Determining and Evaluating the Benefits
of KM Tool Support for SME
Ulrike Borchardt, Jörn Reck, Birger Lantow
Chair of Business Information Systems, Rostock University, Albert-Einstein Str. 22, Rostock, Germany
Keywords: Knowledge Management Systems, SME, Case Study, Value-Orientation.
Abstract: Though knowledge management (KM) and knowledge management systems (KMS) have been well
established in organizations the question on how to evaluate the benefits to be gained from the use of such
systems is still not finally resolved. Based on a complete case study showing how a KMS was introduced in
a knowledge-intensive small enterprise in Germany this paper illustrates the operationalization of the KMS
success model of (Jennex, Olfman, 2006) for its use in a SME. It shows the difficulties arising from the use
of the model as well as the shortcomings during the implementation process which further was directed at
determining a suitable KMS by addressing the knowledge services as introduced in the KMS architecture by
Maier (Maier, 2007). Therewith two complex models generated in the field of KMS are transferred into
practical application and discussed in the context of a SME which is part of our framework for the value-
oriented decision support on KMS support for SME.
1 MOTIVATION
Knowledge Management (KM) and Knowledge
Management Systems (KMS) have been in the focus
of research for several years now and have reached
the state of practical relevance and application. In
(Borchardt, 2010) we presented a survey showing,
that the concepts and possibilities of KM and KMS
for SME are not realized by the ones answering the
survey, indicating that the concept of KM is only
vaguely known to SME, as well as it is constantly
confused with the scopes and tasks of information
management. The result was that the application of
tools or KMS in the participating SME is still based
on rumours, in the best case on success stories if
implemented at all. During the survey the main
question put forward by the participating SME was
the one on the benefits to be expected from the
application of a KMS. Though several benefits as
e.g. knowledge preservation under employee
fluctuation, shortened times for searching documents
or stronger innovation through reflection on the field
of expertise (Mertins, Seidel, 2009), can be named in
general this was not what the SMEs expected. Most
SME still liked to speak of benefits in terms of
monetary units or at least more specific for their
organization instead of general expectations. The
rather imprecise and timewise undetermined benefits
named are too vague to convince SME to invest into
the effort necessary.
To address this problem and offer a systematic
value-oriented method we designed a framework
based on the concepts of knowledge demand,
knowledge services and the operationalization of the
KMS Success model (Borchardt, 2010) which was
applied within the case study described in the
following paper. We therefore used a case study and
applied it as a means of practical evaluation as
demanded in the design science approach (Hevner,
2010). Regarding the already exiting results within
the field of KM, KMS and benefit determination for
IS we determined the following research questions:
1. How can a model for measuring the benefits
of KMS be operated towards the use in SME?
2. How can a recommendation on which tools to
use for KM in SME be given based on the
knowledge services and the organizations
requirements towards KM?
3. Where does the introduced software lead to
benefits?
This paper illustrates our approach to provide
answers to these questions using a case study of a
biotech SME introducing a KMS. The general
203
Borchardt U., Reck J. and Lantow B..
Determining and Evaluating the Benefits of KM Tool Support for SME.
DOI: 10.5220/0005075702030211
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2014), pages 203-211
ISBN: 978-989-758-050-5
Copyright
c
 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

presentation of our framework is done in section 2.
The actual case study including methodology,
conduction of the case study and results is presented
in section 3. Finally, section 4 relates the work of the
case study to our general work in the field of value
orientation of KMS in SME.
2 THE FRAMEWORK FOR
VALUE-ORIENTED DECISION
SUPPORT ON KMS
The general objective of our framework is the
recommendation on usage of KM supporting
applications which support mostly one of the
knowledge services, instead of building a holistic
system at once as suggested by Maier (Maier, 2007).
This decision is based upon the characteristics of
SME, having a smaller budget and a stronger
orientation towards the operative business (Mertins,
Seidel, 2009).
The decision upon the knowledge service to
implement is to be made based on the possible
perceived benefit of such implementation.
Consequently the decision making process includes
a questioning of the employees for their needs.
