Improved Corporate Management Using Knowledge Management Information which is required for quicker, more efficient and improved qualitative execution of business processes is often not available. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to filter relevant information out of the prevailing information flood. In addition, the information is strongly person-dependent meaning that the information can only be found in the immediate working domain of the appropriate person. Long-term competitive advantages are not created from basic information generation but rather via the networking of information i.e. knowledge. In order to continuously provide mangers with information necessary for future-oriented decision making, a systematic and comprehensive approach to management of the resource – information – is necessary.In order to deal with this issue, a research partnership between the Institute for Information Management at the University of St. Gallen and the Technical University of Berlin in co-operation with five leading German and Swiss companies was formed two years ago. With support of innovative information and communication technologies, the Enterprise Knowledge Medium (EKM) was developed. The EKM has the task of supporting management processes integrally and universally within the framework of information processing.Management processes are different from others since they are in practice rarely formalized making the specific provision of information for management difficult. The decentral transaction of management processes compounds this problem. For this reason, the EKM supports the reorganization, structuring and modelling of processes and their relationships to information objects. A Workflow management module automatically controls the processing. The increased degree of structuring and the transparency of the processes enable defined process steps to be provided with information and knowledge by linking them with information objects. Since management processes include a share of creative ad-hoc activities, the communication aspect was identified by the EKM as being one of the central requirements. For this reason, an integrated assortment of Workflow and Groupware functions (e.g. team-oriented preparation of documents, appending comments to information, e-mail, etc.) was created. Managers profit from this due to three reasons: i) problem-oriented steering of processes; ii) continuous availability of relevant information; and iii) transparency of distributed process structures as well as their integration with information and knowledge.This topic is also a central issue in the design of extra-firm or firm-overlapping processes, i.e. development of “virtual companies.” In respect to this, the processes must be managed beyond the boundaries of the firm and the dependent information objects must be available to all involved firms. The Workflow Management System must support firm-overlapping work flows and permit process co-ordination between the participating organizations. The amount of information from external as well as internal sources and accessible via the network is continuously increasing. This was a further aspect considered in the design of the EKM. Due to the information flood, managers are no longer in the position to quickly and easily identify decision-relevant information. In many firms, an entire staff departments is responsible for information selection and preparation. Everyone who has surfed in the World Wide Web using a search engine is aware of this difficulty. The EKM solves this problem by structuring internal and external information with the help of attributes. The search mechanism of the EKM uses these attributes and the relationships between these for the selection. Thereby, it is also possible to consider the context of the sought information which can lead to a significant increase in the share of relevant information in the search output.Using the EKM, management has an integrated uniform instrument at its disposal which can continuously provide support electronically. It was not only the goal to support information retrieval in the sense of an Intranet approach but rather to create an active medium with which management is in a position to efficiently carry out its tasks. Besides the location-independent and time-independent access to information and knowledge, it is also possible with the help of the EKM to quickly and efficiently generate new information on the basis of existing information objects. Based on the building block principle, new information objects can be assembled by reusing existing elements. Based on efficiency advantages, this procedure has been used in production processes and is now transferable to management processes with the help of the EKM due to extensive electronic availability as well as quantitative and qualitative information objects. Using its integrated functions, e.g. ability to append comments to information, additional knowledge is made available via the corresponding information objects.The systematic use of knowledge present in the company stemming from the networking of information forms the basis for strategic competitive advantages. Due to effective management of the knowledge resource, negative effects, e.g. consequences from the departure from know-how carriers are minimized while at the same time potential is created e.g. multiple use of existing available knowledge (multiplication effect, improved use of resources by reducing redundancies, etc.). The transparency of one’s own knowledge resources as well as external sources, e.g. knowledge maps, storage of company knowledge (structures and process of the firm) are essential requirements in order to guarantee proactive company development and continuous innovation. The EKM forms the technical basis for a structured knowledge pool to make information available anytime in electronic format and independent of the user. Thereby, knowledge present in the firm can be used efficiently and effectively without any time delay.In addition, systematic knowledge management is a significant prerequisite for the successful realization of a virtual company. In this respect, intra-company knowledge should be made mutually and selectively available to partner firms. This means that company networks (Intranets) should be made partially available to external business partners and customers in the sense of an Extranet. Internal company knowledge resources should be made partly accessible to the partner companies within the framework of a common project.The EKM architecture integrates new mediums such as the Internet/Intranet as well as innovative information and communication technologies, e.g. Groupware, Work-flow management and Executive Information Systems. The modular design provides flexibility in the assembly of the components. The architecture of the EKM can be flexibly and quickly adapted to company-specific requirements, e.g. process design and organizational structure). The concept of an “electronic management file” offers management easy and flexible access to the EKM. The “electronic management file” provides among other things direct access to important and current business information in the sense of an electronic newspaper. In addition it contains various instruments for e.g. processing of information objects or design of business models.At the present time, the EKM architecture is in the application phase at Deutsche Bank, one of the project partners. A spin-off took place in order to commercially market the research results.