Dissertation Report

Topic: Knowledge Management

Title: Best Practices in KM

 Abstract

BEST PRACTICES IN KNOWLEDGE

MANAGEMENT

This thesis explains the meaning of knowledge and knowledge management. It defines
knowledge management and the difficulties in development of an accurate definition of
the same. It also studies the types, characteristics and the process involved in
implementing knowledge management.

It further examines the knowledge management implementations in divisions of four

selected global organisations i.e. Aventis, IBM, CG Smith and Hewlett Packard, and aims
to isolate best practices that have contributed to the success of the knowledge
management implementations within units of these organisations.

Further, these best practices are examined to understand their nature, in terms of being
generic or industry specific and their applicability in other organisations.

To conclude, this paper extracts from the organizational best practices, common threads
that would ordinarily form requisites for successful knowledge management
implementations.

2
 Table of Contents
Chapter Title Page No.
A Title Page
B Acknowledgement
C Abstract
D Scope of the Thesis

1 Introduction 9

2 Knowledge Management: Definition 12

Differing Perspective: Technology Centric and People Centric

3 Understanding Knowledge and Knowledge Management 16

What is Knowledge?
Types of Knowledge
Characteristics of Knowledge
Technological Building blocks
Process of Knowledge Management
Improvements delivered through Knowledge Management

4 Alignment with Business Goals 21

Knowledge Assets
Knowledge Acquisition
Internal Knowledge
External Knowledge
Knowledge Collation
Knowledge Classification
Knowledge Usage
Practical Implementation: Tata ELXSI
Knowledge Management Repository (KMR)
Book of Knowledge (BOK)
Knowledge Capsules (K Caps)

5 Importance of humans in the process of knowledge creation 30

Inquiring systems and KM
Human aspects of new knowledge creation
Dynamic and continuously evolving nature of knowledge
Tacit and Explicit dimension of knowledge creation
Subjective, Interpretative and Meaning making basis of knowledge creation

6 Business Environment Analysis 37

3
 Competition in the twenty-first century
Innovation
Responsiveness
Productivity
Competency
Increasing importance of time
Information and knowledge
Cultural change and increasing knowledge intensity
Capitalizing on collective knowledge
Capturing team agility and tacit knowledge
The knowledge cycle
Creating a wealthy intellectual capital

7 Best Practices 46

7(I) Best practice for KM: Aventis 47

Background
Problem
Solution
Knowledge Mail Expertise Management Solution
Benefit
Post implementation
Emergent Best Practice

7(II) Best Practice for KM: IBM 54

KM@IBM
Problem: Creating and Maintaining Competitive Advantage
Solution: Technology or Process
Implementation
Infrastructure and Systems Management
Intellectual Capital seekers
IT Tools
Communications
Benefits
Emergent Best Practice

7(III) Best Practice for KM: HP Austria 63

Global Background
Hewlett Packard Ltd. Austria
KM@HP Austria
Customer Voice

4
 KM Implementation
Structured Intellectual Capital
Benefits
Emergent Best Practice

7(IV) Best Practice for KM: CG Smith 71

Abstract
The beginning
The factors
KM and Processes
KM and Technology
Conclusion and Recommendations

8 Best Practices Identified and Evaluated 92

9 Derivative Best Practices & Conclusion 96

10 References 99

11 Appendix 100

Scope of the Thesis

5
Aim

To investigate generic Best Practices in knowledge management across industries.

Objective

a) Understand knowledge management.

b) Evaluate best practices in managing knowledge across organizations.
c) Identify generic knowledge management best practices from industry and
organisation specific best practices.

Research methods:

The research will primarily be based on document analysis. It will involve analysis of
knowledge management implementations in various organizations. The investigation of
these implementations will be primarily based on published data and other material
available in the public domain.

Sources of data

In view of the need to examine Best Practices, the report will be dependent largely on,
significant amounts of academic research, industry reports, consultancy reports, ongoing
academic working papers and white papers published by government, businesses and
consultancies.

Books:

Since this particular topic has not been studied earlier and as Knowledge Management
remains largely a new and therefore theoretical subject, there is not much in terms of
books on the Best practices thrown up during a Knowledge Management
implementation.

E-resources and journals

6
E-journals will form an indispensable part of my research as they are expected to
provide me with insights of practitioners, and up to the date knowledge on derivative
learning’s from implementations of Knowledge Management worldwide.

CHAPTER I

Introduction

7
As early as the 5th century B.C., the philosopher Socrates dealt with the question of
Knowledge and its limits (Plato - 400 B.C., 1981 as cited in Mertins, et al. 2002). L
Wittgenstein and M Polanyi (1958) described knowledge, as “Knowledge is an activity
best described as a Process-of-Knowing”

Knowledge has been discussed many times over by some of the greatest thinkers of the
times, and it has been widely accepted and understood that knowledge in some form or
the other influenced the rise and fall of civilisations in much the same way as it
influences the rise and fall of individuals, organisations, conglomerates and even
economies.

The importance of intellectual capital and the management of knowledge are strongly
emerging themes in today's organizational world (Chase, 1997). Homogenization of the
globe (resultant from globalization) has caused Intellectual capital or Knowledge to be
the diving force behind organizational competitive advantage. R.Numri (1998,
"Knowledge intensive firms", Business Horizons, 41, 3, 26-31) notes that the emerging
pattern dictates that intellectual capital will replace natural resources, commodities,
finance, technology, etc as the key element to creating a sustainable competitive
advantage.

Prior to the 1990’s knowledge management seems to have been more of a business “buzz
word” rather than an effective business tool and many skeptics have argued that
consultants developed knowledge management to replace declining revenues from the
waning re-engineering movement.

According to Larry Prusak in “Where did Knowledge management come from?”(2001)

Knowledge management, like any system of thought that has value, is both old and new,
and its combination of new ideas with ideas that “everyone has known all along”.

It has only been during the last decade that Knowledge Management has come to be an
integral part of the business world due to its wide implementation based on the results
achieved by its initial implementers. With the homogenisation of the globe and
competitive advantage based on production, the rapid changes in markets and

8
technologies, (Nonaka, et al 2001) and costs not being sustainable in the long term any
more, companies have come to rely on knowledge and innovation to create sustainable
differential and competitive advantages. With the arrival of the knowledge society,
complex mechanisms such as Knowledge tend to define a businesses ability to succeed
and can be root causes for organisational failure or loss of position to competitors.
Process improvements and the emergence of Information Technology as an enabler to
Knowledge management has ensured that the concept has gained prominence with the
passing of every year.

“Knowledge”, writes management theorist Peter Drucker (cited The Trials & Triumphs of
the Knowledge Era – Editor: Britton Manasco -
http://www.knowledgeinc.com/empires.html), “has become the “key resource” of the
world economy. “The traditional factors of production--land, labor and capital--are
becoming restraints rather than driving forces," he adds. "Knowledge is becoming the one
critical factor of production."

The emergence of this new economy, referred to as the knowledge economy has thus
induced a lot of companies to hedge their bets by implementing some form of knowledge
management in an effort to collate and store a resource, which could govern their success
or failure in the years to come.

Dataquest Inc., a research firm estimated that in 1999 corporations spend $4.5 billion to
better their knowledge resources (Ross, 1996). Drucker (1993) has described knowledge,
rather than capital or labor as the only meaningful economic resource in the knowledge
society.

In a world where customers are more interested in the knowledge and the intangible
benefits provided the intangible (knowledge) flows become more important for the
success of the business than the tangible flows of goods and money (Karl-Erik Sveiby
www.sveiby.com cited 10/8/03) In their bid to improve performance and results managers
seek to constantly manage, among other resources, this fluid, ever-growing resource. The
process of managing knowledge is called Knowledge Management.

9
As has been mentioned before, more and more organisations today seek to gain
competitive advantage thro the use [implementation] of knowledge management. Many
succeed [and achieve their goals] while many fail [and remain exercises in the creation of
paper]. The successes are achieved by virtue of correct implementation methodologies
and their resultant best practices.

This study examines knowledge management implementations in a few select

organisation and the best practices that evolved during these implementations. Out of the
sum total of Knowledge management implementations worldwide.

These best practices that have evolved in these organisations have reaped high returns on
investment and have contributed largely in the success of the implementation.

This paper will also attempt to examine whether these best practices are generic and can
be used across industries or are specific to a particular industry / vertical or organisation.

CHAPTER II

Knowledge Management: Definition

10
Knowledge is most often associated with scientific knowledge-which is the knowledge
that emerges from laboratories, universities and other research institutions, is published
and is validated/ verified in scientific circles. Not all knowledge can be classified as
scientific knowledge- the knowledge that allows a motor mechanic to reach a conclusion
as to which part is faulty based on sound made by the machine, cannot be described as
scientific knowledge, but it is knowledge.

Thus definitions of knowledge abound, due to which defining the managing of

knowledge is made an even more complex task.

A majority of organizations understand knowledge management as “a part of corporate

culture, which ‘supports the active exchange of information knowledge and experiences
between employees and departments’” (Mertins, et al. 2002), while others understand it
as “a company oriented method: ‘the sum of procedures that determine the generation,
distribution and application of knowledge to achieve organizational goals (Mertins, et al.
2002).

American Productivity and Quality Center defines Knowledge Management as “the

strategies and processes of identifying, capturing and leveraging knowledge - towards
enhancing competitiveness.

Earl & Scott (1998) list several definitions of Knowledge Management, such as:

 “The capability of a company to create new knowledge, disseminate it throughout

the organization and embody it in products, services and systems.” (Nonaka &
Takeuchi, 1995)
 “The attempt to recognize what is essentially a human asset buried in the minds of
individuals and leverage it in to an organizational asset that can be accessed and
used by a broader set of individuals on whose decisions the firm depends.”
(Marshall, Prusak and Shpilburg, 1996)
 “Art of transforming information and intellectual assets in to enduring values…a
set of processes to transform intellectual capital into value processes such as

11
 knowledge acquisition, organization, application, sharing, replenishment, creation
and innovation.” (Knapp, 1996)
 Earl & Scott (1998) say that Knowledge Management should create, leverage, and
protect organizational knowledge.
 Sveiby’s (1997) definition is “The art of creating value from an organization’s
intangible assets.”

The definitions are different but they all echo some common purposes of Knowledge
Management. Therefore Knowledge Management is about

 Creating knowledge, i.e. Knowledge Management should support innovation;

 Sharing and recycling knowledge;

 Capturing - turning personal knowledge into organizational knowledge;

 Reducing risk of losing valuable knowledge;

 Creating value from knowledge;

Knowledge management is not, as many of the old school believe, then the managing of
information but the more complex management of knowledge derived from information
i.e. it is not information management but is managing of information using tools such as
data analysis, filtering and provision of contextual / location based references leading to
flow of required information to knowledge workers and prevent information overload.

Differing Perspective: Technology Centric and People Centric

12
As can be derived from the plethora of variations in the organizational understanding of
knowledge management, knowledge management lacks clear definition. One of the
primary reasons for this is the differing perspectives on knowledge management that have
emerged over the last five years, which are: the technology-centred perspective and the
people-centred perspective.

The technology-centred perspective is that knowledge equals objects that can be encoded,
stored, transmitted and processed by IT systems. Technology-centred proponents see IT
solutions as the answer to knowledge management problems. Consequently, many IT
companies use the terms knowledge management for the purposes of promoting what are
basically Business Intelligence solutions.

The people-centred perspective is that of various organizational theorists is that

knowledge equals process and that the most valued knowledge defies encoding and
machine storage and analysis. The development of human intellect, people organization
and management skills are paramount (e.g. knowledge creation and an atmosphere of
information sharing and trust). The objective of knowledge management is to leverage
the transfer of knowledge within an organizational and with its external customers and
partners. Consequently, the people-centred perspective views IT solutions as only a small
part of an approach to knowledge management within organizations.

Therefore Knowledge Management can be academically defined as, a process that helps
enterprises find, select, organize, disseminate, and transfer important information and
expertise necessary for activities such as problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic
planning and decision making.

Knowledge Management is multi-dimensional; broad scoped and covers almost all

aspects of organizational activities. Experience shows that enterprises must create and
sustain a balanced intellectual capital portfolio if they are to be competitive and
successful. Not only do they need to set broad priorities along with integrating the goals

13
of managing intellectual capital and the corresponding effective knowledge processes,
leading to systematic Knowledge Management.

Objectives:
Knowledge Management focuses enterprises on its two major objectives:
 Making the enterprise act as intelligently as possible to secure its viability and
overall success, and
 To otherwise realize the best value of its knowledge assets.

CHAPTER III

14
Understanding Knowledge and Knowledge Management

What is Knowledge?
To further understand Knowledge Management we must understand what constitutes
knowledge and its types:

Knowledge is formed when; Data is processed into information combined with

experience and an awareness of “What is required?”

Types of Knowledge:

Three types of knowledge can be found within any organization. Top down they are,
enterprise, group and individual. The knowledge found at these sources can be further
broken down into:

 Explicit Knowledge—knowledge presented in documents, books, email and

databases.

 Embedded Knowledge—organizational knowledge found in business processes,

products and services.

 Tacit Knowledge—undocumented knowledge that is captured during business

processes by knowledge workers.

Organizations today face the challenge of identifying where that knowledge lies and how
it can be leveraged across the enterprise. The majority of KM initiatives today usually

15
revolve around identifying/discovering, classifying and indexing explicit knowledge in
information systems, such as an enterprise document management system, and/or
business content management system. In many cases KM systems also include access to
structured information found in databases.

One of the inherent difficulties of understanding (through definitions) and implementing

Knowledge management across the organization is its scope, which can be as broad as the
width of the enterprise and as deep as its lowest levels.

Characteristics of Knowledge:

According to Sveiby (1997 www.sveiby.com) the four characteristics of knowledge are:

 Knowledge is tacit
 Knowledge is action-oriented
 Knowledge is supported by rules
 Knowledge is constantly changing.

The first characteristic suggests that explicit knowledge is not knowledge. This
characteristic derives from a view that knowledge, in a strict sense, cannot exist outside
an individual. Some knowledge can be formalized, made explicit, but then it becomes
static, whereby it looses another of Sveiby’s characteristics. This means that knowledge
that has been made explicit/static must be interpreted and mixed with personal knowledge
in order to make it true knowledge again.

Sveiby also splits knowledge along another dimension; he separates know-how from
know-what. Know-how is closely related to tacit knowledge. Know-what is closely
related to explicit knowledge because it can easily be put on paper. The two are both
necessary for the ability to act.

Actually all knowledge has a dimension of tacitness and is therefore difficult to explain in
words. Knowledge is also action-oriented through the way we generate new knowledge

16
by analyzing the sensory impressions we receive and because we are constantly losing
knowledge. This dynamic quality of knowledge is reflected in verbs like learn, forget,
remember, and understand. There are also rules for conscious and unconscious processing
of knowledge. These rules help us to act and save us a lot of energy when we do not need
to think before we act. The knowledge is, also, constantly changing but when tacit
knowledge is made explicit through language, it becomes static.

Technological Building Blocks:

Understanding KM is and how can it be implemented in an organization, can be best
understood by studying the five technological building blocks of KM, which are:

1. The Enterprise Information Portal —The EIP is the focal point of an organization’s
KM initiatives and can facilitate a comprehensive range of functionality, including single
point of access to relevant structured and unstructured information, community of interest
building, and collaboration.

2. Information Management Systems —A system in place which facilitates the

organization, indexing, classification of documents, content, and digital assets such as
video and audio files, illustrations, records, policies and procedures etc.

