The Use of SAP as a Knowledge Management Tool at an Australian Research University

Introduction

Knowledge is the most important resource of organization compared to its traditional factors of production – land, labor and capital (Drucker, 1995; Grant, 1996). The nature of the competition in global economy has shifted towards how well knowledge can be managed by the enterprises to make their products, services, internal and external operations more successful (Wiig, 1997b). Knowledge management (KM) is recognized as an important strategic issue for the firm and the idea has gained significant momentum across national and international organizations regardless of the sectors in which they operate (Newell, Robertson, Scarbrough, & Swan, 2002). As a result, KM is considered as the backbone for the successful competitive firms to gain sustainable competitive advantage in today’s global market (Al-Alawi, Al-Marzooqi, & Mohammed, 2007; Ode & Ayavoo, 2020)

ERP systems are integrated enterprise-wide computer-based information systems considered one of the most important developments in corporate information technology (Davenport, 1998). Currently ERP is being used as organization wide efforts to collect, store, transfer, distribute, and apply digital content and knowledge of process to improve organizational efficiency. These systems promise to provide organizational value enabling employees to locate, capture, share, transfer, and use knowledge more efficiently (Scurtu & Lupu, 2016). ERP systems have shown their impact on the business knowledge by facilitating convergence and divergence of knowledge within the organization and also by enabling learning and innovation among the employees of adopting organization (Jayawickrama, Liu & Smith. 2016). An organization can better leverage the ERP system to facilitate it’s capabilities on the processing, free flow and integration of information towards the development of organizational efficiency and flexibility (Davenport, 1998; Huang, Newell, Galliers, & Pan, 2001). These enable the creation, mobilization, sharing and application of organizational knowledge (Huang, Newell, Galliers, et al., 2001; Newell, Huang, Galliers, & Pan, 2003), which provide greater opportunities for enabling firms to build their capabilities in managing knowledge to improve business process and innovation (Srivardhana & Pawlowski, 2007).

‘Knowledge management’ (Kanter, 1999; Quintas, Lefrere, & Jones, 1997; Ruggles, 1998) and ‘ERP’ systems (Davenport, 1998, 2000) are recognized as two essential strategic initiatives for the firm to survive and prosper in today’s knowledge economy. Firms have been continuously investing valuable resources for the implementation and utilization of KM practice and ERP systems to realize strategic benefits. From many successful KM projects, it is evident that KM has become an effective approach for organizations to improve capabilities and performances, and thus to gain competitive advantage (Davenport, De Long, & Beers, 1998; Ruggles, 1998). Equally, organizations are dependent on ERP to survive and compete, which sets the new platform for business operations and interactions within and outside the organizations (Chien & Tsaur, 2007; Davenport, 2000). The speed, connectivity and increased efficiency gained from the effective ERP use are not only changing interaction pattern, attitude and behavior of employees but also the way organizations perform their activities (Davenport, 1998). From the literature, it is evident that both the concepts – KM and ERP – bring enormous changes in information and knowledge culture of enterprise when implemented. However, to-date we have found scant evidence that clearly examines the role of ERP system in supporting KM practice in organization.

In the ERP market, SAP is a leading system which leads that market with more than 12 million users, 121,000 installations worldwide, more than 1500 SAP partners, over 25 industry-specific business solutions, and more than 41,200 customers in 120 countries (Lauchlan 2017). Moreover, Gartner’s Market Share Analysis report (2019) ranks SAP as the number one ERP software vendor according by revenue.