Integrating Knowledge Management and Relationship Management in an Enterprise Environment

Knowledge management and relationship management are essential ingredients for value creation to gain competitive advantages in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century. The merging of the two disciplines has received increasing attention both in academia and in business. Past research focuses on the integration of knowledge management and customer relationship management at the business process level. This paper extends the concepts to enterprise relationship management to include customer relationship management, supplier relationship management and partner relationship management. The merging of knowledge management (KM) and enterprise relationship management (ERM) yields two perspectives: the ERM-oriented KM (EKM) and the KM-oriented ERM (KERM).