3. Federated Search —The ability to search across all organizational structured

(databases) and unstructured (documents, records, emails, video & audio files, etc.)
information sources. This is a seminal enabling technology that facilitates discovery of
intranet and Internet information and data sources.

4. Business Intelligence —Formerly known as decision support, many BI systems were

designed for specific business objectives such as data warehousing financial information
for routine data analysis, standard report writing, adhoc querying, etc.

5. Collaboration —Electronic mail is still the most collaborative technology in most

enterprises, however, a new class of collaborative technologies is emerging that can
greatly facilitate workplace collaboration and the creation of communities of interest/best
practices. These technologies enable virtual workspaces and workrooms that allow

17
members to share documents, emails, schedules and collaborative document creation, in
effect enabling collaborative eCommerce.

These enablers enable the process of management of knowledge to be automated to a

very high extent, thereby ensuring that every scrap is mined and stored to allow logical
retrieval in case of requirement at a later date.

Process of KM:

The basic process of Knowledge management that these tools enable comprises:

• Knowledge Creation:
- Organizational abilities in the development of novel and /or useful ideas followed
by solutions to existing or foreseen problems
- Emergent process in which motivation, inspiration, experimentation, and pure
chance play an important role

• Knowledge Validation
- Ability of a firm to evaluate its knowledge base and understand its effectiveness
for implementation in the current organizational environment.
• Knowledge Presentation
- Methods of displaying/ presenting the knowledge to organizational members

• Knowledge Distribution
- Knowledge needs to be distributed and shared throughout the organization before
it can be exploited at the organizational level

• Knowledge Application
- Methods through which an organization can employ its knowledge resources.

Improvements Delivered through Knowledge Management:

18
 Areas in which improvements were understood to be % of companies who
made by KM implementing company made improvements in
the area.
Cost/ time reduction, increase in productivity 46.8%
Process Improvement 24.8%
Improvement in the exchange of information 22.0%
Customer orientation and satisfaction 22.0%
Transparency of structures and processes 20.2%
Facilitation of decisions and predictions 19.3%
Quality Improvement 19.3%
Staff qualification & satisfaction 11.0%
Success, Market leadership 10.1%
Improvements cannot be determined yet 9.2%
Other 1.8%
(Source: Fraunhofer IPK - 2000)

Chapter IV
Alignment with the Business Goals

In short, Knowledge Management (KM) means to “know what we know”. KM is the

conversion and representation of knowledge available with each individual in a tangible
format. Knowledge unlike information is created and available with human beings rather

19
than systems. The major challenge in KM is to collate this knowledge and make it
available across the length and breadth of the organization. Knowledge available should
be shared amongst each individual.

Knowledge Management basically deals with ways and means of capturing and making
available knowledge of the experts to others, in electronic form. Knowledge that was
accumulated and developed over a period of years can now be made available in just a
few mouse clicks. Knowledge Management systems help you locate, contacts, and
communicates with experts (knowledgeable people) on various subjects, within your
organization, or maybe even outside. Even if experts no longer exist in the organization,
new entrants should be able to make use of the knowledge gained over years through
KM.

Knowledge Assets:
Knowledge assets are the knowledge regarding markets, products, technologies and so
on, that an organization owns or need to own which in turn influence the growth of an
organization. At the strategic level the organization needs to be able to analyze and plan
its business in terms of the knowledge it currently has and the knowledge it needs for
future business processes. At the tactical level the organization is concerned with
identifying and formalizing existing knowledge, acquiring new knowledge for future use,
archiving it in organizational memories and creating systems that enable effective and
efficient application of the knowledge within the organization. At the operational level
knowledge is used in everyday practice by professional personnel who need access to the
right knowledge, at the right time, in the right location.

What this all means is that KM is all about the following:

- Knowledge acquisition
- Knowledge collation
- Knowledge Classification
- Knowledge usage

20
Knowledge acquisition: (what?)
The first step towards building knowledge base is identifying what knowledge assets an
organization possesses and should possess. As our processes are aligned to meet the
business goals, similarly the knowledge acquisition should be in alignment with the
business goals.

21
Let’s take an example where the set business goal is to increase the productivity.
With respect to the above goal the knowledge required can be available internally within
the organization & also it is available external to the organization.

Internal Knowledge: This can be some methods/practices/tools used by a certain group

of people within the organization where the productivity is above average. We need to
know (acquire) about these methods/practices/tools to increase the productivity among
the other groups.
External Knowledge: There will be certain proven methods/practices/tools which have
improved productivity elsewhere, so the organization needs to know (acquire this
knowledge. In short, the organization should have a very clear understanding of what
knowledge it needs, to achieve the set goals.

Knowledge Collation (How?)

Once the organization decides on what knowledge is required the next step involves
identifying where the knowledge assets are, in what form is it available and how to
collect it. The conventional methods of collecting knowledge are like books, training,
hands-on practices, seminars and so on. But what these conventional methods lack is the
knowledge that is gained through experience and practice. This knowledge is basically
embedded in the heads of the practitioners. The organizations should have mechanisms to
capture and access such experience-based knowledge. Those organizations, which are
able to leverage on this experience knowledge in combination with the conventional
methods, have a greater chance of success.

Knowledge Classification:( Where??)

With the advent of the Internet and other sources of information/knowledge there is a
knowledge explosion created. Searching for information among these huge knowledge
repositories will be like searching for a pin in the haystack. So the next logical step would

22
be to sensibly classify the collated knowledge as per the needs of the organization. The
classification should be based on the principle of quick, relevant and easy accessibility of
the knowledge.

Classification of the knowledge is an activity, which needs to be done with some thought
and rationale. This is because often we see that knowledge can be linked to more than one
category. And the categorization of such knowledge should be made with the users
perspective. Let’s take an example where a customer is very particular about receiving
status reports. This knowledge can be linked to two categories, one with respect to the
customer and the other with respect to project management. When we capture this
knowledge with respect to the customer we would stress on the regularity of the status
reports. But in the perspective of the project management it should mention about the
customer being particular about weekly status report and at the same time stress on what
he expects in the status report.
Knowledge Usage:
“A thing which is not used cannot improve”. It holds true with knowledge also. The
classified knowledge thus available and put into practice with some thought generates
more information, more knowledge and so on. It is a continuous cycle as represented in
fig and if it is not so then the knowledge becomes either obsolete or it means it is not
relevant/useful.

23
 Practical Implementation of the above concepts

Company Name: Tata Elxsi

In Tata Elxsi knowledge management is done based on the above-mentioned concepts.
This part of the paper will look at the practical implementation of some of these concepts.
Here we will not talk about the conventional methods

Alignment with Business Goals

As Tata Elxsi follows the TBEM (Tata Business Excellence Model), which is similar to
Malcolm Baldrige model, each function has to identify its KRA’s (Key result areas) and
accordingly make its action plans, which are in alignment with business goals. So the
knowledge management function has its action plans, which are in tune with the
organization objectives. These action plans are a mix of the conventional methods and
developing/devising mechanisms to tap the existing embedded knowledge. Thus the
knowledge needs are identified.

Knowledge Tapping Mechanisms:

KMR (Knowledge Management Repository):
KMR is a collection of information regarding
- Process and technology related good practices
- Process and technology related corrupt practices

24
- Tips related to tools, technology and customer
- Development life cycle related
- Management related
The inputs for this repository comes from many varied sources like the
- Business development team
- Development community
- Quality team
- Reports generated during the various life cycle stages
- Customer feedback
- And other Internet based sources etc.
The strength of this repository lies in its ability to provide classified information.
Some of the categories in KMR are Tech Domain specific, customer specific,
Stage wise best practices, Process specific etc. KRM is a lotus notes based application
developed in-house, accessible to all through the Intranet maintained by the Knowledge
Management Team.

BOK (Book of Knowledge)

BOK is a knowledge compendium document generated at the end of every project.
This document is structured in a way as to capture each and every aspect of the
development activity with the aim to make it a source of the organizational knowledge.
Some of the points that are covered in the BOK are like lessons learnt, new
techniques/features used, risks, defect prevention methods, problems faced, tools tips etc.
For example, a specific characteristic of a programming language can be an important
source of knowledge to the rest of the organization so that other teams need not go
through the learning phase again. The BOK Repository is maintained and the same is
accessible to all through the Intranet. Ongoing projects refer to these BOK’s for valuable
tips at every stage.

K’Caps (Knowledge Capsules)

None of the conventional knowledge acquiring methods are able to replace the
knowledge gained through experience. This is where we thought of Knowledge Capsules.

25
The idea is to convert the knowledge gained through years of experience into
capsules/modules, which will be administered, on the newer team members to help them
gain from the previous experience. This helps in reducing the learning curve.
Presently we have developed two such Knowledge Capsules one is process related and
the other is technology related.

1. PA Caps (Process Assistant Capsules):

Because of the high manpower turn over and also the regular recruitment of Fresher’s it
becomes very important for an organization to familiarize these new team members with
the quality system and procedures within a shorter time span to make them productive.
The usual method to do this is to put the new members through a QMS briefing program.
These programs only help in introducing them to the Quality systems and procedures and
do prove effective when it comes to practice. This is where PA Caps come into the
picture.

PA Cap is a 3-day module where in the participants go through the entire development
life cycle. A set of requirements is given to the participants for whom they are expected to
design, code and test using the organizations processes, templates and checklists. The
coordinators of these programs will guide the participants at every stage to familiarize
them with Process and all the sections of the templates, the relevance of each section and
their importance in the template.

At every stage the participants are provided with standard reference material thus
enabling them to know the Grey areas. We could see a tremendous amount of decrease in
the learning curve as compared to those who did not undergo PA Caps

2. T Caps (Technology Capsule)

Every technical domain has got some correct and distinct ways of implementing certain
things. This knowledge is only gained the hard way, i.e. through experience. The

26
objective of T caps is to simulate these situations thereby helping to gain this distinct
knowledge in a shorter duration The T Caps actually consists of assignment related to
different tech domains developed by experts. The relevant modules can be administered
individually, mentored by the respective capsule developer. These assignments are
generally of 2 to 3 weeks duration. The capsule is administered with the necessary inputs
and the participant comes up with a solution, which will normally be the incorrect
implementation. Then the mentor gives him different levels of clues in a phased manner
and leads him to the right solution. Thus the participant is exposed to the problem and the
right solution for it in a very short span of time. This way we are able to disseminate the
knowledge gained through experience.

Conclusion
Using the different knowledge tapping mechanisms mentioned above we can process the
knowledge accumulated and developed by individuals over a period of time. Only when
tools are synchronized with the ingrained knowledge of the people within the
organization can the real benefits of KM be realized. Gains in the form of decrease in
learning curves, increase in productivity and enhancing skills of new entrants can be
realized through KM.

27
Chapter V
Importance of humans in the process of knowledge creation
"To conceive of knowledge as a collection of information seems to rob the concept of all
of its life... Knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection. It is how the user
reacts to a collection of information that matters."

Churchman had clearly explicated that knowledge does not reside in the
collection of information, and had underscored the importance of humans in the
process of knowledge creation. Churchman's emphasis on the human nature of
knowledge creation seems more pertinent now than it was twenty five years ago
given the increasingly 'wicked' environment characterized by discontinuous
change (Nadler & Shaw 1995) and "wide range of potential surprise" (Landau &
Stout 1979). Such an environment defeats the traditional organizational response
of predicting and reacting based on pre-programmed heuristics. Instead, it
demands more anticipatory responses from the organization members who need
to carry out the mandate of a faster cycle of knowledge-creation and action based
on the new knowledge (Nadler & Shaw 1995).

However, most extant formulations of information technology (IT) enabled

knowledge management seem to have ignored this point. Our observation is
supported by a review of the extant literature on IT enabled knowledge
management in scholarly research as well as the trade press (cf: Anthes 1991;
Chorafas 1987; Gopal & Gagnon 1995; Maglitta 1996; Strapko 1990; Zeleny
1987). Based primarily upon a static and 'syntactic' notion of knowledge, they

28
specify the minutiae of machinery while disregarding how people in organizations
actually go about acquiring, sharing and creating new knowledge (Davenport
1994). By considering the meaning of knowledge as "unproblematic, predefined,
and prepackaged" (Boland 1987), they ignore the human dimension of
organizational knowledge creation. Prepackaged or taken-for-granted
interpretation of knowledge works against the generation of multiple and
contradictory viewpoints that are necessary for meeting the challenge posed by
wicked environments: this may even hamper the firm's learning and adaptive
capabilities (Gill 1995)

Inquiring Systems and Knowledge Management

Increased realization of knowledge as the core competence (Prahlad & Hamel

1990), coupled with recent advances in information technology such as intranets
and the World Wide Web, has increased organizational interest in the topic of
knowledge management. Examples of known knowledge management initiatives
include Andersen's Knowledge Xchange, Booz Allen & Hamilton's Knowledge
On-Line, CAP Gemini's Knowledge Galaxy, Ernst & Young's Center for Business
Knowledge and Monsanto's Knowledge Management Architecture.

Most such technology-based conceptualizations have been primarily based,

however, upon heuristics -- embedded in procedure manuals, mathematical
models or programmed logic -- that, arguably, capture the preferred solutions to
the given repertoire of organization's problems. Following Churchman, such
systems are best suited for:

(a) Well-structured problem situations for which there exists strong

consensual position on the nature of the problem situation, and

(b) Well-structured problems for which there exists an analytic

formulation with a solution.

29
Type (a) systems are classified as Lockean inquiry systems and type (b) systems
are classified as Leibnizian inquiry systems. Leibnizian systems are closed
systems without access to the external environment: they operate based on given
axioms and may fall into competency traps based on diminishing returns from the
'tried and tested' heuristics embedded in the inquiry processes. In contrast, the
Lockean systems are based on consensual agreement and aim to reduce
equivocality embedded in the diverse interpretations of the world view. However,
in absence of a consensus, these inquiry systems also tend to fail. The convergent
and consensus building emphasis of these two kinds of inquiry systems is suited
for stable and predictable organizational environments. However, wicked
environment imposes the need for variety and complexity of the interpretations
that are necessary for deciphering the multiple world views of the uncertain and
unpredictable future.

The other two kinds of inquiry systems are particularly suited to such multiplicity
of worldviews. Kantian inquiry systems attempt to give multiple explicit views of
complementary nature and are best suited for moderate ill-structured problems.
However, given that there is no explicit opposition to the multiple views, these
systems may also be afflicted by competency traps characterized by plurality of
complementary solutions. In contrast, Hegelian inquiry systems are based on a
synthesis of multiple completely antithetical representations that are characterized
by intense conflict because of the contrary underlying assumptions. Knowledge
management systems based upon the Hegelian inquiry systems, would facilitate
multiple and contradictory interpretations of the focal information. This process
would ensure that the focal information is subjected to continual re-examination
and modification given the changing reality. Continuously challenging the current
'company way,' such systems are expected to prevent the core capabilities of
yesterday from becoming core rigidities of tomorrow (Leonard-Barton 1995).

Given the increasingly wicked nature of the organizational environment, there

seems to be an imperative need for consideration of the Kantian and Hegelian
models that can provide the multiple, diverse, and contradictory interpretations.