These uttered demands then build the base for a
benefit to be perceived, which can be valued as
useful by the employees if fulfilled and will not be
perceived as “yet another system” to be filled. A
general depiction of the framework showing the
interrelations between the different components of
the framework can be seen in Figure 1.
The decision upon the technical support must not
only consider the knowledge service but also the
interdependencies between them, e.g. knowledge
items cannot be found if they were not published
properly. Having made a recommendation on the
service to be implemented this recommendation is
refined into a recommendation on the application
class to be implemented, which is based on the
general strategy of the SME under consideration.
Using this recommendation the SME has to conduct
a market research to actually find their product
implementing the recommended application class.
During market research and implementation already
the awareness for the KMS success dimensions
(Jennex, 2006) is requested, since the dimensions
should be considered from the very beginning, to be
able to successfully satisfy the demands retrieved
from the employees with a well-balanced technical
support.
After implementation the framework includes a
regular evaluation of the solution to find the points
of dissatisfaction or be able to detect necessary
changes in time, before the system is neglected by
the possible users.
Figure 1: The initial framework for KMS recom-
mendation.
The general method accompanying the
framework and operationalizing it is shown with the
help of the case study in the next section.
The framework and the method are directed at
SME or small-scale business units, since these
usually do not have the resources for a strong focus
on KM, but can benefit from a systematical support
as well (Mertins, Seidel 2009). The actual
framework was composed by the combination of
components retrieved from the scientific knowledge
base (Knowledge services by Maier, social empirical
methods, KMS Success), since we found no direct
support for this issue in literature. As such the
framework represents our artefact gained using the
design-science research approach (Hevner, 2010).
With the application of method and framework to
the case of BTL we were looking for the transfer of
our work to IS practice, as well as conducting a
cycle of evaluation for the created artefact. This does
not mean that the framework is finalized, but the
presented case study shows the practical application
and possible points for further adaptions.
3 CASE STUDY
This section shows the application of the framework
for value-oriented decision support for KMS support
using the case of BTL and transferring the
theoretical artefact to practical application.
3.1 Methodology of the Case Study
The case study took place between May and
September 2012 in Mecklenburg-Hither Pomerania,
Germany. During accessing the organization we
used the following approach:
KMIS2014-InternationalConferenceonKnowledgeManagementandInformationSharing
204

1. Observation phase: accompanying the
administrator we looked at the common IT
infrastructure and routines of the organization
2. Interviews on recent situation: were held
using a questionnaire to clarify following issues;
level of awareness and application of KM,
expectations towards KM and KMS, handling of
documents in work routines, identification of
knowledge sources, estimation of efforts for
information gathering, support with knowledge in
the enterprise, communication in the enterprise,
confirmation of results gained by the observation.
3. Determination of the requirements
catalogue on the knowledge services as proposed by
Maier and
4. Installation of the system in the enterprise,
including the linking to older sources in use.
5. Employee training on the software
6. Utilization phase, including a
documentation of the chosen software solution with
its issues knowledge wise, as well as technical
7. Success evaluation using the KMS
Success approach by (Jennex, 2006) to determine
the perceived benefit and the user satisfaction using
our own operationalization of the model.
3.2 The Enterprise
The enterprise within the conducted case study is
BTL, a biologic testing laboratory close to Rostock,
Germany. Its fields of operation are biology and
agricultural ecology. Accordingly, the work mostly
concentrates on the development and application of
procedures for testing pesticides and newly
cultivated plants before they are to be accredited for
the market. In addition cultivation procedures for
organisms (wanted as well as unwanted) to be used
in experiments and behavioural studies are
developed. Moreover, resistance and tolerance
studies belong to the central business activities of
the enterprise. Summing this up, BTL considers
itself in service industry, and is used to close
cooperation with research facilities.
As for the enterprise’s organization: it is
employing 12 people on 3 sites having an annual
turnover less than 2 million €. Consequently, it can
be classified a small enterprise. The working reality
is that there are two managers owning the company.
With regard to the means of KM it was stated that
external knowledge is acquired rather seldom, yet
knowledge in general is considered very important
for the enterprises’ business processes. Nevertheless,
previous to this case study the enterprise was not
deliberately running a systematic KM.
