Business analysis for knowledge management systems development in an HR service provider: XPR.

In the knowledge economy, organisations are faced with many challenges to maintain growth and competitive advantage. Fast changes in organisational environment, market dynamics and the needs of the knowledge worker have a wide impact on organisational performance. Small and Medium Enterprises in particular are facing more difficult challenges when they try to offer integrated services to their corporate clients. Outsourcing parts of their business to meet demand within constrained resources make it difficult to manage diversified expertise and cultures. Knowledge Management concepts offer opportunities for organisations to overcome these challenges by creating innovative business models that facilitate exploitation, sharing and utilisation of knowledge. This paper is about the problem-solving lifecycle in conducting Knowledge Management Systems analysis in a small company. It describes an action research project that extends and evaluates concepts that emerged from conducting requirements analysis. This study uses action research to investigate the current situation at XPR – an established provider in IT recruitment and Human Resources services in France and UK – which uses knowledge management concepts to improve service delivery to corporate clients by value-sharing with the IT community they serve.