30
Such systems, by generating multiple semantic views of the future characterized
by increasingly rapid pace of discontinuous change, would facilitate anticipation
of surprise (Kerr 1995) over prediction. They are most suited for dialectical
inquiry based on dialogue: "meaning passing or moving through...a free flow of
meaning between people..." (Bohm cited in Senge 1990). The underpinning
discussion asserts the critical role of the individual and social processes that
underlie the creation of meaning (Strombach 1986), without which dialectical
inquiry would not be possible. Therein lies the crucial role of the humans in
facilitating knowledge creation in inquiring organizations.

Human Aspects of New Knowledge Creation

The dominant conception of IT enabled knowledge management is constrained by

the very nature of the knowledge creation processes. Specifically, the extant
mainstream notion of such inquiring systems has given sparse attention to:

 The dynamic and continuously evolving nature of knowledge;

 The tacit and explicit dimensions of knowledge creation;
 The subjective, interpretative and meaning making bases of
knowledge creation; and,
 The constructive nature of knowledge creation.

These issues are not meant to be mutually exclusive or comprehensive, however

they highlight some of the limitations inherent in the current techno-centric
conceptualizations of knowledge management. These issues devolve from the
wicked nature of the environment discussed earlier and are aimed at providing the
underpinnings for the sustenance of an inquiring organization that is capable of
not only continuous learning, but also continuous unlearning (Hedberg 1981). The
following discussion elaborates on these issues and suggests how the limitations
in the current conceptualization may be addressed to some degree.

31
Dynamic and Continuously Evolving Nature of Knowledge

Knowledge management solutions characterized by memorization of 'best

practices' may tend to define the assumptions that are embedded not only in
information databases, but also in the organization's strategy, reward systems and
resource allocation systems. The hardwiring of such assumptions in
organizational knowledge bases may lead to perceptual insensitivity (Hedberg et
al. 1976) of the organization to the changing environment. Institutionalization of
'best practices' by embedding them in information technology might facilitate
efficient handling of routine, 'linear,' and predictable situations during stable or
incrementally changing environments. However, when this change is
discontinuous, there is a persistent need for continuous renewal of the basic
premises underlying the 'best practices' stored in organizational knowledge bases.
The extant conceptualization of inquiring systems is devoid of such capabilities
that are essential to the continuous learning and unlearning processes mandated
by a continual and increasing pace of discontinuous change. A more proactive
involvement of the human imagination and creativity (March 1971, Maslow
1965) is needed to facilitate greater internal diversity [of the organization] that
can match the variety and complexity of the wicked environment.

Tacit and Explicit Dimensions of Knowledge Creation

The current conception of IT-enabled knowledge management doesn't address the

processing of tacit knowledge, which is deeply rooted in an individual's action
and experience, ideals, values, or emotions (Nonaka & Takeuchi 1995). Although
tacit knowledge lies at the very basis of organizational knowledge creation, its
nature renders it highly personal and hard to formalize and to communicate.
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) have suggested that knowledge is created through
four different modes: (1) socialization which involves conversion from tacit
knowledge to tacit knowledge, (2) externalization which involves conversion
from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, (3) combination which involves
conversion from explicit knowledge to explicit knowledge, and (4) internalization

32
which involves conversion from explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge. The
dominant model of inquiring systems is limited in its ability to foster shared
experience necessary for relating to others' thinking processes thus limiting its
utility in socialization. It may, by virtue of its ability to convert tacit knowledge
into explicit forms such as metaphors, analogies and models, have some utility in
externalization. This utility is however restricted by its ability to support dialogue
or collective reflection. The current model of inquiring systems, apparently, may
have greater role in combination, which involves combining different bodies of
explicit knowledge, and internalization, which involves knowledge transfer
through verbalizing or diagramming into documents, manuals and stories. A more
explicit recognition of tacit knowledge and related human aspects, such as ideals,
values, or emotions, is necessary for developing a richer conceptualization of
knowledge management.

Subjective, Interpretative and Meaning Making Bases of Knowledge

Creation
Wicked environments call for interpretation of new events and re-interpretation of
extant practices. However, the dominant model of inquiring systems largely
ignores the important construct of meaning (cf: Boland 1987) as well as its
transient and ambiguous nature. 'Prepackaged' or 'taken-for-granted' interpretation
of knowledge residing in the organizational memories works against the
generation of multiple and contradictory viewpoints that are necessary for ill-
structured environments. Simplification of contextual information for storage in
IT-enabled repositories works against the retention of the complexity of multiple
viewpoints. Institutionalization of definitions and interpretations of events and
issues works against the exchanging and sharing of diverse perspectives. To an
extent the current inquiring systems, based on their ability to communicate
metaphors, analogies and stories by using multimedia technologies, may offer
some representation and communication of meaning. However, a more human-
centric view of knowledge creation is necessary to enable the interpretative,
subjective and meaning-making nature of knowledge creation. Investing in

33
multiple and diverse interpretations is expected to enable Kantian and Hegelian
modes of inquiry and, thus, lessen oversimplification or premature decision
closure.

Constructive Nature of Knowledge Creation

The computational metaphor of knowledge management ignores the constructive
nature of knowledge creation and instead assumes a pre-specified meaning of the
memorized 'best practices,' devoid of ambiguity or contradiction. It ignores that
the meaning of the focal information would not exist if human beings had created
the objects and entities in them in the first place (Dewey 1933, Strombach 1986).
The dominant model of inquiring systems downplays the constructive nature of
knowledge creation and action. For most ill structured situations, it is difficult to
ensure a unique interpretation of 'best practices' residing in information
repositories since knowledge is created by the individuals in the process of using
that data. Even if pre-specified interpretations could be possible, they would be
problematic when future solutions need to be either thought afresh or in
discontinuation from past solutions. Interestingly, the constructive aspect of
knowledge creation is also expected to enable multiple interpretations that can
facilitate the organization's anticipatory response to discontinuous change.

Recent literature suggests that some IS researchers are paying increasing attention
to explicitly addressing the human meaning creation issues in the context of
designing inquiring systems. Illustrative examples include distributed cognition
systems that assist individuals in making interpretations of their situation,
reflecting on them, and engaging in dialogue about them with others (Boland et
al. 1994) and embedded application systems (Käkölä 1995) that facilitate the
users' interpretive flexibility of information systems.

Hence
A review of existing conceptualizations of IT-enabled knowledge management suggests
that sparse attention has been given to the human aspects of knowledge creation. Given
the increasingly 'wicked' environments, this dominant model of organizational knowledge

34
management systems is increasingly constrained by its Lockean and Leibnizian nature. It
is suggested that Hegelian and Kantian systems are better suited for wicked
environments. We discussed how the human aspects of knowledge creation are critical for
sustaining such systems for facilitating inquiry based on divergence of meanings and
perspectives. Implications were drawn for improving the design of inquiring systems for
knowledge management in inquiring organizations. The discussion of the human
capabilities underlying organizational knowledge creation for wicked environment is
expected to contribute to the philosophical bases for the evaluation of organizational
knowledge management systems.

Chapter VI
Capitalizing on Intellectual Assets: Business Environment Analysis
As we approach the twenty-first century, the business environment is experiencing a
tremendous change. Globalization, technological innovations, and competition are
forcing companies to shift the fundamentals of how business is conducted.
Increasingly, companies are moving rapidly from labor-based business to
knowledge-based business. Companies are seeking to leverage vast stores of
information and expertise to capitalize on this emerging knowledge-based global
economy, while embracing the ideas of "knowledge management" to further define
and facilitate this new knowledge revolution. They realize that the benefits of
institutionalized knowledge management are broad in scope. Individuals from
different disciplines, teams, and sites are working together to share and improve
their collective knowledge, so that this knowledge can be applied worldwide in a
repeatable and sustainable manner.

Companies working to capitalize on their own knowledge focus on sharing a wide variety
of intellectual content among units, ranging from processes to business patterns, design
experiences, and beyond. They learn the importance of embedding technology into
effective business designs so that markedly different patterns of sustained value growth
can be achieved. The advent of high-capability intranet technologies makes possible the
collaboration that is critical to rapidly transform customer needs into deliverable value.

35
These new capabilities can strip away the corporation boundaries that have traditionally
inhibited the ability to tap the wellsprings of knowledge that often exist in isolated
1

pockets of the company.

To survive and excel in this rapidly changing global economy, a new emphasis on
innovation, competency, and collaboration is needed. The goal of managing knowledge
as a strategic asset is not only to seek the short-term returns, but also to maximize the
long-term advantage over competitors. The ability to learn, collaborate, and innovate
faster than one's competitors becomes the only sustainable source of competitive
advantage in the coming knowledge-based economy. To stay competitive, companies
need to capitalize on their intellectual assets, rather than their infrastructure .
1

In the late 1980s, Peter Drucker predicted, "The factory of tomorrow will be organized
around information rather than automation." Today his insight is becoming a reality.
Business developments such as a networking economy and enterprise expansions are
compelling corporations to manage knowledge as an asset. Yesterday's strong
organizational hierarchies and strict work rules are no longer economically rewarding. As
the economy of tomorrow emerges, a company's prosperity is becoming increasingly
dependent on the intellectual capacity of its workers and their ability to change in a
dynamic business environment. Consequently, finding and applying methodologies to
generate and use knowledge faster and more effectively is becoming one of the most
promising and valuable new management practices.

Competition in the twenty-first century

The world in which we live is changing in a fundamental way. Markets are increasingly
international, tariff barriers have disappeared, and the economy is becoming more
information based. To succeed, an enterprise must meet the challenge of global
competition for markets. Four "change drivers" that most concern today's chief executive
officers (CEOs) are: innovation, responsiveness, productivity, and competency. While
these present a challenge to today's enterprises, they also open the door to a wealth of
opportunities.

36
The solutions and methodologies that support information and knowledge management
have been available for quite some time. Today, however, trends in the marketplace and
new technology are redefining their use, making them more critical than ever before to
intellectually intensive companies. A knowledge management program needs to focus on
addressing these four change drivers.

Innovation:
In today's business, one of the critical success factors for enterprises is the ability to
innovate: to quickly develop the products, processes, and services customers want, at a
competitive price; to find new solutions to old problems; to adapt solutions to changing
circumstances; and to apply the lessons of experience, the technology solutions, and the
wellspring of creativity to the new challenges presented in a changing world. The
innovation process now extends outside the enterprise. In many industry sectors,
individual companies are really part of a broader business system. One example is in
automobile production, with its networks of designers, material suppliers, parts
manufacturers, assemblers, and dealers. The computer industry is another, involving chip
designers, component manufacturers, assemblers, system software manufacturers,
application software manufacturers, and distributors of all kinds, ranging from mail-order
houses to superstores.

Many smart CEOs know that the external environment ultimately limits business
performance. An enterprise's ability to compete depends on interactions with suppliers,
customers, banks, shareholders, the educational system, and government regulators,
among others. The more effective a company's interactions with these external players,
the better it will perform. An enterprise needs to extend the knowledge-sharing network
beyond its own knowledge workers to its customers, business partners, and suppliers.

Responsiveness:
Hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky once said that his success was due to his ability to skate
"not where the puck is but where it will be." An enterprise needs to have the same
instincts to provide customer services. In today's world of open information architectures,
customers have many choices, and enterprises have to move quickly and efficiently so

37
they can not only react to, but also anticipate customer needs. In this fast-moving
business environment, product availability is essential. Enterprises have to ensure that
customers can get the products they want, with the features they are looking for, at the
places where they want to buy. The key measure of cycle time--from placing a customer
purchase order to delivering a ready-to-use product--is a major yardstick of
responsiveness.

Speed of implementation has always been an important determinant for successful

companies. The integration of electronic commerce and other technologies in the
business mainstream has made this factor even more important. Today, neither companies
nor its clients can afford to wait long for the implementation of global solutions.
Therefore, the processes for developing these solutions must make optimal use of
available knowledge resources. In order to streamline these processes, it is imperative to
establish a means for eliminating the costs associated with reinvention and to alleviate the
frustrations endured by practitioners when they cannot benefit from lessons learned by
others.

Today's workforce with its sophisticated technology is more mobile than ever before. In
the past, when a new employee came on board, he or she would simply ask, "Where is
my office? What personal computer will I have?" Today, workers want to know what
kinds of network facilities are available for dialing up and working globally. They
constantly need access to knowledge from diverse locations. This requires truly
interactive, transaction-intensive, on-line support enabling them to accomplish real
work--to reshape the way products are designed, the way customers are supported, and
the way decisions are made.

Productivity:
Robert Reich describes three emerging categories of work and competitive positions:
routine production services, in-person services, and symbolic-analytic services. Routine
production work can be performed anywhere in the world. Most in-person services
receive the minimum wage, which has been declining in real terms in the United States.
The symbolic-analytic services, which are essentially provided by knowledge workers,

38
are the key competitive advantage for the new economy. Providers of these services
solve, identify, and broker problems by manipulating symbols. They have the best jobs,
with rising real incomes. The intellectual capital-intensive business gives opportunity for
growth.

Globalization, privatization, and alliances are progressively changing the face of the
competitive market landscape. While these trends reveal an abundance of new
opportunities for companies, they also press the question of how to manage global
businesses effectively and efficiently. Today, globalization is less about where one goes
and more about how one can provide services from there. Companies need to generate
practices that can be tailored to accommodate regional differences, which involves
creating a framework and culture for global collaboration.

Continuous improvement in operation efficiency and productivity is essential to long-

term earnings growth and is a key determinant of an enterprise's competitiveness. With
this in mind, the emphasis for an enterprise is not simply on cost reduction, but also on
maximizing global resource productivity in the context of long-term growth and
profitable operations. Intellectual capital plays a key role in the increase of productivity.
Effective measurement of this increase in productivity and new business opportunity is
vital.

Competency:
A competency is a logical grouping of productive resources (human, technical, and
intellectual) that represent leading edge and differentiated thinking that is valued in the
marketplace. A competency can foster the rapid transfer of experience and ideas that can
be applied in a consistent manner across organizational and geographic boundaries. A
competency is focused--it does not try to be "all things to all people." It is designed to
accumulate knowledge wealth, reusing abilities and shedding irrelevancies. Because
competencies are difficult to duplicate, they enhance a company's competitiveness.

The key word for today's business environment is change. The new competitive
advantages include: timeliness of information and intelligence, quality of customer

39
services, and customer self-service resulting from the electronic commerce revolution. To
prepare employees to anticipate, drive, support, or respond to change, enterprises need
complete and objective information about their core competencies--knowledge, attitudes,
skills, abilities, and traits--in order to accelerate business growth and stay competitive.
The first step is intensive information collection and analysis procedures to identify the
critical competencies needed to meet the enterprise's goals and its expectations to sustain
leadership in the marketplace.

The increasing importance of time

As enterprises engage in a new form of global competition, expedience is increasingly

important. Not only is the Internet shortening the distance between customers, suppliers,
and business partners, it is also reducing, for all participants in the marketplace, the time
needed to acquire information. The Internet provides a convenient medium for customer
self-service and is reducing the level of intermediation in the marketplace. Businesses
therefore need to renovate their customer services and seek to achieve customer loyalty
and retention. Visionary companies are undergoing customer-driven realignment of their
demand and supply value chains. Companies need to have mechanisms in place to
capture and communicate the thoughts and feelings of customers. They need to have
systems to quickly transform this knowledge into products and services for customers.
Timeliness in acquiring information and efficiency in transforming it into deliverable
solutions are the differentiators for today's product and service organizations.