The technical infrastructure obtained through
observation showed that 12 PCs and notebooks are
operated, spread between the 3 sites of the
enterprise. Other devices e.g. smartphones, PDA’s,
tablets were not supported. On all systems different
versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system
are running (from XP to Windows 7). Additional
software in use is: Microsoft Office, Citavi
(literature management), reference manager
(literature management), Adobe Photoshop (image
processing). Further software is installed however
not relevant for business activities or directed only
towards the data manipulation using laboratory
equipment. As for the network infrastructure it can
be stated that 2 of 3 sites are connected. Yet the
average transfer rate is below 0.5 Mbit/s. On the
main site the only server is allocated, running as a
file server only.
The availability of information and knowledge
sources onsite is mainly reduced to working hours, a
remote access to the enterprise network is not
provided. This includes that remote work is not
supported which on the one hand side is due to the
low bandwidth and on the other hand influenced by
the characteristics of laboratory work. Regarding the
localization of the documents and information we
found most items concentrated on the main site’s file
server. Even the available paper literature is
concentrated at the main site. The access to the
different sources is not restricted, however
employees do not seem to be interested in that
condition and restrict their information need mostly
to their working tasks for accomplishment. Asking
the employees for their sources of information, the
sources named most often were external sources as
there are books and the Internet since these are the
ones holding most information for the identification
process of the organisms to be worked on. The
enterprise processes mostly being experiments
results in the according documentation as protocols.
However, these are not standardized and can be
found in various formats. With regard to the sources
used less frequently (e.g. invoices, research results
and reports) it has to be recognized that these are
mainly addressed to the management and are of no
relevance for the other employees.
Finding different information takes time,
however most information can be found within 30
minutes, forms and protocols within 10. The search
for research paper and literature consumes more
time. The concerned employees claim that this
process usually takes more than 1 hour, yet this
holds only for a few employees concerned with the
task. Accordingly we asked for the mechanisms to
DeterminingandEvaluatingtheBenefitsofKMToolSupportforSME
205

find information and gained the result as depicted in
2; this indicates that computer based search is hardly
of any support.
Having a closer look at the gained results and
comparing the different questions several
discrepancies between the claims of usage and the
search for information can be revealed. Several
employees said e.g. they would not use any search to
look for appointments yet only one employee stated
not using the information at all. This leads to the
question whether employees can use information
without searching for it. Taking a closer look at the
usage of available search functions it can be
recognized that only 50% of the employees take
advantage of them and only for few options.
Consequently the rest can be assumed unaware of
the functionalities. However, the result (see figure 3)
confirms the general assumptions on colleagueship
in SME: asking a fellow worker is the most common
choice to find something.
Figure 2: Information sources.
Representation of information is mostly done via
common formats as there are Word or Excel files, as
well as picture formats. There is no hint on which
documents are new (through the means of
formatting) and documents are not linked to each
other. Storage is done centralized as well as
decentralized; however this is accomplished without
version control. Moreover, there is no more
metadata available than the automatically stored one.
Few documents have to be released by the
management, e.g. reports for customers. In addition
the employees rarely provide information gained
from their own work electronically for colleagues.
Information provision is generally limited to
common pieces of information concerning the
enterprise.
3.3 Results in the Implementation
The questionnaire used to gather the wishes and
expectations towards KMS is divided in 8 different
sections: level of awareness and application of KM,
expectations towards KM and KMS, handling of
documents in work routines, identification of
knowledge sources, estimation of efforts for
information gathering, support with knowledge in
the enterprise, communication in the enterprise,
confirmation of results gained by the observation.
Within the sections the questions itself were already
directed at the services search, publication and
collaboration as provided by the service orientation
of Maier’s architecture for KMS.
Figure 3: How is information obtained.
3.3.1 Determine Knowledge Service Needs
The determination of the knowledge needs was part
of the questionnaire, showing that knowledge is
considered of high importance in the SME. To begin
with several knowledge domains of the enterprise
were identified. The main domain is the
interpretation of field studies. Furthermore, the
identification and analysis of arthropods and method
development can be named. The other domain
concerning the analysis of plants and insects with
regard to illnesses and defects is characterized as
mostly standardized procedure depending in
efficiency on work experience. These experiences
are mostly exchanged orally; however the process
can be supported by a KMS.
