Employee competence development through information tools. ASCOM case study

Abstract

Information is being considered as an asset in the organizational environment. Firms strive to develop the effective information sharing strategy. The well formulated information strategy facilitates employees across the organization to build their competency, but also helps the firm to achieve their strategic goals. The information sharing becomes a prominent challenge if only focused on transmitting documents. Contrary, it should be well structured and accessible by all employees in order to achieve enterprise goals. Therefore, this paper investigates the way in which the competence of different target groups should be built through information tools. The working target groups addressed are i.e. sales and technicians at Ascom Wireless Solutions. The online tool for survey together with series of interviews is used as a methodology to identify the main channels for building competence and the limitations of these information tools. The main sources are Extranet, Technical reference library (TRL), Trainings and informal communication. In order for the users to obtain the needed competence, the identified channels have to improve the content of the information as well as the search possibilities that the sources provide. Therefore, the paper concludes with the proposed suggestions for the betterment of Ascom information strategy in order to build employee competence.