Information and knowledge

Information consists of data passed through a person's mind and found meaningful.
Information is something that happens as a person mentally "decodes" the data from
audible or visible expression. The actual decoding process must take place in time. It may
happen in the interaction between minds, or between mind and objects or other pieces of
information. The quality of information rapidly degrades over time and in distance from
the source of production. Moreover, its value is highly subjective and conditional. For
example, last year's newspapers are quite valuable to the historian; on the other hand,

40
news that occurred more than an hour ago may have lost any relevance to a stockbroker.
Therefore, information is experienced, not possessed.

Knowledge is defined by Davenport and Prusak as "a fluid mix of framed experience,
values, contextual information, and expert insights that provides a framework for
evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information." Knowledge has different
value to different people. Knowledge cannot be measured, but one can measure its
activities and results. Knowledge results include judgment, expertise, rapid pattern
recognition, error avoidance, reuse, and innovative thinking.

Within a business organization, there are three broad sets of activities interlinked in a
cycle: business management, project management, and intellectual capital management.
Each set has its own goals, processes, roles, constraints, and types of information or
knowledge that must be manipulated and supported.

Cultural change and increasing knowledge intensity

Knowledge management requires addressing both cultural and technical issues. The way
in which knowledge is transferred is very different from the transfer of physical goods.
Goods are transferred through distribution, propagation, and interaction. Knowledge can
be transferred without leaving the possession of the original owner. The value of the
output resulting from the transferred knowledge can be far greater than that from the
original knowledge--it is dependent on the individual mental processes and application
contexts.

Capitalizing on collective knowledge

Today, staying in the game is not enough. To win, a company must be poised, ready to
meet customers' challenges and to provide a winning solution ahead of the competition.
Knowledge sharing occurs naturally in a mutually dependent community. Knowledge
transfer occurs through human interaction and social processes. Knowledge management
targets two dimensions. One dimension is knowledge type: from tacit knowledge,
through project experiences, to explicit knowledge. The other dimension is knowledge

41
communities: from individuals, through teams and groups, to enterprise organizations.
Tacit knowledge represents what works, discovered over time and through the experience
of an individual or team. It normally resides in the minds of individuals and is a
tremendously valuable corporate asset. Explicit knowledge is tacit knowledge that is
documented and externally visible.

Capturing Team Agility and Tacit Knowledge.

There has been emphasis on the importance of teamwork in the workplace. Whether one
is delivering services or merely wanting to increase effectiveness and employee morale,
developing effective and cohesive teams is a good tactic. A team is generally composed
of a highly communicative group of people. Poor communication means that the group is
not a team. Frequent dialogs and discussions among the team members generate a
wellspring of tacit knowledge. This dialog along with work products, form the tacit
knowledge generated by the team. This is the source for collecting and recording explicit
knowledge for sharing and reuse. A team with diverse members from different
backgrounds and with varying skills and abilities has better agility and can more
effectively generate valuable tacit knowledge and an innovative learning environment.
More importantly, it must have a shared sense of mission and clearly identified goals to
be able to generate knowledge that is focused and intensive. Goals help the team to gauge
its success and to know what it is trying to accomplish.

The knowledge cycle: From project information to intellectual capital.

Reuse of intellectual capital is one of the most effective ways of improving speed of
response and encouraging innovation. Context-sensitive linkage between the project
management environment and intellectual capital management is critical. The knowledge
cycle is the process, for knowledge creation, use, and reuse with continuous
improvements, which the professionals are sharing. The scope of the knowledge cycle is
the context boundary of the users. In a business context, it is linked to the complexity and

42
evolving nature of the marketplace. In a project environment, a collaborative work
support environment is needed to capture dialog and work products.

Creating a wealth of intellectual capital.

The Internet can be considered a gold mine of information for some persons, and at the
same time a junkyard to others. It all depends on the content quality of the information
found and how the information is presented. Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported
that thousands of Web sites are not updated for long periods of time, resulting in the
devaluation of their information content. This condition provides a clear picture of how
information can become useless if not managed through a quality life cycle. Maintaining
high-quality content and frequently refreshing it with new information is critical for
attracting visitors to a Web site. Likewise, companies need to manage both tacit and
explicit information and knowledge as dynamically as possible to maintain its value.

However, having access to quality information alone is not sufficient for success in
knowledge management. Once intellectual capital is captured, institutions and practices
must be established to compel its dissemination throughout the firm to increase
productivity and foster innovation. Many companies still operate under the mistaken
assumption that employees automatically share their knowledge. Moreover, as companies
expand to become more global, the assumed opportunities for spontaneous face-to-face
exchanges of tacit knowledge diminish. These factors provide compelling reasons to
create frameworks for promoting what is learned at the individual level to the
organizational level.

Finally, the effectiveness and value of knowledge management depends on the active
participation of every professional. Employees need to make it a habit to contribute their
ideas and knowledge for reuse, and to attentively refine existing intellectual capital.
Every knowledge community should promote and encourage other communities to use
and submit intellectual capital. Each employee's willingness to share knowledge is
critical. The time that one spends contributing will be more than compensated for when

43
tapping the reservoirs of intellectual capital to provide efficient, high-quality service to
customers. Teamwork is key to successful knowledge management.

Best Practices

44
Chapter VII (I)

Best Practice for Knowledge Management – Aventis

The Knowledge Management Implementation at AVENTIS

Background:

On Dec. 1, 1998 Hoechst AG and Rhône-Poulenc S.A. – two companies with rich
histories spanning over 100 years and experience in markets throughout the world
announced heir intention to combine their pharmaceutical and agricultural businesses to
create Aventis. Resulting from this merger Aventis was officially born on Dec15, 1999.
From this beginning Aventis is today a world leader in the discovery, development and
marketing of innovative pharmaceutical products with core business sales in 2002
totaling more than € 17.59 billion and core business employees totaling more than 71,00
world wide. Aventis has an Annual research and development budget of over € 3 billion
(www.aventis.com, cited 13-8- 2003).

45
Their mission statement says, “We aim to create and sustain value by being recognized as
a pharmaceutical industry leader – valued by patients and healthcare providers, sought
after as an employer, and respected by the scientific community and by our competitors.”

Aventis focuses on pharmaceuticals and human vaccines to fight serious diseases.

Working in a network with partners, Aventis scientists are discovering and developing
therapeutic innovations in areas such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma
and allergies and are involved in developing new vaccines to prevent and treat a wide
range of serious and often deadly diseases. One of Aventis’s major goals is to satisfy
unmet medical needs in large patient populations.(www.aventis.com/aboutus.htm)

Aventis aims to generate optimum returns on our strategic brands through life-cycle
management and to achieve leadership positions by building on operational excellence in
major pharmaceutical markets such as the United States, France, Germany and Japan.
(www.aventis.com)

Problem:

Aventis is a global organization with cross-functional teams with over 5000 researchers
based in various locations all over the world. The organizational structure is very heavily
matrixed and this often lead to issues / trouble keeping all its researchers abreast of what
the company had achieved so far, in terms of research and development, so as to prevent
regular reinvention of the wheel (Connecting Experts
Gartner Case Study on Results of Using Tacit Technology at Aventis by French Caldwell,
Gartner Group - 2001).

Research associates revealed in feedback interviews frustrations in being able to find

appropriate knowledge that they were sure existed somewhere in the company e.g. the
previous internal research results and documentation on research conducted into the use
of enzymes in the drug discovery process. In an effort to become a more networked
enterprise, Aventis saw opportunity in improving access to tacit knowledge and
connecting people for knowledge transfer and resource sharing.

46
Aventis also needs to allow the researchers to acquire the necessary expertise and expert
interaction as and when required. These perquisites along with the fact that the solution to
these issues must be easy to implement and use and must not add to the daily work load
of the end users i.e. the research associates were some of the major issues to be addressed
with the Knowledge management solution implementation.

In the business of drug creation/ discovery time is money in the truest sense of the word
and saving time means funds available for further possible drug discoveries. Thus, the
solution had to be one that enabled fast and smooth interaction and location of required
expertise. According to performance support technology expert Gloria Gery
(http://webcom.com/quantera/empires3.html), “knowledge should be made available at
"the point and moment of need"” and this was not the case at Aventis.

Along with the required ease of implementation and use the solution also had to be a
considerable value add to the organisation – delivering the “added value” at low cost,
when compared to the traditional approach of setting up knowledge warehouses (which
would involve not only document management and data mining tools but also collation of
debriefing data and interviews with experts).

Solution:

As Aventis recognizes that the most important business capital in the organization i.e.
knowledge- lies with its associates and the challenge lies in tapping into and accessing
their knowledge whenever, wherever and however possible- leading to possibly reduced
“time to market” for new drugs.

Towards better understanding the goals and proposing a solution Aventis’s knowledge
managers decided on a practical definition for knowledge management, based on which
they would formulate strategy. They defined knowledge management in the Aventis
context as, “the systematic effort to promote connectivity between people, and to
facilitate the generation, sharing and use of knowledge to gain competitive advantage”.

47
Once they had defined what the organizational understanding of knowledge management
was to be the look at various methodologies and techniques to implement knowledge
management. Many process based solutions were evaluated along with technology based
ones.

As process based solutions did not meet the fundamental requirement of not adding to the
research associates workload software based solution was considered the best option.
Software based solutions span from Document Imaging solution (Scan ‘n’ store) to
Process based Document management solutions (Storage in native formats, embedded
workflows, etc) were evaluated and rejected based on the amount of user intervention
required on a constant basis.

The derivative solution emerging from analysis of these issues and further understanding
them was an initiative called KnowledgeMail. Which initiatives towards successful
knowledge management and achievement of the knowledge management goals is –
KnowledgeMail-, which uses individuals as Knowledge carriers who are therefore the
focus of all KM activities. One of KnowledgeMails basic precepts is the individual
employee’s willingness to participate in global knowledge exchange.

KnowledgeMail is expertise location management software that profiles emails and

documents submitted by the users to create user profiles detailing areas of expertise and
possibility for manual correction through the addition or deletion or additional areas.

KnowledgeMail helps not only locate in house expertise (Expertise Location

Management) but also connects people through networking – and is the basis for
Aventis’s KM strategy.

The KnowledgeMail concept focused on prompt availability and efficient diffusion of

expertise- based on document less sharing of information (as document based
information sharing can be both time consuming and inefficient in terms of costs
involved).

Knowledge Mails Expertise Management Solution:

48
As one of the primary goals of Aventis’s knowledge management strategy was to keep
employee workload in terms of management of knowledge and expertise to a minimum
the implementation chose not to focus on the traditional high end tools / technologies in
terms of management of expertise, which would involve creation of a high precision
search system based on a taxonomy of terms maintained specifically for this purpose.
This would involve constant maintenance in terms of updation of “jargon” as terminology
and topics in medical and pharmaceutical research and development are ever evolving.

Due to the need of imposing minimal effort and time investments on the research
associates was considered primary background profiling of unstructured information such
as emails and documents was considered an ideal solution in terms of both costs involved
and benefit delivered.

KnowledgeMails solutions was to extract key phrases from outgoing emails or submitted
documents and add such phrases to the users private profiles. The user was then free to
decide whether these terms / extracted phrases would then be added to / published in a
organisation wide searchable database.

49
 Outgoing email or Add to searchable
submitted document public profile

YES
KnowldegeMail
Key phrase Publish Database
extraction and these
addition to key
users private phrases
profile NO

Delete or Store in
users private profile

KEY WORD EXTRACTION PROCESS

&
THE WORKING OF KNOWLEDGE MAIL

When required a user could search for relevant terms and KnowledgeMail would contact
experts (users with relevant expertise based on “jargon” /terms within their profiles) on
behalf of the searcher. The experts then were free to choose to or not to respond to the
searcher based on their ability to help / time available.

The KnowledgeMail implementation and solution was considered to be ideal as it

delivered the following advantages and resultant benefits:

 Constant automatic profiling – with minimum input from users

 User ability to edit his profile

 Can profile based on company specific terms / oft used research jargon.

50
  Data privacy as no documents itself were stored and the users were free to choose
to or not to respond to a searchers query.

 Helped network building within employees.

 Dramatically reduced regular reinvention of the wheel.

Benefits:

 Results from 3-month pilot implementation showed that KnowledgeMail helped

Aventis save 7.8 man months in research time.
 Calculated financial ROI of > 200% through savings in time and increase in
productivity (measured via cycle time reduction post KnowledgeMail
implementation)

 Creation of employee expertise database.

 Ease of updation and expertise location resulting in high continued usage even
after the first evaluation cycle.

Post Implementation:

After an initial learning curve the KnowledgeMail implementation has reaped rewards in
terms of high Returns on Investment and high level of employee satisfaction with the
solution. Aventis has benefited as employees find that KnowledgeMail is a low
maintenance and high yield solution. Using KnowledgeMail has reduced cycle times
considerable and made it extremely easy for location of relevant expertise as and when
required on an ongoing basis.

KM best practice derived from the implementation is not IT or software based but
revolves around creation of an environment conducive to knowledge sharing and this
knowledge management.

Emergent Best Practice:

51
Fundamental to the success of the KnowledgeMail based knowledge management
implementation at Aventis is the established framework based core value of networking.

The company has deeply entrenched in all its employees the concept of reaching out
across borders and boundaries to access ideas and information and making all possible
efforts to share various forms of knowledge by the research associates.

These core values aided by the ease of locating, networking and connecting to the
knowledge carriers (using KnowledgeMail) was the next logical step, and thus resulted in
a very successful and ‘unique in its own right’ knowledge management implementation.

Chapter VII (II)

Best Practice for Knowledge Management – IBM

52
 Knowledge Management – The IBM GLOBAL way!!

Background:

IBM is synonymous with technology – from being one of the worlds largest computer
hardware companies to being the worlds largest Information Technology Company, IBM
has done it all!!

IBM employees more than 320,000 people and have (IBM Annual Report 2001) revenues
of more than $88.3 billion.

IBM Global services are IBM’s IT services arms with operations spanning 160 countries,
150,000 employees and revenues of $33.2 billion (www.ibm.com cited 10/9/03). It is the
worlds leading provider of information technology services.

According to the IBM Global website IBM Global services primarily comprises three
units: the business innovation services unit (delivering business strategies and eBusiness
solutions), the integrated technology services unit(delivering infrastructure solution –
from design to implementation) and the strategic outsourcing services unit ( providing
outsourcing of systems, networks and data centers). Each of these three units has its own
consulting units.

IBM has many smaller subdivisions such as the Infrastructure and Systems management
unit, which is responsible for carrying out international projects in infrastructure and the
systems management arena. It employees more than 4000 computer/ IT professionals
worldwide and again has its own smaller consulting arm.

53
As IBM in its magnitude cannot be studied as one single organism and has more
knowledge management implementations world wide than can be studied for the
purposes of this paper we will primarily be focused on the knowledge management
practices at the Infrastructure and Systems management unit.

KM@IBM:

Problem: Creating and Maintaining Competitive Advantage

Knowledge management at IBM is based on IBM’s business keywords of

“Competitiveness, Profitability and Intellectual leadership”

As IBM has grown over the years so have its customer’s demands on the company’s
services. Its competitive advantage was gradually being eroded by various competitors
who were providing services similar to IBM at lower costs and thereby eating into IBM’s
market share.

As a tool to secure competitive advantage over a variety of clones that were trying to
provide services similar to “big blue”, and maintain “Competitiveness, Profitability and
Intellectual leadership” IBM decided to implement knowledge management. This
decision was based on the fact that the ability to learn faster than competition is the only
true competitive advantage (Peter Drucker - Gore & Gore, 1999, p. S555).

Solution: Technology or Process??

A technology-based approach was first looked into – utilizing databases to store

experiences, know how and information. These databases were to be the solution to the
problem of retaining knowledge and using the same knowledge to grow in the face of
continual employee turnover.