The third domain to be covered is method
development for customers, which again relies on
work experience as well as the access to research
literature. During development shared documents
are needed, however they are by now not used for
documenting tests on the methods. Moreover, in
addition to the domains, general enterprise
knowledge is needed, as is information on
employees’ knowledge and customers involved in
projects, which might carry specific project relevant
knowledge. Information from team meetings is not
yet saved centrally, however a need for such
functionalities is expressed. What was neglected
here was the access to knowledge on method
improvement from research literature. However, this
KMIS2014-InternationalConferenceonKnowledgeManagementandInformationSharing
206

can be gained from outside the enterprise only,
demanding a connection to external information and
knowledge sources. The strongest demand could be
identified on the field of publication indicating the
need for more information to be published.
However, published information should be found
and for this reason some improvements for the
search are desirable. Since the work is not constantly
done at a PC workspace the demand for
collaboration via PC is relatively low.
Summing this up a central system storing
process knowledge and experiences is suitable to
address the enterprise knowledge needs. This
however leads to the use of a document management
system which might be complemented by groupware
functions e.g. contacts and collaborative working on
documents. The software should cover standard
office formats.
3.3.2 Software Choice
Based on the demands described above and
economic aspects (investment and maintenance cost,
training effort) a systemic support was chosen.
The concrete criteria for this choice were: user
friendliness, integration with the existing Microsoft
office environment, license costs, scope of
performance, training effort, necessary technical
infrastructure, and documentation support.
Integrating the products already in use with the
desired KMS promises a higher acceptance and less
training effort. This is according to Jennex/Olfman
KMS Success (Jennex and Olfman, 2006) a
significant indicator for a system’s success. The
final decision was made in favour for Microsoft
SharePoint as a system for collaboration and
document management, which also provides a
centralized calendar and contact management.
Aspects supporting this choice were the opportunity
to adapt the interface and the structure to the
enterprise’s needs as well as that information
representation is not restricted to the interface
provided, but can be extended to other programs.
3.3.3 Implementing the Knowledge Services
using Sharepoint
Since learning as a service to be implemented was
already ruled out during the first questioning of the
management only the three remaining knowledge
services according to Maier are covered.
Publication support is realized by the use of
several document libraries within SharePoint. These
allow for a better overview and structure and
furthermore provide context for the published
documents. Furthermore, Microsoft Office 2010 was
integrated with the Sharepoint installation ensuring
that documents can be opened within the SharePoint
environment. Besides the document libraries a wiki
was established to support collaborative working on
knowledge artefacts. To create a suiting starting
point of the wiki several IT related articles were
published from the start as was a general structure of
the knowledge domains of the enterprise. Finally the
system should gather information from team
meetings. This information should be published as
an intranet blog. This provides date and category of
the entry (team, project or special meeting) and on
the other hand has editing functions very similar to
Microsoft Office and therewith lowers the entrance
barrier.
Search is supported on a basic level only by the
standard installation by Microsoft SharePoint
Foundation. It does not support full text retrieval or
search over the complete intranet nor does the search
include certain document types, e.g. pdf. To address
this problem the Microsoft Server Express 2010 was
installed as addition. This addition allows for more
sophisticated search support in the Foundation
version. There it is integrated and displayed as an
extra website, which supports searching the old file
server as well as the newly established intranet. It
supports crawling more document types and
especially pdf’s, which is highly important for the
enterprise. Finally, the advanced search based on
meta data is supported.
Collaboration is not supported directly with
specific functions of the Sharepoint installation, but
by the installation of a DMS itself, allowing parallel
work on documents. Comments and remarks can be
posted within the DMS and are displayed in an extra
column of the document library providing feedback
to authors as well as other users.
To put this installation into practical use for all
employees on all enterprise sites a VPN was
established enabling employees to use the intranet
installation.
3.3.4 Success Evaluation
The software was installed, customized and trained
by the administrator of the enterprise, who also is
the major support for the system. After two months
of application time a questionnaire to determine the
success of the installation and implementation was
issued.
