Ms Hannah Hermit is the CEO of “Top Travel”, a travel agency business. Top Travel provides services for booking air and train travel, hotels and rental cars. Currently, their system is such that the customers have to contact the organization for all information and services, as there is no effective way for the travellers to perform any self-service. The process of booking takes longer as a few senior employees have left the agency and new employees spend a long time finding and accessing the information they need. There seems to be a lot of duplication of documents and the employees don’t seem to be communicating with each other. Hannah would like to increase her customer pool and implement an online booking tool for Top Travel to manage its travel business. She has many ideas that she would like to incorporate such as traveller customizable options and a 24/7 alert system to notify travellers of unexpected disruptions, like strikes and severe weather conditions.
Hannah is fascinated by the use of new technology to add value to her business. She has read about the advantages that a systematic knowledge management approach can offer to one’s business and that technology is only part of the solution. She understands that a comprehensive KMS can:
- facilitate knowledge discovery;
- support knowledge capture;
- enable knowledge sharing;
- enhance knowledge application.
She would like to try implementing a KMS to provide some of the functionality she has in mind for the future of her business. She also wants to capitalize on some existing on-line travel assistance systems as part of achieving these goals. At this stage she is considering two popular systems for these purposes:
- TripAdvisor: http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/ or
- Trivago: http://www.trivago.com.au/
However, she’s rather unsure which one would fit her business requirements of broadening her customer pool and providing more personalized services to her existing customers as part of her KMS.
Your Task:
- Imagine you are a “Knowledge Technology Consultant” appointed by Hannah Hermit, CEO of Top Travel.
- Your task is to help Hannah select one of the two systems that Hannah considered and evaluate its suitability as part of a KMS for Top Travel.
Step 1. Read the case scenario and formulate Functional, Non‐functional and Transitional requirements of the Top Travel agency and relate them to each of the four KM Processes. (Review the materials and information available at http://www.volere.co.uk/ for details on requirements formulation).
Step 2. Analyse to what extent one of the online travel assistance systems can support/implement a set of requirements which were formulated in Step 1. Organise your analysis and requirementstatements by applying Becerra‐Fernandez& Sabherwal’s(2011) perspectives onKMProcesses:
- Knowledge Discovery
- Knowledge Capture
- Knowledge Sharing
- Knowledge Application Use additional references as needed (3 ‐5 references are expected in your References list).
Step 3: Conclude your evaluation by discussing the recommendations for Hannah to address any deficiencies of this solution based on your analysis.