This approach proved economically unviable and unsuitable from a user perspective and
thus had to be scrapped. On evaluating this approach user testing determined that users
were attracted not to the technology but to the “usability” of a knowledge management
technology.

54
The second and subsequent attempt at knowledge management was process based rather
than technology based and revolved around the provision of a “holistic framework
concept- provision of a framework to enable process based knowledge management”
based on which “Intellectual Capital” i.e. knowledge could be managed. This framework
was the beginning of the Intellectual Capital Management programme at IBM.

Implementation:

Michael Polanyi definition of the dimensions of knowledge management from “The Tacit
Dimension,” Knowledge in Organizations, (L. Prusak, Editor, Butterworth-Heinemann, Woburn,

MA (1997) has been the basis of knowledge management at IBM. According to Polanyi,
knowledge may be explicit or implicit or tacit, and may be available to groups or
individuals or communities as a whole.

According to Nonaka’s work based on Polayni’s output (which is the basis of

understanding of knowledge management @ IBM) “Tacit knowledge is what the knower
knows, which is derived from experience and embodies beliefs and values. Tacit
knowledge is actionable knowledge, and therefore the most valuable. Furthermore, tacit
knowledge is the most important basis for the generation of new knowledge, that is , the
key to knowledge creation lies in the mobilization and conversion of tacit knowledge.”

According to IBM Almaden Research Center’s Knowledge Management (KM) overview

document, explicit knowledge is documented and structured knowledge that is easily
accessible and widely available through different media. Implicit or tacit knowledge on
the other hand is knowledge that exists in the heads of the companies’ employees and
tends to include, ideas, rules of thumb, experiences, tips and tricks.

IBM’s goal was to manage the explicit and implicit (tacit) knowledge, experiences and
ideas that were structured in such a ways so as to be distributable and reusable so as to
provide benefits to both the organisation in terms of improved operational effectiveness
and customers in terms of better meeting of requirements.

55
IBM’s Intellectual Capital Management initiative largely tries to capture not only the
explicit knowledge available but also tries to capture as much as possible implicit/ tacit
knowledge. Where it may be unable to capture the gamut of implicit knowledge it tries to
ensure that this knowledge is shared and distributed in such a way so as to be implicit
knowledge with a larger number of professionals that was previously.

Intellectual Capital Management has been defined as a framework of values, processes,

people and technology set up to collect, make available, reuse and further develop
knowledge experiences and information. (Vorbeck et al. 2000)

Management of knowledge comprises the following tasks at IBM, by which the

knowledge management goals are achieved:

 Making intellectual capital available (technologically and procedurally, where in

each staff member structures and stores knowledge while being supported by
respective functional core teams).
 Reusability of intellectual capital of each member of staff unit-wide.

 Maintaining of intellectual capital: core team responsibility.

56
  Structuring the respective knowledge domain (core teams or special task forces)
leading to “solution boards”.

 Creating and constantly developing intellectual capital (each member of staff).

Infrastructure & Systems Management: Knowledge Management through

Intellectual Capital Management at the Unit level:

The Intellectual Capital management effort is centered around a core team derived from
the 4000+ members of the unit, who are all members of the community of practice within
the unit. The core team role is to:

 Sense and respond to the community’s requirements and needs.

 Structure, maintain and manage the knowledge of the community and make it
available.

 Develop techniques to collate the knowledge and experiences where these are
unavailable.

 Distribute the knowledge so collated to employees/ the community of practice

within the unit.

Towards the fulfillment of this role, technique called “ShareNet” is used. This involves
use of “ShareNet” meetings to get the groups/ individuals to interact with each other to
identify and exchange knowledge both tacit and explicit. Attendees of the “ShareNet”
meetings and the core team together identify, evaluate and structure contributions to the
ICM database from the 4000+ members of the community of practice. The core team
then organizes presentations of the best practices so derived to all relevant members of
the unit.

Such “ShareNet” meeting and derivative material form the basis of the Intellectual
Capital management methodology within IBM.

57
Derivative material from “ShareNet” meetings is subject to scrutiny as it has to be refined
by the knowledge owner and then initially reviewed by a “knowledge router” who then
may or may not pass the material onto another more specialized reviewer. The reviewer is
responsible for supervision of certain subject/ topical areas and selection/ evaluation of
the contributions. The reviewer may correspond with the contributor to perfect the
contribution (document) with the goal of achieving the best possible quality, which is
then dissipated to employees to enable them to learn from the experiences/ knowledge of
others as employee learning further sharing is the fundamental behind all knowledge
management efforts.

According to Shoshana Zuboff, author of “In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future
of Work and Power”, "Learning is not something that requires time out from being
engaged in productive activity; learning is the heart of productive activity. To put it
simply, learning is the new form of labor."

The Intellectual capital management technique has been constantly evolved to ensure that
barriers to learning and knowledge management are identified and overcome as soon as
they have been recognized as such. Based on their experience with the technique core
teams have been able to classify barriers as cultural, technological and language based.

These barriers have been broken down in most emergent instances by means of upper
management initiatives, meetings, newsletters, intensive communications, the provision
of national language assistants and internal marketing of the ICM techniques in most
cases.

During the first phases of the implementation of the Intellectual Capital management
techniques a fourth barrier based on information technology infrastructure shortcomings
existed due to the fact that the technology being used was yet to mature. This barrier has
since been overcome by technological advances made and the effort IBM has made to
provide a more stable knowledge management platform.

58
Intellectual Capital Seekers: An Intellectual Capital seeker (referred to as an IC seeker)
is a member of the community of practice who volunteers for the knowledge
management initiative / programme. It is their role to function outside of the Intellectual
Capital management framework and locate and source knowledge from potential holders
of knowledge.

The locate sources by constant interaction with members of the community, in person and
via ShareNet, and promote the idea of sharing of knowledge. Intellectual capital sources
are one of their key deliverables and are measured during their annual performance
reviews.

An IC seekers role would comprise, locating a potential source of knowledge by means

of interaction, convincing the potential possessor of Intellectual capital to document his
knowledge in such a way so as to make it accessible and reusable by others and to
encourage other to use the existing documented knowledge by making them aware of
how such knowledge would help in delivery of a better end result.

IC seekers function both within and on the periphery of ShareNet and use its resources to
locate potential sources of knowledge.

IT Tools: Apart from provision of the enabling knowledge management framework and
processes IBM also uses “knowledge café” based IT (software) applications built on the
lotus notes platform to facilitate the transfer, standardization and reuse of individual tacit
knowledge and its transfer into the explicit public knowledge domain.

Communication: Another major focus / key area that IBM has focused on to enable the
knowledge management initiative apart from the Intellectual Capital management
techniques ( communities of practice core teams developing framework, knowledge
management process methodologies and the use of the “ShareNet”) and the IT based
“knowledge café’s” is the focus on core bi-directional vertical communication between
all team members and bi-directional horizontal communications between project groups/
teams within an operational unit and the community.

59
Several, knowledge management, knowledge enablers are in place to encourage and
facilitate these types of communication, such as:

 An intranet site for sharing of current news, whitepapers, presentations and other
such material of immediate and long term relevance.
 A “password base access” internet site that shares information with clients and
allows client facing teams to access material that may be used at the client site.

 A quarterly newsletter that covers knowledge management issues and topics

within the infrastructure and systems management focus areas, available both for
download and immediate viewing on the intranet site. This newsletter also covers
infrastructure and systems management related issues and technological
developments within this area that may be of interest to members of the
community of practice, such as connectivity and networking issues.

 An “ezine” based on an email subscription model that covers latest news,

published intellectual capital, upcoming training and events, new project
announcements, tips and tricks from implementation team experiences, customer
feedback and other such material of interest to members of the community of
practice.

 Interviews and “question and answer” sessions conducted using lotus in real time
and web based news groups that may be collectively able to answer questions
from / aid members of the communities of practice.

These communication tools help deliver knowledge on and cover areas not covered by
the other knowledge management tools and techniques, such as intellectual capital
management, ShareNet, knowledge cafes, etc.

Benefit:

60
All these knowledge management tools and techniques – by virtue of their being
interconnected are able to deliver a comprehensive knowledge management environment
to IBM – resulting in a better equipped work force and more satisfied clients.

By investing in “knowledge” networks that enable sharing of expertise, knowledge

exchanges through the strategic application of learning, performance and knowledge-
based technology – such as ShareNet, IC seekers and Lotus Notes applications, IBM have
acquired a significant competitive edge. They are realizing gains that enable them to
thrive in an era of customized service and contracting product cycles.

At a time when intellectual capital is beginning to eclipse fixed assets and financial
capital as a source of competitive strength, they have found the means to dramatically
enhance their own processes of intellectual capital formation (Corporate Knowledge Nets
and the Learning imperative by Britton Manasco. Knowledge Inc.)

The use of knowledge management based on the Intellectual Capital management

techniques has proved very effective and has been spread to all other units and
subdivisions worldwide.

The of IBM’s KM projects provide a steady stream of technology shipping within IBM
products, such as IBM's Content Manager, Lotus Discovery Server, and DB2 as most
techniques and technology that would benefit a conglomerate like IBM can be found
useful by other client organisations too.

Emergent Best Practice:

 Intellectual Capital management techniques: have resulted in the maintenance of

the only true competitive advantage which is the ability to learn faster than
competition and the development of a sharing culture, directly and indirectly
enabling better result deliver to end customers.
 ShareNet: As a technique unique in its thought and execution, making sharing of
knowledge an easier and more user friendly task.

61
  Intellectual Capital seekers: a job function that entails that Intellectual Capital be
sought out and stored for later reference and reuse – a job function unique to IBM.

Chapter VII (III)

Best Practice for Knowledge Management – Hewlett Packard Austria

Knowledge Sharing through IT – The Hewlett Packard story

Global Background:

The new Hewlett Packard formed after the 2002 merger with Compaq Computer
Corporation is a dynamic, powerful team of 140,000 employees with capabilities in 178
countries doing business in more than 40 currencies and more than 10 languages. Hewlett
Packard’s revenues for the combined companies were $72 billion for the fiscal year that
ended October 31, 2002. The new Hewlett Packard is headed by Chairman and CEO
Carly Fiorina, which has corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, California (www.hp.com).

Hewlett Packard’s four business main business groups are

(http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/):

 Enterprise Systems Group (ESG) - focuses on providing the key technology

components of enterprise IT infrastructure to enhance business agility, including
enterprise storage, servers, management software and a variety of solutions.
 Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) - HP is the leading provider of printing and
imaging solutions for both business and consumer use. IPG includes printer
hardware, all-in-ones, digital imaging devices such as cameras and scanners, and
associated supplies and accessories. It also is expanding into the commercial
printing market.

62
  HP Services (HPS) - HP Services is a premier, global IT services team. It offers
guidance, know-how and a comprehensive portfolio of services to help customers
realize measurable business value from their IT investments.
 Personal Systems Group (PSG) - focuses on supplying simple, reliable and
affordable personal-computing solutions and devices for home and business use,
including desktop PCs, notebooks, workstations, thin clients, smart handhelds and
personal devices.

In addition to the four business groups, HP Labs provides a central research function for
the company. HP Labs is focused on inventing new technologies that change markets and
create business opportunities (http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/).

Hewlett Packard is a business leader in its own right and maintains a stranglehold over
the markets / segments that it operates in. It is:

 #1 globally in inkjet, all-in-one and single-function printers, mono and color laser
printers, large-format printing, scanners, print servers, and ink and laser supplies
 #1 globally in total server revenue and shipments

 #1 globally in total disk storage systems, total external disk storage systems and
open storage area networks

 #1 globally in network and system management software

 #1 globally in notebook PCs

 #1 globally in Pocket PCs

Hewlett Packard Ltd. Austria

Hewlett Packard Ltd. Austria (HP Austria), founded in 1970, is based in Vienna. The
company is responsible for all HP interests in Austria, Switzerland, Central & Eastern
Europe, the continent of Africa and the entire Near East. The number of employees

63
handling a total contract value of €1.07 billion was 450+ (HP Austria – Annual Report
1997). In 1998 these figures were – turnover € 223 Million handled by a team of 420.

HP Austria focuses on telecommunications, banking, gas and oil industries as it major

source of revenue. It is primarily a front end marketing company – taking orders and
delivering products and services for its parent - Hewlett Packard.

HP Austria is split into eight subdivisions – they are enterprise accounts, consulting,
computers for HP Partners, medical engineering solutions, measuring and testing
equipment, consumer markets, chemical analysis and the operating business. The
enterprise account handles all issue relating to computers for large customers, while the
consumer markets subdivision handles the computing needs of large retail/ chain stores.

KM@HP Austria - Background:

Lewis Platt, the Ex CEO of Hewlett-Packard, said that, “successful companies of the 21st
century will be those that do the best job of capturing, storing and leveraging what their
employees know. He used the phrase, "Knowledge is our currency", as a mantra to spread
his message across Hewlett-Packard's worldwide organization
(www.sveilby.com/articles).

HP is traditionally a very metrics oriented company – not only did they start off as a
organisation involved in the production and development of measuring devices but they
have also used product development, delivery, customer satisfaction, among other as
metrics on which their management strategies are based. Using these metrics, in the early
1990’s they realized that not only were competing companies narrowing the gap between
in their product delivery and customer satisfaction but they had also in some cases
bettered HP.

With the results from the metrics as a base, HP realized that their focus should move from
a more production/ delivery base to a customer satisfaction based approach. Towards this
end a “Quality One On One” programme was introduced worldwide, with the goal of not

64
only better understanding the customers but also aimed at better understanding them
through a development, in all employees, of a “passion for the customers”.

HP Austria aimed at achieving this goal as profitably as possible by understanding

customers as best as it could. It tried through internal workshops, meeting, etc to develop
an internal customer orientation in the belief that an “internal customer orientation”
would lead to an “external customer orientation” i.e. satisfied and happy employees
would lead to satisfied and happy customers.

“Even some proponents of knowledge management haven’t yet realized it, but the single
most important aspect of the whole KM movement is its potential to help companies
strengthen their relationships with customers and thereby ensure deep commitment and
loyalty. Relatively few companies have grasped the implications of their failure to
establish such relationships.”(Customer Relationships That Can Last A Lifetime - Britton
Manasco – Knowledge Inc. October 1997).

HP Austria probably realized this and aimed at achieving external customer satisfaction
was a regular analysis of external customer feedback – which had been coming in for
many years. This customer feedback, among other customer satisfaction initiatives and
the CEO’s knowledge orientation has been the reason for HP Austria’s efforts at
introducing and, later successfully implementing a knowledge management programme.

KM implemented at HP Austria:

a) Customer Voice

Comprehensive Knowledge Management is a fundamental for successful customer

orientation and to be customer centric it is found to be necessary to be efficient at the
management of knowledge.

According to Hewlett Packard, “Knowledge Management is the ability to collect,

organize, and easily make available information which knowledge-workers can use to
effectively do their jobs. Implementing knowledge management requires high uptime at

65
all levels - storage, processing, data mining, data access - as well as extended
management.” (www.hp.com).