The parts of the questionnaire address the part of
the KMS Success of Jennex/ Olfman (Jennex, 2004)
as introduced before. There were questions on usage,
information/knowledge quality and motivation/
DeterminingandEvaluatingtheBenefitsofKMToolSupportforSME
207

intention to use the system. There was no further
questioning on system quality since this was already
considered during observation time. Moreover,
usage as well as user satisfaction were assumed the
focal points for successful adaption. For the
evaluation 9 of the 12 employees could be asked, the
others were not available due to summer holidays.
In the general questions it was asked what the
precise working field of the employee was and
whether he is using a permanent PC workspace. On
this 4 of 9 answers denied using a designated
workspace. As for the barrier of having to work with
new software, 5 of 9 employees answered that they
do not have problems to adjust, 2 gave no answer
and the left one found it less easy/difficult.
The actual working time showed that one person
actually uses the system regularly which is rather
disappointing, even if it is a manager. Moreover the
actual time per usage rarely exceeds 15 minutes (4
times up to 10 min, once up 10 to 15 min, once 15 to
30, once more than 30, 4 times "prefer not to say").
The reasons for using SharePoint named were: to
provide work experience, curiosity, find support for
own work, and interest in KM. Though being
provided with the answering options “management
demand” and “incentive system” as a reason for
usage no one named them - so by then usage was not
depending on external reasons. The overall results
appear rather disappointing but for the actual result
the working conditions and number of employees
have to be taken into account. Some employees use
the system for sharing their experiences though not
being permanent PC workers.
The functions mentioned to be used most often
were DMS and search, whereas the wiki was not
used regularly. The later shows that the willingness
to provide initial information into the system is still
deficient, as is the reach of the system. As for the
meeting blog: it is considered to hold valuable
information, however the employees use it only in
addition to their written notes. This is again also due
to the fact that not all employees have permanent PC
access, whereas a paper notebook can be easily
carried around. Asking the employees for the precise
reason why they did not use the SharePoint system
the time factor was mentioned most often (5 times)
indicating a lacking integration into the work
processes as well as a missing adoption in
organization culture. No KM specific support by the
management was given. Consequently it is noted
that the problem is not the system itself but its
process integration. It gives evidence that an
enthusiastic management might be helpful but is not
sufficient.
For the third category of information quality the
employees were asked how they evaluate the
information provided. The results are shown below
in figure 4. It can be seen that only one negative
aspect was mentioned, namely information being
incomplete.
This is remarkable and should be changed yet by
that time can be easily explained: after 2 months it
could not be expected that everything was
transferred completely into the new system.
Figure 4: Quality of information.
Moreover, the employees should be encouraged to
fill found gaps, to enlarge the knowledge base.
Finally, the motivation of the employees was
analysed. Therefore we asked whether SharePoint
support helps to accomplish tasks more quickly. Yet
5 of 9 employees could not/ would not answer the
question. Only 2 employees perceived a positive
effect for their work. In contrast we also asked
whether they see a positive influence on their
colleagues work. Here we gained 6 positive answers
and 3 times "prefer not to say".
3.3.5 Resume
Considering we evaluated a knowledge- intensive
SME with little knowledge on the topic of KM it
showed very high expectations towards the
introduction of KM and implementation of a KMS.
With this background and the rather specific
workspace situation the implementation of the
system can be considered partially successful. As for
the individual benefits we sum up the following:
Employees have developed a personal idea on what
KM is and what a KMS can deliver; the access to
documents is more efficient (faster, centralized)
content display in SharePoint is clearer than before;
and employees feel support for their work,
especially considering the group exchange.
Based on the individual following organizational
benefits were identified: aware employees see the
use of KM and are more willing to externalize their
knowledge; the KMS holds entries in the wiki which
KMIS2014-InternationalConferenceonKnowledgeManagementandInformationSharing
208

can be retrieved in case the now responsible
employees are no longer available, SharePoint is
fully installed ready to support further projects;
Knowledge elements can be organized easier what
leads to shorter access times and the installed meta
search integrates old assets from the fileserver with
the new ones in the intranet.
