be stored in the
written documents or can be stored in the computers. Important content should be stored in a
way that that its retrieval should be easy and then information should be evaluated and then
proper media should be used to send the data.
4.2 Changes to improve collection, formatting, storage and dissemination of information and
knowledge
Improvements can be done in the process by making it more systematic. Content and
problem oriented approaches should be used to capture the data. In this information sources can
be web resources, libraries and many more. When enterprise face a specific problem than stored
data can be evaluated that it is useful for solving the problem or not. Public platforms can be
used to collect the information through public and this will result in bettering the relationship
with communities people (Armitag and et.al., 2011). This will give rise to the various links
between the community and enterprise and helps in solving various issues for example: product
marketing, right to information, job opportunities and many more.
4.3 Strategy to improve the system.
Knowledge and information is important system because it provides useful data which
helps in increasing the day to day operations of the business. To get effective content it is very
necessary that knowledge and information system should be well implemented in the enterprise
(Raymond and et.al., 2010). The system should consist the important and relevant data about all
the departments of the enterprise and data collection should be timely updated in the system by
collecting feedback. All the issues and problems should well addresses by the enterprise,
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coordination and cooperation should be there among all the departments of enterprise. All the
important messages should be collected time to time in order to achieve objectives of the
enterprise (Von Krogh, 2012). Enterprise data should be timely filtered and a check should be
made by enterprise to ensure that set objectives are met by enterprise or not.
Other than this a lot of improvements can be done in the knowledge and information
system to increase the effectiveness business activities and to enhance the quality of the
decisions taken by firm.
CONCLUSION
From the above important information, it can be concluded relevant data plays an
important role in the success of any enterprise. It is very essential for every business firm to have
up to date knowledge about what are the major changes that takes place in business environment
and about its competitors. Two-way communication is essential in every enterprise to achieve the
success. Enterprise should include its stakeholder in the important decision making process to
reach a better decision. Timely improvements should be done in the strategies adopted by the
firm to make better relations with the stakeholders.
Proper use of collected content help the enterprise in enhancing quality of decisions taken
and deliver well produced services to the customers. Various internal and external sources can
be used by a firm to access the information in the given scenario. Involvement of stakeholders
ensures success of the enterprise and help the firm achieving its objectives.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Armitage, D and et.al., 2011. Co-management and the co-production of knowledge: Learning to
adapt in Canada's Arctic. Global Environmental Change. 21(3). pp.995-1004.
Bélanger, F. and Crossler, R.E., 2011. Privacy in the digital age: a review of information privacy
research in information systems. MIS quarterly. 35(4). pp.1017-1042.
Best, A. and Holmes, B., 2010. Systems thinking, knowledge and action: towards better models
and methods. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice. 6(2).
pp.145-159.
Choi, S.Y., Lee, H. and Yoo, Y., 2010. The impact of information technology and transactive
memory systems on knowledge sharing, application, and team performance: a field
study. MIS quarterly, pp.855-870.
Dalkir, K. and Liebowitz, J., 2011. Knowledge management in theory and practice. MIT press.
Holsapple, C. ed., 2013. Handbook on knowledge management 1: Knowledge matters (Vol. 1).
Springer Science & Business Media.
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