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304 Chapter 8

Box 8.7
An example: Mercedes-Benz

The Mercedes-Benz Customer Assistance Center in Maastricht, The Netherlands, serves as
a central customer contact point for the whole of Europe, handling all customer needs in
seventeen European countries, in twelve languages, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a
year. In order to share knowledge of product information, technical information, and
business procedures as well as sample letters, FAQs, and best practices, a web-based knowl-
edge management solution was developed for Mercedes-Benz by CMG, a leading European
IT services business. Called BRAiN (backbone repository for archiving information), this
KM-based IT solution enables Mercedes-Benz Customer Assistance Center employees to
share and retrieve knowledge through the company ’ s corporate intranet. Full text search-
ing and dynamic knowledge maps allow users to navigate intuitively to the information
needed. Direct search facilities enable quick retrieval of all information related to a specifi c
vehicle, country, or market, and have been fi ne-tuned to support business needs. Web
technology facilitated a quick rollout within the organization and helps to minimize
maintenance. Attention was paid to all business aspects throughout the project phases. A
staged business approach, supported with incremental system development (RAD, rapid
application development), was applied. Both technical and organizational goals were
identifi ed at each stage. Procedures were defi ned for sharing knowledge, and these were
directly supported by the knowledge management system. BRAiN offers the possibility to
identify knowledge users, publishers, advanced publishers, and knowledge administrators,
each with their own rights and authorities.

Practical Implications of KM Tools and Techniques

A number of techniques and tools, while never having been specifi cally developed for
or targeted to KM applications, have proven to be quite useful. A pragmatic toolkit
approach is needed for KM as there is no single end-to-end solution that can be simply
bought “ off the shelf ” in order to address all the critical dimensions of a knowledge
management initiative. It is therefore important to understand what is out there
already and what some of the new emerging tools are in order to adapt them and
make use of them for KM purposes.

Key Points

• Content creation and management tools are used to structure and organize knowl-
edge content for each retrieval and maintenance.