As for critical remarks on the KMS and KM we
found the following: though Microsoft SharePoint
Foundation is free of charge the cost for an IT
administrator (by the means of time) should not be
underestimated; introducing the system with a
specific work scope e.g. within a project is more
promising when it comes to the question what
should be put there and where to start, it provides
employees with a more specific point to start for
documenting their results. The integration of the
KMS and working with it into work processes still
remains crucial, especially with regard to the fact
that most employees do not have permanent access
to a PC on their workplace.
3.3.6 Discussion
In general the small sample of 12, respectively 9,
employees can be argued to be too small for
showing or proving effects of the work conducted.
Yet working in the field of SME this enterprise size
represents a typical example for a small enterprise.
With regard to the critical remarks a stronger
focus on the TOI components (Bullinger et.al.,
1997) is desirable and should be addressed by the
management. Though SME are said to have a
knowledge supporting structure it is still a problem
that time has to be spared for these tasks. The
management should provide more concrete goals to
be accomplished, to provide a stronger context for
the KMS in the SME as suggested before. In
addition, in the beginning integration and adaption
time for the employees is needed to adjust.
As for the method it was recognized, that the
success evaluation may be repeated after a longer
period of time. Moreover, we had to recognize, that
a knowledge demand analysis is the starting point
for the introduction of a KMS however, the means
are various and hardly standardized and therewith
demand a high expertise on the field which cannot
be expected to exist within a SME. Therefore this
analysis seems to be rather rough in our case study
and is to be refined for further cases. Anyhow the
embedding in the dimension for KM Success in
general can be considered insufficient, since the
management support and knowledge content could
be seen lacking a certain level, whereas the other
dimensions were not considered at all. Using of
interviews for the demand analysis, allowed a deeper
insight into the general settings of the enterprise.
Regarding the questionnaires to determine how the
employees satisfy their need for information: it
certainly needs introduction to ensure, that the
questions are understood by the employees.
Nevertheless, it proved useful, since it ensured that
all employees were confronted with the same
questions. In addition it can be repeated easily
without further support from the outside, which was
considered a positive side effect of it by the
manager. The latter also holds for the use of a
questionnaire for success evaluation, considering
that the results of further evaluations can be
compared more easily.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Within this paper we presented the opera-
tionalization of our framework showing the
operationalization of the KMS Success model
(Jennex and Olfman, 2004) and the knowledge
services (Maier, 2007) and consequently showed the
answer to the first research question on the
operationalization. We showed the retrieval of the
KMS recommendation using questionnaires filled in
by the employees to determine their demands, which
then were prioritized as demands on support of
individual knowledge services, resulting in a
recommendation on a knowledge service to be
supported. This is the general answer to research
question 2: using social empirical methods to
retrieve the demands of the employees, which can be
questionnaires, but also interviews and observations.
With regard to research question 3 the results were
presented in 3.3.5.
The case study showed that the framework as
such needs further refinements to allow for a better
application. In general considering the usage of the
model of KMS Success of Jennex/Olfman (Jennex,
2006) it would be of interest to be able to compare
the gained results with other enterprises. Yet the
concrete operationalization of the model is left open
by the authors of the model. However, this approach
does not support the exchange and comparison of
precise experiences between individual enterprises
as it might be of interest for SME (Borchardt, 2010).
Especially for the use within SME KMS/ KM
tools as well as their indicators for success have to
be quick at hand. This leads to the question whether
the KMS success model can be operationalized into
DeterminingandEvaluatingtheBenefitsofKMToolSupportforSME
209

a method addressing SME and allowing them in the
end to see the benefits to be expected from certain
KMS solutions to be able to make their decisions for
a KMS support based on that method, in the context
of their individual situation. For this part this
included an easy to handle questionnaire pointing
out the facts of interest to pay special attention to
under the phase of implementation.
Figure 5: Revised version of the framework.
By the research work presented concrete
adjustments in the framework are demanded.
Especially for the demand specification it became
obvious that two kinds of demands have to be
distinguished. By now we concentrated on the
individual demand for the support with knowledge
by the means of the knowledge services. However,
also focusing on the embedding in the organization
the organizational demand should be considered as
well, since it provides the frame in which the
individual demands arise and should be satisfied.