During the course of various customer projects undertaken by HP Austria it was realized
that one of the major facts of customer dissatisfaction with HP was the inability of HP
projects to achieve their full potential – this was not caused by lacuna in hardware or
software supplied but by the inability of the HP staff to devote time & effort to and satisfy
the customers (the new IT systems users) need for attention to be paid to the so called
“soft-factors”. This was understood to originate from the barrier in the transference of
knowledge from expert users to non expert users. These soft factors were the basis for
HP’s implementation of internal learning systems, which would encourage not only
provision of better solutions to various problems but also supplement product ranges and
manage changes in the new IT systems, were implemented based on a knowledge
management framework. This “listening to customer voice” requirement was the
cornerstone on which employees were evaluated- based on their contribution and
handling of customer centric knowledge within their job structure.

The whole Knowledge management initiative at Hewlett Packard Austria is based on the
concept of “customer voice” – the HP Austria effort to create knowledge about
customers. All responses from customers are collected systematically, analyzed based on
customer expectation patterns and transferred into the company’s knowledge store, while
triggering off appropriate measure to meet/ develop responses to customer feedback.

The largest sources of customer information are handwritten notes from Hewlett
Packard’s front end (customer facing) staff, transcripts of telephone messages, feedback
from internet based web forms and customer interviews.

Type of customer response Percentage of

information
collected

Letters from Customers 5-7%

66
Telephone Calls 20%

Handwritten Notes ( staff) 60%

Internet based Web Forms (fastest growing response medium) 7%

Customer Interviews 5-6%

Staff is trained to analyze incoming responses/ feedback based on information required,

urgency and certain process. Based on their urgency they are then forwarded to the
responsible heads of departments.

This staff involved in the analysis of customer feedback responses are the major carriers
of knowledge and are responsible for making available this customer voice and HP’s
responses to all HP teams, through a centralized database that every department
contributes to. As a measure to encourage documenting of all customer centric
information, HP provides all staff with personalized notepads and has made a easy to use
data entry and retrieval intranet/ internet solution available. Thus, the knowledge
repository grows everyday and makes responding to customer needs easier and more
measured for the customer facing front-end staff.

To spread and apply the knowledge so gained, and formulate responses departmental
management teams meet monthly or quarterly. These teams then link the customer
feedback to half yearly business plans and their achievement is measured through internal
audits.

To further spread the “listen to customer- customer voice concept” HP Austria also
conducts regular workshops in which focused analysis is made on twenty most successful
responses and twenty least successful customer responses in the current quarter, so as to
encourage further learning and case study type evaluation of how the measured response
system may be improved.

b) Structured Intellectual Capital:

67
Further to the “customer voice” technique of creating and building on the repository of
customer issues, so as to enable satisfactory responses to such issues, HP also has in place
a framework processes called the “Structured Intellectual Capital” which is based on the
knowledge process experiences of the “Big 5” consulting firms.

The “Structured Intellectual Capital” approach focuses on the development of networks

of experts and the availability of knowledge in databases available through the intranet/
Internet.

For the application of the “Structured Intellectual Capital” based knowledge management
approach Hewlett Packard Austria has identified and uses three models, which are:

 Learning communities
 Expert communities and

 Project snap shots.

Learning communities within the community of practice work towards the promotion of
knowledge transfers between “experts” and “novices”. They function both formally and
informally, but are formally encouraged to ensure that knowledge transfers take place
leading to empowerment of all relevant staff.

Expert communities are aimed at the identification of areas of lack of knowledge and the
working of the experts both individually and as groups towards the rectification/ removal
of these “blind spots”. The expert communities are focused on “fields of interest” as
identified by HP’s professional services group.

Project snap shots is a model identified and developed by Hewlett Packard and the
Project Management Institute, USA, based on the project management life cycle model
with six identifiable stages: Initiation, Planning & Proposal, Selection, Implementation,
Warranty, and Support. This model promotes utilization of existing solutions available
through the knowledge database when proposing / developing new offerings.

68
The project snap shot is a structured meeting conducted in the presence of an external
moderator, whose role it is to collect and evaluate all positive and negative experiences
resulting in the course of the project. This meeting is not a “witch hunt” but is a meeting
focused on possible “lessons learnt” which are the source for knowledge and are entered
into the knowledge database.

Benefits:

The benefit and result of this “Structured Intellectual Capital” approach is the
development of Hewlett Packard’s ability to dissemate knowledge internally and ensure
that knowledge is available for reuse and the creation of knowledge database and expert
networks throughout the organisation, thereby creating a resource that helps the
organisation anticipate a customers needs and concerns before they actually develop,
resulting in the availability of a measures response when the needs and concerns do
develop. This has given HP an enormous competitive advantage.

Also the “listen to “customer voice” approach, based on the successful management and
collation of customer knowledge using a knowledge management framework has helped
HP build a ability to focus its product, service and market offering in such a way so as to
enable HP to deliver customer satisfaction and through the resultant increase in customer
loyalty, has helped achieve its business objectives.

Emergent Best Practice:

 Customer Voice: Listening to the customer and making available all customer
related information to all customer facing front line employees.
 “Structured Intellectual Capital” has focused HO on the development of networks
of experts and the availability of knowledge in databases available through the
intranet/ internet.

69
Chapter VII (IV)
The KM experience @ CG-Smith: How we rolled the dice in the KM game

Abstract

This section, primarily, reflects the Knowledge Management initiatives that have been
conceived, implemented and found to be effective at CG-Smith Software Pvt. Ltd. It also
brings out the lessons learned in the process. The experience has been documented to a
very large extent and could answer questions like “How did CG Smith deploy a KM
framework from scratch?”

It presents the knowledge gained by CGS in three categories – People, Process and
Technology. It sketches the road map that CGS took while handling each of the factors,
the impact on the organizational environment, the cultural, technological and
methodology issues. It explains, in both objective and subjective terms, KM’s
contribution (post-implementation) to the organization. The metrics are discussed in
detail to bring out the change in the environment and the effectiveness of the initiatives.

The introduction starts with the vision of the KM initiative and the points that formed the
backbone for its implementation. The KM and People section covers the cultural issues,
promotion of the concept, the people-oriented activities that were introduced for the
management of knowledge and the response from the employees. It hands out a summary
of the metrics associated with the initiatives described herein. The KM and Processes

70
section covers the fundamentals of handling processes from the KM perspective. It
describes the process improvements that were taken up for the management of knowledge
at CGS, in detail. Further, the metrics indicate the variety of processes that were worked
upon to achieve the objective. The KM and Technology section starts with what CGS
evaluated and contemplated and goes on to explain the small in-house tool that was
utilized in the beginning. It then explains the Intranet/Portal initiative as well as the
features of the KM section in it. The section also throws hints at future enhancements to
the Intranet from the KM perspective.

It presents a summary that brings out growth rates of contributions – before and after the
KM initiatives were implemented vigorously– and identifies reasons for growth. It also
brings out the gist of the KM’s accomplishments at CGS in subjective terms. The last
section consists of recommendations based on the CGS experience, in terms of general
methodology, a consolidated road map, and lessons learned. Finally, the three most
effective practices at CGS that might help other organizations do something concrete,
immediately after they get back to work, is filtered and highlighted.

How did CG Smith get going?

Any initiative of good standing needs a strong vision - a goal towards which the company
can move. And, it would be essential to derive the vision from that of the company’s.
Based on this, our KM vision statement is:
“To achieve operational efficiency by sharing and managing knowledge in the
organization, which in turn will be reflected through better customer relationships and
services“.

The KM mission statements that CG-Smith has laid down give the means to achieve the
vision in terms of creating a learning organization and knowledge sharing culture:
· To nurture an environment and organizational culture that will place emphasis on
continuous learning and thus create a “Learning Organization”

71
· To evolve an organizational culture and strategy that will encourage, nurture, facilitate
and enhance the sharing of knowledge for each and every employee's benefit as well as
organizational benefits

Laying down the vision and mission statements was not all; having laid down the vision,
thought about the means to achieve it, and fixed the responsibility with one person; the
next thing was to walk the talk. This required exhaustive planning, laying down annual
goals and finally converting and breaking up the goals in terms of concrete activities. The
bullets that were derived were as follows:

 We had to achieve operational efficiency, which would mean, for one, giving our
people all the knowledge resources they needed at the right time and right place
and in the exact format in which they expected it
 The next logical step would be to identify the knowledge that the company
needed to have to be able to achieve the corporate vision. This was done quite
easily since the company had a clear focus
 Simultaneously, it would be essential to introduce KM to the staff and “educate”
them about it. Of course, it would be done gradually and not at one shot, so as to
let the concept seep in without being pushed down the throat
 Once the identification was complete, tapping knowledge that was generated
within the company as well as by external entities and storing them (accessible
and organized) in the right format would be an important activity
 Tapping would be done through people to people interaction/brainstorming
sessions etc, elicitation from processes and by using technology that would tap
knowledge at the time of creation. Rewards would come into the scenario at this
juncture
 Utilization would be the next crucial step. The knowledge would have to be made
accessible to the right people and communicated/marketed to them on a regular
basis

72
  Then, the utilized knowledge would have to be tracked and metrics derived. The
metrics so obtained would have to be analyzed so as to identify trends and
enhance the KM initiatives

Once the steps were outlined as above, the activities were prioritized and we were ready
to get going. The activities that were taken up were mapped into the three main factors of
KM – the people, process, and technology factors so as to provide for easy tracking and
enhancement.

When it came to the explanation of the KM concepts, we hit upon some brand building as
an exciting means to convey the message. Captions and slogans were designed to bring
out the objective of KM at CG-Smith. It proved to be an eye-catcher and successfully
conveyed the objective that KM was trying to achieve. It would be very complex to trace
the exact impact it had on employees, but the belief is that it did trigger them into
thinking about knowledge sharing. To get ahead and convey the factor-specific
experiences, the subsequent sections shall address each of the aspects related to People,
Process, and Technology at CG-Smith.

2. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT – THE FACTORS

KM and People

The people factor is arguably the most challenging in KM. It is also the most complex
and might not even take off, if everything depends on just a handful of people in the
organization. Another sensitive issue is that if the people factor does not click, the process
and technology factors too would be a letdown. Processes that cater to tapping of
knowledge might serve the purpose to an extent, but getting started with the softer issues
of KM – people and culture – would definitely make one feel like one was taking the bull
by the horns. Given this, our first few steps were directed towards pushing the concept of
KM to get people to wake up to the benefits of large-scale knowledge sharing and
management. The pushing/pulling was primarily done through examples and brand
building. A pilot group picked up a good book on software development and started

73
talking about it by conducting open-house sessions. Communiqués were sent to the staff
and the concept of knowledge sharing was thus introduced in a subtle way.
Simultaneously, people-oriented processes that would help employees realize the magic
of knowledge sharing were conceived. There were probably a few teams that were into
knowledge sharing amongst their own group, but the new practices would look at
formalizing and structuring it and taking it to the organizational level.

When the first organizational KM initiative was introduced, it was done based on the
three faces of the relationship between KM & People as shown in the picture below. The
first aspect was to get people to contribute, and the second to promote utilization. The
rewards would be the third face. The simple but time-consuming task of ushering in a
knowledge sharing culture was a part of the contribution face of KM & People model and
tackled the most crucial issues - that of attitude and change management. The innovative
practice that addressed this was what we call Knowledge Voice. It simply involved
getting people together to discuss an interesting and relevant topic. The person taking up
the initiative of talking about any topic of his/her choice would be rewarded. Even though
there was an expected friction in the beginning, the concept took off due to a combination
of reward, recognition and realization of individual/team benefits.

The discussions that were initiated during such sessions proved to be stimulating and
thought provoking. The audience also got to meet more people with similar interests and
thereby enhance their professional network. With time, it became obvious that delivering
a presentation actually improved their knowledge because of the preparation that it
demanded as well as because of the discussions that ensued during/after the session. The
new recruits, especially, enjoyed it. It, undoubtedly, helped them feel at home and
accelerated their learning curve. The presentation used would be stored in the
organizational repository and one of the keywords to retrieve the presentation would be
the person’s name! That sure sounded exciting for most, if not all.

74
Project teams that shared knowledge within their teams were required to pass on the
presentations to the repository too. This was useful in the sense that there were a lot of
teams that were experimenting at the project level and were not yet ready to take their
learning to the organizational level. A project level session could later be expanded at the
organizational level.
Overall, the initiative seemed to go with the findings of a study by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, which proved that 80% of ideas that were generated were a result
of discussions. The Knowledge Voice promotion involved usage of catchy advertisements
and regular communiqués to bring in fun. The mails were written in a little more than just
plain “announcement language”. If people were involved, they would get the praise they
deserved. A simple trick was to highlight their names, splash a few colors and play
around with words. Once we got a handful of people (the trend setters) lapping up the
concept of knowledge sharing through Knowledge Voice, we worked further to convince
the employees into contributing to the organizational knowledge in other ways too.

We started another practice that added to Knowledge Voice. Building up the Knowledge
Repository. Employees were sold the concept of building up a company-wide repository
to house informative and valuable documents that would be useful across teams. They
were asked to volunteer and simply pass on information in the form of documents. These
documents were checked for relevance, reliability, copyrights and quality, categorized
and stored in the repository in an appropriate format and an organized way. This would

75
cater to people in terms of fetching documented knowledge from both within and outside
the company. Contributions were publicized, appreciated, and rewarded to recognize the
contributor and also inspire the rest. Apart from this, employees who sent in self-written
white papers were given a reward equivalent to that for a Knowledge Voice session.

It would obviously not serve our purpose to simply build up the repository – we had to
get people to use it. This brought our focus to the utilization face of KM & People model.
Pushing employees into utilization of the knowledge gained was done through
communiqués and publicizing success stories. Later, we tracked the utilization by
soliciting feedback. Talking about the results and the response, the audience’s reaction
was encouraging and there were a good percentage of employees proclaiming to have
learned from the sessions/repository contents. To add spice to the exercise, employees
were asked to quote their opinion about the sessions/presentations and these quotes were
made public.

Meanwhile, another change management activity was taken up. The popularity of KM
was seen to be increasing gradually but everything was based on the so-called “push”
factors like mails/advertisements. The need for a “pull” factor was strongly felt and the
obvious means was to orient people towards KM through an educatory session on it. We
catered to that by developing a three-hour session on KM, which was included in the
organizational orientation course. It involved a demonstration of the KM tool that the
organization had started working on. This was expected to drive home the benefits of KM
right from when a new employee stepped in. Another “pull” factor that was expected to
deliver the goods was the modification of the performance appraisal procedure to
encourage and motivate people into sharing their knowledge. The evaluation would partly
be based on the extent to which they were involved in knowledge sharing/contribution
initiatives and would translate into an improved work/training/compensation structure for
the staff.

76
Even though subjective feedback (mentioned in this section) might not convey the same
message as numbers it definitely appeals to the people-oriented. On the other hand, hard
numbers definitely make interesting reading. They speak for themselves and prove the
worth of the initiatives taken up.

Metric 1: The total number of Knowledge Voice (KV) presentations, the total number of
Knowledge Repository (KR) contributions and the total number of tips/tricks shared
across the organization over a span of 18 months, 16 months, and 17 months respectively
are as follows. It would be important to note that the contributions picked up from zero.

Metric 2 and 3: The Knowledge Voice (KV) presentations were spread across 18 months
as shown below. The first graph shows the number of sessions in the first 7 months after
introduction of the concept and the past 11 months (after the introduction of a dedicated
KM resource and vigorous concept selling including rewards). The Knowledge
Repository (KR) contributions were spread across 16 months as shown below. The first
graph shows the number of sessions in the first 5 months after introduction of the concept
and the past 11 months (after the introduction of a dedicated KM resource and vigorous
concept selling including rewards).

