Re-engineering the customer relationship: leveraging knowledge assets at IBM

A successful knowledge management strategy identifies a firm's key leverage points essential to achieve business results. These often reside in core business processes that may be re-engineered to capitalize on and expand organizational knowledge resources and capabilities. This case describes a 4-year initiative undertaken by IBM to re-engineer its customer relationship management process and capitalize on knowledge-based resources. The case illustrates the effective, integrated use of information technologies to improve the performance of both customers and IBM's human experts by providing knowledge access and availability, acquiring and assembling knowledge, and disseminating knowledge to those who need to apply it. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.