The inclusion of the organizational demand in the
framework also addresses the lack of a KM strategy
which became evident within this case. Yet for a
goal oriented application of a KMS support this
should be clarified first. Consequently, the adaption
of the framework should look like shown in Figure
5. At the current point of research we are working on
the refinement of the part knowledge demand as a
prerequisite for the choice to be made on the
knowledge services. Anyhow putting these
components together should allow us to establish a
value-oriented framework on the choice of KMS for
SME, and is to result in a multi case study, allowing
for comparisons based on the repeated use of the
same approach. As such the framework was already
outlined in (Borchardt, 2010).
While putting this framework into practice we
had to recognize, that before being able to start into
picking suitable services and applications it is
necessary to determine the knowledge demands of
the SME. As was shown with the case study
presented in this paper, the knowledge demands
determine the necessary knowledge services. Yet,
this topic is rarely covered systematically in
scientific literature other than by the statement that
manifold empirical methods are available to address
this problem, as e.g. in (Probst et.al., 1999) where
knowledge goals and identification are important
building blocks, but no recommendation is given on
how to address them systematically.
Besides the already existing questions which are
discussed as e.g. done with the presented case study,
the questionnaires also ask for further validation, as
e.g. presented in (Ong, Lai, 2007). However, the
mere statistical validation is rather difficult due to
the small numbers of users in SME. Moreover, the
validation has to be done more generally, and should
not be done for the questionnaires, but for
framework and method only. A possible approach
for such validation is by (Lincoln, Guba, 1985).
REFERENCES
Borchardt, U. (2010): Towards Value-Driven Alignment
of KMS for SME. BIS (Workshops) 2011: 220-231
Bullinger, H., Wörner, K., and Prieto, J. (1997).
Wissensmanagement heute: Daten, Fakten, Trends.
Fraunhofer-Inst. für Arbeitswirtschaft und
Organisation (IAO).
Davenport, T. and Prusak, L. (2000). Working
Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They
Know. Knowledge Management. Harvard Business
School Press.
DeLone, W. H., McLean, E. R., (1992). Information
systems success: the quest for the dependent variable.
Information systems research, 3(1), 60-95.
Delone, W. H., (2003). The DeLone and McLean model of
information systems success: a ten-year update.
Journal of management information systems, 19(4), 9-
30.
Hevner, A., & Chatterjee, S. (2010). Design science
research in information systems (pp. 9-22). Springer
US.
Jennex, M. E. , (2004). Assessing knowledge management
success/effectiveness models. In 37 th Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences,
HICSS35, IEEE Computer Society.
Jennex, M. E., Olfman, L., 2006 . A model of knowledge
management success. International Journal of
Knowledge Management (IJKM), 2(3), 51-68.
Jennex, M. E., Smolnik, S., & Croasdell, D. (2012).
Where to Look for Knowledge Management Success.
In System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii
International Conference on (pp. 3969-3978). IEEE.
Lincoln, Y. S., Guba, E.G., (1985). Naturalistic inquiry
(Vol. 75). Sage.
Maier, R. , (2007). Knowledge Management Systems:
Information and Communication Technologies for
Knowledge Management. Springer-Verlag Berlin
Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, third edition. edition.
Mertins, K., Seidel, H. (2009). Wissensmanagement im
KMIS2014-InternationalConferenceonKnowledgeManagementandInformationSharing
210

Mittelstand: Grundlagen - Lösungen - Praxisbeispiele.
Springer.
Nonaka, I., Takeuchi, H., Mader, F., (1995). The
Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese
Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation.
Oxford University Press, Oxford, USA.
Ong, C. S., Lai, J. Y., (2007). Measuring user satisfaction
with knowledge management systems: scale
development, purification, and initial test. Computers
in Human Behavior, 23(3), 1329-1346.
Probst, G., Romhardt, K., Raub, S., (1999). Managing
knowledge: Building blocks for success.
DeterminingandEvaluatingtheBenefitsofKMToolSupportforSME
211