77
Finally, the latest KM initiative can be mapped to the two faces of the KM & People
model – contribution and utilization of the tacit knowledge in the company. Knowledge
sharing that is much better done /can only be done, orally was catered to through an
expertise locator, popularly known as the Yellow Pages in KM circles. Even though ours
is a medium-sized organization, we decided that it would be of help to start off with the
identification of experts in its areas of focus. It would be easy to add to the list as the
organization grew. The first step was to identify the subjects and topics in which
knowledge was required by the organization to a detailed level. The topics were then
organized and put down in the form of an index. Each topic would have a list of
employees (and their contact information) who had volunteered to answer queries in the
respective areas. There have already been a few indicators as to the worth of this
initiative. There have already been two instances wherein employees at customer sites
have been able to work on tasks assigned, by locating help through the expert identifier.
The initiatives explained above sort of sum up the people tactics that were used, so far.
Currently, the focus has shifted to technology for sustaining the initiative through user-
friendly means.

KM and Processes
People need to be convinced, motivated, encouraged, rewarded and sometimes forced.
One very obvious way to force people into the habit of doing something is to build a
process around it, a process that is followed on a regular basis. There could be process
violations in the beginning, but over time, following it will become a habit with most,
especially when the benefits of following it are realized. Another important factor is that,

78
tapping of knowledge at its source has to be built into processes. Processes, ultimately,
help tap knowledge at the right place and the right time, every time.

Knowledge needed would be embedded through either exclusive process, that enable
sharing of knowledge and exploitation of collective wisdom, or by subtly tapping it from
existing processes. Subtle changes might sometimes do a job much more beautifully and
effectively when compared to vigorous change management tactics. The processes that
were used for tapping knowledge, at CG-Smith, include software development, human
resources and business processes apart from exclusive KM processes that were brought
into the picture. As the picture below depicts, the three faces of KM & Processes are
tapping, mapping and policies (including procedures/practices). The policies section is
perhaps the most crucial one, because it lends direction to the effort. The policies when
further extracted make sense in terms of a procedure/practice. We began by putting down
policies, procedures and practices for focused Knowledge Management. The policies
catered to the people factors - knowledge contribution, sharing, and utilization at the top
level. The procedures were conceptualized and developed to cater to tapping of
information and knowledge and also contribute to the mapping of expertise in the
organization and capturing of feedback from the users of the KM system. The practices,
on the other hand, catered to activities that did not have to be forced onto employees
and/or could not be perfectly spelt out in terms of steps. The practices would bring in
flexibility and also cater to the initiatives that are on the “tacit side”.

79
To give the reader a few concrete examples of exclusive KM processes, a “tapping and
mapping” possibility was to bring in a procedure that would help projects identify various
sources of information within the company before they began their work. The sources of
information could be similar projects (old and new), people with expertise in the domain
concerned (mapped in the yellow pages) etc. The checklist that would be used while
starting with a project would remind the team to do an exhaustive project knowledge
search. In the first place the projects that information is derived from will have mapped
their data in the appropriate places so as to allow future projects to tap it from there. The
company’s Intranet catered to this practice with an exclusive feature. Another practice
was to go for a half-yearly survey to gauge the benefits of KM activities. This would help
tap the experience of people and use their ideas to tap/map knowledge. All these activities
would help extract information at the right place and right time.

A few examples of how already existing processes were improved/enhanced to cater to

Knowledge Management could make things more vivid. The CG-Smith project teams’
weekly meetings were being conducted with a checklist and this was modified from the
knowledge sharing perspective for tapping of experiences and for better collaboration.
This would probably be a painful endeavor for the teams that were into nothing but
routine and mechanical tasks like testing of code. But newly set up project teams and
teams with new members or a new domain would be able to exploit the situation to
extract some of the most crucial information and experiences on a regular basis. The
second process improvement involved modifying the post project- closure checklist and
report to include tapping of information about sources of information, documenting
experiences and ideas, sharing consolidated tips and tricks for similar projects and
passing on documents that were used, to the repository. Based on the information
obtained from the discussions, it would also attempt to get people to volunteer as experts
on the organization’s yellow pages. A third process improvement was to develop a
pictorial representation of the organization’s processes so as to enable easy understanding
and tracking of information flow. The mapping would be made complete by developing
data flow diagrams that depicted the way in which information flowed among
departments and the various parent processes.

80
Process improvement for Knowledge Management not only involved modifying software
processes but also human resources processes. This would help cater to the people factors
in KM, in a direct way. As has already been mentioned in the previous section, the
performance appraisal procedure was modified to motivate employees to share their
knowledge. It was touched upon so as to reflect the contributions. Knowledge sharing
was identified as an exclusive field in the performance appraisal form and the roles and
responsibilities document was changed to reflect the necessity of knowledge sharing
across various designations and departments. This was looked at as an improvement that
would make knowledge sharing a sustainable habit and embed it into the responsibilities
of an employee. The technology initiative was also brought in as a process improvement
– that of incorporating a better media for information & knowledge sharing and dynamic
communication. Ours being a medium-sized organization, there had been no web browser
based Intranet even though we had an exhaustive repository. First, the repository was
reorganized (after a survey) and a search engine was developed for the repository. The
next thing to be done was to start off with an Intranet. It would cater to all the processes
that were being followed by the employees. It would be more appropriate to go about
explaining the features of the Intranet under the technology section. Here, it would suffice
to say that the requirement for the Intranet came about as a process improvement!

To talk about the results, the organization has had a culture of initiating and accepting
improvements to processes right from its earlier days and this proved to be a stepping
stone. Also, improvements were accepted and carried out accordingly, without any
complications, given the process support model that exists in the company (by virtue of
being a CMM Level 5 company). In fact, one of the best responses that could have been
elicited out of the employees would have been that of people coming up with their own
ideas for knowledge sharing and management. This happened to a satisfying extent
through the process improvement programme that the company has in place. There were
four exclusive KM process improvement suggestions that were accepted and taken up.
For example, there was a suggestion that people who had been to customer sites should
make it a point to talk about their experiences at the customer’s work place and thus

81
prepare future travelers for what the customers might expect from them. Another was to
create a common area where bugs could be listed under various domain/projects.

Metric 1: Given below is a simple metric that outlines the type of process improvements
that were initiated and completed. The total number of process improvements worked
upon over a span of 18 months was 16 and the break up is as follows. The break up is in
terms of exclusive KM practices development (KM), improvement of HR related
practices (HR) improvement of software development related practices (SD) and
improvement of business processes (BP).

KM and Technology
Coming to the third factor that plays a crucial role in the success of KM – Technology - it
can probably be talked about for hours together because of the ambiguity and the variety
of thoughts that still exist in what one can declare to be a perfect KM software. To start
with, it is important to realize that technology does not help in anyway, if the people and
process aspects have been neglected. It would be a disaster to just spend time and effort
and incorporate flashy technology while not having worked upon cultural factors and
processes that could help tap knowledge. If one were to take a cross-section of the
software that is available in this field, one would find a large variety. Most of those would
probably address one small factor of KM and only a handful of products would address

82
KM in its entirety. The technology varies from enterprise portals, Intranets, expertise
locators for tacit knowledge transfer, package of chat and discussion forums, repository
builders with an intelligent search, groupware, white/story boards, process mapping tools,
document management, ERP/CRM/SCM, learning portals, business intelligence, data
warehousing and help desks & customer service tools. The business intelligence and data
warehousing tools were not really found to make sense in the context that this paper
refers to (a medium-sized organization with less than 300 people). These technologies
and the ERP/CRM/SCM would be a good bet for large organizations with a large
database of information and customers. But whatever the tool used, a repository with a
good search engine would be a must, irrespective of the size of the organization.

To talk about CG-Smith’s technology experience, the organization has its own in-house
tool that has been used for carrying out all its software processes. While we began with
KM, the first thought was to equip the in-house tool to be able to cater to the basic KM
requirements. It seemed quite logical given that the organization had got used to the tool
and would lap up added KM features, if given through the tool. Moreover, developing a
new tool or buying a new product for KM would take time and we could not be sure
about its acceptance unless we had tested the waters. The way the KM module was
developed was to cater to the three faces of KM & Technology as shown in the picture
below. Accordingly, the KM module’s main features were the presence of a full-fledged
search engine for the organization’s Knowledge Repository, a personal information store
and organizer, and a simple user interface for sharing tips and tricks and lessons learned
across the organization, and finally, an automated graphical representation of the
number/category of contributions to each of the modules. The other features were related
to project reports’ browsing.

83
When the module was released to the organization, the search engine seemed to be
widely used, while the tips and tricks user interface was not used to an equal extent. This,
in fact, is a typical example of technology not coming to the rescue when the people
factor isn’t working all right. To tackle this, motivating advertisements were created,
project leaders were asked to advocate the benefits of using it and it was also
incorporated into the Performance Appraisal process. People who were found to be using
it and contributing it were brought to the limelight and contribution went up gradually, as
can be seen in the metrics.

Metric 1: The tips/tricks shared across the organization were spread across 17 months as
shown below. The first graph shows the number of sessions in the first 6 months after
introduction of the concept and the past 11 months (after the introduction of a dedicated
KM resource and vigorous concept selling including that related to performance
appraisals).

84
While the employees were using the in-house tool, the search for a “perfect” KM product
was launched. Given that it is not appropriate to discuss the tools that were evaluated in
this paper, it would suffice to say that quite a few products in the market were evaluated
and not taken up for various reasons. Another KM product could be integrated with the
company’s Intranet but one that would not fit in completely would have been a failure.
Finally, after opportunities and risks analyses, we decided to postpone the “buy” decision.
The CG-Smith Intranet promised to provide an exhaustive and full-fledged KM area and
the other advantages were the fact that it could be customized to suit our processes, at
lower costs. This would definitely make employees feel at home since we would be
building to suit the organizational culture. The KM area would concentrate on converting
all the KM practices into web-based, automated and easy-to-use processes. The chat and
the discussion forums would help in collaborative-working.

The Intranet was built around the basic concept of dynamic information & knowledge
sharing and organizational communication. The development was done based on eight
nodes of information/knowledge. The nodes were the organization’s Departments,
Management, Customer Care, Knowledge Management, an exclusive FAQ section,
General Services like the Organizational Calendar, Chat & Discussion Forums. Each
node would have the basic objective of passing on real-time information and collecting
real-time feedback and comments. Further, each node would have a home page, a query
section, a survey section, and user interfaces that would help carry out the processes
related to the respective function. The survey section would provide a facility for focused
surveys through the Intranet. The Intranet would also display dynamic information and
have a search (simple and advanced). The search could be both universal and department
based. Tips related to many organizational processes would be displayed in the respective
nodes on a daily basis. The KM section would help follow the KM practices, share
information and knowledge, identify sources of information and experts in various areas,
provide specific project information and advocate KM as a concept in general.

85
Employees with specific knowledge sharing contributions and projects that exploited the
principles of KM would be featured on the pages as a means to promote the concept.
There would be constant recognition of the performers and motivation for the rest. The
Customer Care area would cater to specifically customer-related information and
knowledge. This would help the company realize the goals that it has and would be
justified given the organization’s customer orientation.

The fact that the nodes were built around the concept of information dissemination as
well as the organizational processes would let the user avoid the torture of abandoning
the work at hand and moving out to gather data/information/knowledge. It would also
cater to the very important fact that any KM portal should capture data once and at its
origin. Any third party would not filter information unless it was a part of the process.
There would be no inconsistency in the information disseminated to the organization
since the Intranet would be the universal carrier of information – from the right sources.
Sharing as well as utilization of knowledge could be reported on a single click and related
metrics captured. In this paper, though, it is a bit early to talk about metrics related to the
usage of the Intranet. The belief is that the successful implementation and running of the
Intranet shall prove to be a significant milestone from the KM perspective. It should, so
to say, provide the backbone around which KM objectives will be built/enhanced.

3. THE GIST: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

After dwelling upon the facts and metrics that would have hopefully provided concrete
indicators as to what KM could consist of, there needs to be something that will give the
concept, the finishing touch it deserves. More important than the numbers themselves are
the derived data like the percentage growth in a given area. They are capable of
eradicating doubts, provided there aren’t too many other factors that the success could be
attributed to. The charts below show the percentage growth in each of the attributes
talked about in the previous sections – Knowledge Voice (KV), Knowledge Repository
(KR) and Tips/Tricks. The metrics is in terms of the percentage growth of the average

86
number/month in the latter part (11 months each for KV, KR and Tips/tricks) over
average number/month in the first half (7 months-KV, 5 months-KR, 6 months-Tips).

The difference in the average/month in terms of percentage growth in the latter half of the
year over the initial half is evident. This is what would probably convince the reader
about the success of the effort that was put in to promote KM at CG-Smith. The graphs
clearly show the explosive growth in the averages once the concept took off - especially
in the repository section. The growth in the average number of sessions per month in KV
(in the latter parts of the year as compared to the beginning) was a good 333%, while the
growth in the repository section was an overwhelming 2733%! It is worthwhile to note
that the files were scrutinized before being accepted. As a few situations prove, the
repository files turned out to be of help to quite a few employees in various situations.
Compared to these two initiatives, the tips/tricks section fared not so well. The growth
was 200% but the spread was less – that is the number of people who were using it was
less compared to the repository. This might have because of the benefits being “not-so-
evident”. The growth can, in all probability, be attributed to the focus on KM, pushing
and promotion of the concept, recognition of performers, introduction of rewards,
publicizing of benefits (through advertisements as well as word of mouth), process
improvements and technology. Advanced technology, in the form of an Intranet, that is
just seeping into the organization shall probably fetch even better results given that the
cultural issues have already been touched upon to an extent.

87
The explanations below provide some subjective results analysis.

 When it comes to productivity, there have been quite a few incidents wherein an
employee has been able to work better on some issues due to information found in
the repository and/or presentations made by colleagues in other projects

 When costs are considered, the “value” would be got, for example, by converting
time saved into money, and by fixing the monetary value for ideas that came out
of brainstorming and knowledge sharing

 Leveraging intangible assets are an advantage that CG-Smith is objectively sure

of. There has been close to 90 percent participation in the KM initiatives! Another
interesting factor that has turned out to be very useful for CG-Smith has been
recognition of talent due to KM initiatives. There have been situations wherein
employees have been given opportunities in the “right” areas after the KM
initiatives reflected their knowledge!

 The other factors like improved learning are almost obvious given the strong
repository collection. Networking is, again, an evident activity due to Knowledge
Voice sessions

 Coming to innovation, we haven’t really been able to pin down the incidents
wherein people have been innovative/creative due to KM. Obviously, there would
be other factors too. But, the KM initiatives have certainly contributed to wide
thinking – especially the Knowledge Voice sessions at CG-Smith

 The competitive advantage that KM promises can again be gauged only through
the incidents, which have helped employees cater to customer queries because of
the repository usage and such incidents have been reported reasonable number of
times

88
What are the silver bullets that CG-Smith would like to give the audience? These might
sound obvious but are important enough to be reiterated:
 Have a vision for the KM initiative
 Apply the creative brain while trying to “sell” KM to the organization and use it
to catch employees’ eyes – at least initially
 Pass on success stories whenever you get any. Never lose an opportunity to talk
about them.
 Involve everybody in new initiatives (to the extent of it being practical)
 Use different media for educating employees about the concept of KM (push and
pull).
 The Intranet should address KM
 The performance appraisal process should give KM the place it deserves
 What are the lessons learned that CG-Smith would like to pass on?
 For any KM initiative, make sure the management is convinced for they’ll have to
promote it as much as the KM group.
 Changing the culture will be the toughest and most sensitive. Initial resistance
will have to be overcome by innovative pushing and pulling as well as regular
reiteration

It becomes a must to understand how the employees look at the initiative and whether
they perceive benefits from the exercise. Feedback has to be solicited on a regular basis
and acted upon

And it will not work without rewards/incentives. The incentives and rewards scheme that
is employed needs to be optimal, neither too free flowing nor too rigid. The non-
performers need to be motivated and educated about the benefits, thus helping them catch
up with the organization. Stress on the benefits of KM, with examples

 The three most important aspects of any KM initiative - people, process and
technology – cannot be practically segmented, as distinguishably as on paper.
They have to go hand-in-hand and supplement each other. For example, a process

89
 might be followed best with a tool as an enabler or it might be easier to bring in a
“must-do-it-this-way” process to direct people into a certain activity.

