Dirt Bikes USA

You’ve worked with the Dirt Bikes case study to think about their infrastructure. Now that you’ve read the chapters on knowledge management and business intelligence, you will explore the opportunities for this level of IS support at Dirt Bikes.

Senior management has started reading about knowledge management and has asked you to explore opportunities for improving knowledge management at Dirt Bikes.

Taking the role of a consultant reporting to Carl Schmidt and Steven McFadden, address their interest in the form of a business memo. Your memo for this assignment will focus on identifying the knowledge assets, knowledge needs, and knowledge management opportunities, particularly:

What are the most important knowledge assets at Dirt Bikes? What functions and employee positions are responsible for creating, distributing, and using these knowledge assets? Are all of these assets explicit knowledge?
What knowledge from outside the organization is required by the company?
Are there other knowledge assets that are needed but not currently available?
How could the following employee groups benefit from knowledge management: designers and engineers, product development specialists, marketing specialists, sales department staff and representatives, managers?
Describe the kinds of knowledge management systems that would be most valuable for each of these groups. What information would each of these systems provide?
Of course, they know the organization well. But your consulting memo should start with the context, a very brief overview of the company, highlighting features that will relate to your analysis.

**Formatting features of Memos are as follows:

Single spaced
Usually with block formatted paragraphs (that is, no indentation for paragraphs; just skip a line between paragraphs).
For memos in paper form, the second and subsequent pages should have a header containing: the name of the addressee, date, and page number.
Memos do not have a salutation (“Dear”) nor do they have a closing (“Sincerely”).
If a paper copy of the memo is being distributed, the sender often initials the memo (after his/her name in the From field).
It is expected that all written assignment submissions be spell checked and reviewed for grammar prior to submission to the instructor.
Memo Content
Even more so than any other form of writing, it is important to stay focused and make your points clearly in a memo.

The first paragraph must let your reader know why he/she is reading the memo, so it has to be written carefully.
The remainder of the text of the memo should be concise and to the point.
Bulleted lists are frequently useful. However, do not sacrifice clarity for brevity.
You must use prose to explain the purpose of any list you use.
Memos are frequently written using a write-through technique. That is, the memo is written in a manner that allows the recipient to extract sections and forward them on to others. An example of the usefulness of this technique is when a manager writes a memo to his/her director requesting funding for an additional staffer, and the director includes part of the memo’s text in his/her budget.

While real-world business memos are admittedly frequently not properly cited, you must be careful to give credit to your information sources. This allows your reader to locate the original source (and avoids the question of plagiarism). Also, if you use a person’s name in your memo, make sure you CC the person referenced so he is aware of the topic addressed in the memo.

You can find more information about many topics in writing, including proper citations, using the Research and Library Tips page located in the course information module.