 A simple tool for KM would be good to start with, but it will not take one further
o Tools need to be used wherever appropriate to capture information thus
minimizing the chances of losing the information forever. The Intranet/tools used
for KM need to be user-friendly and easy to understand and fun to work with.

 The processes need to be studied regularly and exploited to capture any sort of
methodology related/content related/tacit information. People involved in
processes need to be interacted with on a regular basis for any requirements and
benefits. Innovative processes need to be developed to bring out tacit knowledge
that may have otherwise gone un-noticed or un-captured.
 If the organization has a process improvement system, use it to present ideas for
the KM system. That is likely to be the least path of resistance as well as most
reliable.
 And ultimately, it would be important to keep track of the metrics apart from
subjective feedback. However, it needs to be noted that the numbers are mostly
long-term in nature and might carry the added disadvantage of not being able to
be attributed to KM initiatives alone. So, the numbers have to be mixed with
qualitative data judiciously.
E.g.: For now, the metrics that have been collected serve the purpose of finding out the
correctness of the direction in which we are going as well as gauging the effectiveness of
the initiatives. The repository initiative’s success was evident and the tips/tricks utility
was modified to incorporate more ease-of-use (by providing additional features and
advertisements) after looking at the numbers. The KV numbers were utilized to recognize
patterns and were mapped to the future needs. The metrics, of course, have been used to
fix targets for the future.

What are the three most effective KM practices that CG-Smith suggests?
 Introduce a KM course in the organization’s orientation programme

90
  Let employees with a common interest get together to discuss a chosen topic and
document at least the main points that were discussed
 Develop an expertise locator, preferably consisting of volunteers rather than using
push techniques And after all the hard-core experience that this paper had for the
audience, a little bit of imagination - what does the future look like for KM? With
improvements in technology there might be no need for people to consciously
work towards sharing of knowledge! For example, tools that can listen to, or feel
human intentions can take care of tapping tacit knowledge, leave alone explicit
knowledge! And jumping back to the facts, all said and done, there will be
absolutely no replacement for the good old one-to-one personal
discussion/training when it comes to transferring of knowledge from one to
another! Families, schools and groups minus technology/process will continue to
play their part in knowledge transfer, however unstructured!

CHAPTER VIII

Best Practices Identified and Evaluated

As has been seen in these case studies above, the knowledge management success of
organizations seems to be based on emergent or preexisting best practices that ensured
the success of the KM.

The best practices that the cases studies have thrown up are:

1 Organizational Culture: which we have seen as the basis of the success of the
Knowledge Mail based knowledge management implementation at Aventis –
organization wide culturally entrenched core value of networking.
2 Intellectual Capital management techniques: have resulted in the maintenance
of the only true competitive advantage which is the ability to learn faster than
competition and the development of a sharing culture, directly and indirectly
enabling better result deliver to end customers.

91
 3 “Structured Intellectual Capital” has focused HP on the development of
networks of experts and the availability of knowledge in databases available
through the intranet/ Internet.
4 ShareNet: As a technique unique in its thought and execution, making sharing of
knowledge an easier and more user friendly task.
5 Intellectual Capital seekers: a job function that entails that Intellectual Capital
be sought out and stored for later reference and reuse – a job function unique to
IBM.

Organisation Culture (as seen at Aventis) is not only a best practice for promoting a
culture where the dissemination of knowledge is respected but, more importantly, one
where losing precious tacit knowledge is not feared. Most organisations that are seen to
be successful in their efforts to reuse and retain knowledge through the implementation of
knowledge management seem to have open cultures based on the free access of
information, with high levels of management support (as is seen in all three case studys).

Organisation culture can be seen to be a critical factor towards the success of knowledge
management implementations as a culturally engrained employee reluctance to share both
explicit and tacit knowledge can ensure the failure of the best process or technology
based knowledge management implementations.

Thus it can be said that an organisation culture favourable to the transfer and /or sharing
of knowledge between employees is a Generic Best Practice, mandatory for KM success
across all industries.

92
Intellectual Capital management techniques: as are used by IBM, seem to be the basis
for knowledge management initiatives in many world-class organizations (such as IBM
and HP themselves). Being a framework around which the KM effort may be built they
help achieve the retention of knowledge and experiences i.e. intellectual capital and help
in quantifying the same. Intellectual capital management has broader implications than
knowledge management itself and is therefore a preferred technique when it comes to the
achievement of learning and competitive advantages through the use of knowledge
management tools.

This technique has also been used and implemented at Hewlett Packard, where it is
focused on the creation of expert networks and has also proved highly successful there.

The Structured Intellectual capital methodology used at Hewlett Packard uses

communities of practice, called Learning Communities, which interact in ways similar to
the IBM “ShareNet” methodology to share and exchange knowledge and experiences.
Hewlett Packard also uses expert communities to identify and rectify knowledge blind
spots within HP’s knowledge repository.

Intellectual Capital Management when properly implemented seems to deliver all what
knowledge management promises to the community of practice and then some more in
terms of organizational value addition. This technique as combined with the ShareNet
meeting methodology and the efficacy of the IC seekers can be applied to any
organization that wants to transition from a reactive and “reinventing the wheel” mode of
operation to a learning organization. Thus, this Best Practice is generic and can be used
across industries.

ShareNet meetings; as mentioned above, ShareNet meetings play an important part in

the organizations efforts to enable identification and exchange of knowledge (both
explicit and tacit) between individuals and groups. Attendees of the “ShareNet” meetings
and the core team together identify, evaluate and structure contributions to the ICM
database from the members of the community of practice. The sharing of such
information experiences works on three levels: between local project teams, between peer

93
companies in countries in comparable market stages and between countries in different
market stages.

The emergent knowledge is then spread across the organization by means of live and
intranet based presentations. This technique to encourage the spread of knowledge has
proved effective in IBM and thus can be used in other environments to achieve the same
results, especially when used in conjunction with the Intellectual Capital Management
techniques.

IC seekers (Intellectual Capital Seekers): A role unique to IBM, this function involves
locating a potential source of knowledge by means of interaction, convincing the
potential possessor of Intellectual capital to document his knowledge in such a way so as
to make it accessible and reusable by others

The IC seeker is a member of the community of practice who volunteers for the
knowledge management initiative / programme. It is their role to function outside of the
Intellectual Capital management framework and locate and source knowledge from
potential holders of knowledge.

The locate sources by constant interaction with members of the community, in person and
otherwise, and promote the idea of sharing of knowledge.

The best practice of encouraging the sharing of knowledge and locating hidden sources of
knowledge using an IC seeker is a practice that can also be utilized in other organizations
and therefore can also be termed as generic.

94
CHAPTER IX

Derivative Best Practices & Conclusion

The best practices uncovered so far seem to lead us to three practices that seem, in
conclusion from the cases studied, to be basic requirements that can mean success or
failure in an organisations effort to implement knowledge management.

These three common practices, which enable organisations to succeed in their knowledge
management implementations, and can therefore be called “generic best practices”, are:

1 Cultivating corporate repositories,

2 Connecting experts through Yellow Pages and
3 Building Communities of Practice.

95
In the best practices analysed above, we have seen that most organisations implement at
least one of these practices, but most often these organisations implement two or maybe
even all three of these best practices as they seem to work best in combination, enabling
exploitation of both explicit and tacit knowledge, improving exchange of existing
knowledge as well as stirring innovation.

Cultivating the corporate repository

As we have seen in all the IBM and Hewlett Packard cases the organisations have based
their knowledge management efforts around a storage and retrieval technology. Advances
in web applications have improved the successor to the paper i.e. the electronic archive to
such an extent that it can be understood to be the core of the organisation. Be it Internet
based, intranet based or just a client server application, the accessibility, ease of use,
storage structures etc define the success and acceptability of the repository.

Connecting experts through Yellow Pages

As stated by Collins & Parcel (2001) state ‘The best medium for knowledge is the human
brain and the best networking protocol is conversation’. Ordinarily, as we have seen in
the Aventis case (KnowledgeMail) and the Hewlett Packard Case (expert communities) in
organisations where one to one expert interaction is not possible, a expert or expertise
location system need to be in place, providing details on the available experts, their
profiles and other such data, retrievable to other employees. The basic concept behind the
Yellow Pages is to prevent the reinvention of the wheel.

Building Communities of Practice

Practitioners of Knowledge Management currently tend to see human contact as the way
to exchange knowledge and stimulate innovation (Collins & Parcel 2001, Wenger, Mc
Dermott & Snyder 2002). Thus it is important, as in the case of both IBM and Hewlett
Packard, to build learning and expert communities of practice. Communities of Practice
are described as ‘groups that share insights and have common interests, and set their own
membership norms’ (Boyd, 2001). These communities can be online or can be inter

96
personal exchanges of ideas, thought, knowledge and experiences. They share their
know-how either on an informal basis or formally through the organisations ICM
framework.

Thus, building communities of practice is one of the major requirements to successfully

implement KM in an organisation and constitutes one of the best practices that can be
used across industries.

Preliminary references:

1 Numri, R., 1998, "Knowledge intensive firms", Business Horizons, 41, 3, 26-
31.
2 Ives, B., Gersting, A., 1998, "Implementing knowledge management - lessons
learned", Knowledge Management
3 Craing Pritchard, Richard Hull, Mike Chumer & Hugh Wilmott, 2000,
Managing Knowledge: Critical investigations of Work and Learning,
Macmillan Business.
4 Carla O’Dell, Cindy Hubert & Susan Elliot, 2000, Knowledge Management: A
guide for your journey to best practice process, American Productivity &
Quality Center.
5 Susan Cantrell,” Challenges and Best Practices in Measuring High end
Knowledge Work” Accenture LLP.

97
6 T. Davenport and L. Prusak. 2000, Working Knowledge: How Organizations
Manage What They Know, Harvard Business School Press.
7 Silver, Daniel L. and Elhadi Shakshuki, 2002, Knowledge Management:
Integrating Perspective, Acadia University
http://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/comp/dsilver/KM_IP_Abstract_4.doc.
8 Gupta, B., Iyer, L., Aronson, J.E., 2002, Knowledge management : practices and
challenges
http://www.managementfirst.com/articles/knowledge.htm
9 Adams, Katherine C., 2001, What happens to knowledge workers when the
economy heads south? KM World, Vol 7 Issue 1, 1998
10 Gartner Group, 2001, Connecting Experts- Gartner Case Study on Results of
Using Tacit Technology at Aventis by French Caldwell.
11 http://www.tacit.com/customers/casestudies/aventis.html
12 Manasco, B., 1997, Customer Relationships That Can Last A Lifetime - –
Knowledge Inc.
13 Karl-Erik Sveiby www.sveiby.com cited 10/8/03
14 Sveiby K.E., 2000. A Knowledge-based Theory of the Firm to guide Strategy
Formulation, presented at ANZAM Conference, Macquarie University, Sydney.
15 Malhotra, Y., 2000, Knowledge Management for E-Business Performance:
Advancing Information Strategy to Internet Time, Executive’s Journal, V.16, No.
4, pp. 5-16.
16 Manasco, B., The Trials & Triumphs of the Knowledge Era
http://www.knowledgeinc.com/empires.html, cited June 2003.
17 http://www.unicom.co.uk/events/event_details.asp?productid=1237
18 Platon 1981 as cited in Mertins, et al.Knowledge Management :Concepts and
Best practices: Springer 2002.
19 Sveiby, K., 1992, Strategy Formulation in Knowledge-Intensive Industries,
International Review of Strategic Management, Wiley.
20 Shuller , 1998, cited Scholl, Konig et all, 2003, The Future of KM

98
21 Nonaka, I & Takeuchi, H., 1995, The knowledge-creating company: How
Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford University Press,
New York
22 Nonaka I , The Knowledge-Creating Company, N.Y.: Oxford University Press,
1995 (with co-author).
23 Nonaka I, Strategic vs. Evolutionary Management: A U.S.-Japan Comparison of
Strategy and Organization, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1985 (with co-authors).
24 Nonaka I, "A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation,"
Organization Science, Vol.5-1, February 1994.
25 Earl, M., Scott, I., (1998): What do we know about CKSs? In: Despres, C.,
Chauvel, D., Knowledge Horizons. Butterworth Heinmann, Boston.
26 Mertins, K., et al. (2002) Knowledge Management: Concepts and Best Practices
Springer Verlag
27 Wiig, K., (1997)Knowledge Management: The Central Focus for Intelligent-
Acting Organizations, Schema Press
28 Drucker, P., (1993) Innovation and Entrepreneurship HarperBusiness
29 Richard B. Chase, F. Robert Jacobs, Nicholas J. Aquilano, 1997, Operations
Management for Competitive Advantage, McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

99
 Appendix

Profiles of the Industry Experts

Profile of some of the KM Experts

Nirmala Palaniappan is a B.E in Instrumentation Technology from Bangalore

University and an M.B.A in Systems and Finance from Anna University, Chennai. She
was a gold medallist and topper in MBA. She is currently working with CG Smith
Software. Her current job has a mixed “work-pie”. It has knowledge management,
business process improvements, Intranet development, and occasional business analysis.
Her long-term goal is to write a book on KM, a book that will make KM a really practical
and interesting thing to do, especially in the Indian context.

Gunesh has completed B.E(Computers) in 1993 from Mumbai University and was a
topper of his batch. He has over 8 years of experience in the Software Industry. The
domain knowledge includes areas such as; Image processing, Process Control and

100
automation, Constraint satisfaction and scheduling, Logistics, Web technologies and
Wireless Computing. I have managed mainly medium size projects, ranging from Image
cataloguing area to Resource scheduling. He also has interest in Knowledge Management
and Application Service Provider (ASP) technologies. He has a passion of making India,
a world known IT superpower.

P. Chandrasekar has 12 years plus experience in various facets of Knowledge

Management & Information Technology, viz Program, Project, Account and Business
Management. He is with Virtusa Corporation's `Advanced Technology Center' at
Hyderabad, as their `Global Knowledge Manager'. In his current capacity, his role and
responsibilities include `Managing the Knowledge Environment' and KM Program
Implementation across Virtusa Corporation that specializes in Global Technology
Innovation Services with a focus on Reuse of Best Practices from Product Engineering
Excellence to facilitate faster development and deployment of mission critical enterprise-
class Products and Solutions.

Palaniyandy M V, Assistant Manager (Knowledge Management), GE Capital, has an

overall experience of nine years in capturing, synthesizing, organizing and web
publication of intellectual capital produced in the organization.

Padma Venkatesh Bhamidipati, Brand Manager (Knowledge Management), Infosys

Technologies, is involved in corporate communications, branding activities, marketing
and business strategies and corporate planning.

101