Knowledge Management Solutions

Introduction

With the concept like globalization gaining its world-wide acceptance, these
days firms are setting up new marketing branches in different parts of the world.
The benefit of being local does not exit any more. In fact the boom of internet
has provided a new opening to operate any business without having an office
near the customer. However at the same time one cannot deny from the fact that
one has to improve constantly in order to survive in the existing market with a
knowledge driven business management process. In other words, running
organizations knowledge and exploiting it in the marketplace is the newest
quest for having a competitive advantage.

The biggest challenge for any business these days is to provide the correct
information that can lead to effective knowledge and can be further used to
make better decisions. Certainly, the interest in knowledge management has
grown during the last few years. Knowledge management solutions create a
platform for extensive data mining. With sharing of information across the firm
and getting the details or feedback from consumers and managers can further
help in predicting the future trend and thus take a better decision.

Knowledge management is a concept in which an enterprise gathers, organizes,

shares, and analyzes its knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and
people skills. KM involves data mining and some method of operation to push
information to users. Knowledge management can also be a business process
that formalizes management and leverage of a firm's intellectual assets. KM is
an enterprise discipline that promotes a collaborative and integrative approach
to the creation, capture, organization, access and use of information assets,
including the tacit, un-captured knowledge of people.

In some organizations such as educational institutions, research labs and

marketing services companies, “knowledge” is “the” backbone. Indeed in all
organizations, the appropriate utilization of knowledge towards collective
intelligence and wisdom plays a critical part in improving its own operations.
These organizations seek to enforce a discipline that can be used to
systematically leverage expertise and information to improve organizational
efficiency, responsiveness, competency, and innovation. Systematically means
that the discipline does not rely on informal water cooler conversations, but on
planned processes, technology, measurement techniques, and behaviors.
Knowledge management seeks to exploit all the key resources that an
organization has in place and that can be put to use in a more effective way.

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What is Knowledge Management?
A knowledge-based company builds its competitive strategy on the processing
of intangible, often invisible nuggets of information that cannot always be
quantified or recorded. Such knowledge may include information about
competitors or the understanding of a crucial market segment. It also
encompasses the expertise of individual employees that, when mined, can
increase a company's competitive advantage.

Are information and knowledge different?

Yes. Information is data: hard numbers about a company's profits, losses or
budgets; the phone number of someone at a competing company who can be
coerced out of some secrets. Take that information and season it with context
and understanding, and you get knowledge. Put that knowledge where other
people can get to it and you are now managing the knowledge.

Where does knowledge reside in company?

That's what makes KM such a difficult concept to put into practice. Knowledge
is ubiquitous. While information can live inside myriad databases, true
knowledge is more likely to lie hidden and undervalued in the minds of
individual employees. And it may dwell in the relationships your colleagues
have with people at other companies.

Aren't people reluctant to give up their knowledge?

Yes, and that's one of the trickiest parts of knowledge management. Before you
can manage knowledge, you have to get it out of people's brains and into a
central repository. And that's not easy to do if people have proprietary feelings
about what they know. After all, knowledge is power, and the impulse to hoard
rather than share is strong. Real KM—getting, refining and sharing information
across the business—requires enormous organizational change. Only companies
willing to remake their cultures around the value of sharing knowledge and
insight will see the benefits.

How do KM doing it right?

Quantifying a return on KM is hard to do definitively. Though a slew of
companies are coming to market with software to help you try, it's still hard to
put exact numbers on information organization. If careful attention to your
intellectual assets has allowed you to abort a costly project before it failed, for
example, you can count what you saved by not pursuing the project as KM ROI.
And if there were a way to measure what you're losing by not undertaking
knowledge management, then that would count as ROI, too. Companies that fail
to exploit their knowledge tend to stumble on ideas and decisions with a
haphazard approach rather than through a carefully organized method that takes
full advantage of all available information. But happenstance is no long enough.

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It's not what you have that's important; it's whether you can find it, and then
what you do with it.

SO, HOW DOES ICREON IMPLEMENT A

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION?

To implement a KM solution, Icreon follows the under-mentioned stages:

1. Identifying places and stages in an organization’s business process

where knowledge plays an important part.
2. Devising a system or architecture to tactfully “map” knowledge key-
stages and manual processes to IT-enabled processes.
3. Merging the core-business process with key inputs from the
“Knowledge Base”, wherever applicable.

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, many companies especially the multinational companies are

trying to retain the existing knowledge by managing and controlling it, as
knowledge is one of the companies' assets. Knowledge Management is
significant in current unstable market conditions particularly in reshaping
the product and project lines in tune with the market requirements
especially in IT companies. It also plays a crucial role in avoiding the
organizations being in a disastrous position of being with the wrong
product, at the wrong time and in the wrong place. KM techniques and
technologies can also help organizations to examine their processes and
improve their services to customers. In the present study, the author had
explained the importance, functions and tools used for Knowledge
Management system and the challenges faced by the IT companies in its
implementation.

Key Words: Tactic knowledge, explicit knowledge, intellectual assets, After

Action Reviews, Communities of Practice, Competence Mapping Systems, Exit
interviews, Intellectual Capital Audits, Knowledge centers, etc.
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Knowledge is an innately human quality, residing in the living mind because a

person must 'identify, interpret and internalize knowledge' (Myers, 1996, p.
2).Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual
information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and
incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in

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the minds of 'knowers'. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in
documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes,
practices, and norms. (Davenport & Prusak, 1998, p. 5). Knowledge originates
and is applied in the minds of knower. In organizations, it often becomes
embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational
routines, processes, practices, and norms.

Knowledge is simply actionable information, which allows us to make

predictions, casual associations or predictive decisions. Two types of
knowledge are used in the organizations, Tactic and Explicit. Tactic
knowledge is personal, context specific knowledge that is difficult to
formalize, record, or articulate; it is stored in the heads of the people.
Explicit knowledge is that component of knowledge that can be codified and
transmitted in a systematic and formal language. There are two types of
knowledge sources in the organizations, Structured and Unstructured. Some
of the structured sources are Data bases, Data marts, Data warehouses,
Knowledge base, etc and some of the unstructured sources of knowledge in
the organizations are Text document, Graphics, Presentations, Web sites,
Tactic knowledge, etc. Nowadays, many companies especially the
multinational companies are trying to retain the existing knowledge by
managing and controlling it, as knowledge is one of the companies' assets.
Companies that focus on knowledge enforce the commercialization of
knowledge and innovate or creative knowledge workers. The present study
tries to focus on the importance of Knowledge Management system and its
challenges in its implementation in the IT companies.

THE CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge management can be discussed in general as the ability to create,

communicate, and apply the knowledge to achieve organizational goals.
Knowledge management refers to the production, sharing, application, and
transformation of knowledge. It can be induced from previous studies that
the procedure of knowledge management involves 3 steps, including

(1) Acquisition of knowledge;

(2) Creating the culture of knowledge sharing; and

(3) application of technological facilities (Alavi & Leidner, 2001;

Davenport et al., 1998; Wang, 2000; Chang, 2000; Broadbent, 1998;
Hansen, 2002).

In other words, "knowledge management" aims to transform personal

knowledge into organizational knowledge through innovation, storage,
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 sharing, and exploitation of knowledge, so as to help the organization seek
higher performance, and better competitiveness (Zack, 1999; Tsai; 2001).
The inventor of knowledge management, Peter F. Drucker, conceived that
no matter knowledge management is applied to schools or enterprises, the
principles and norms are the same, and the major difference lies in how
things are managed.

Knowledge Management is a process where organizations have formulated

ways in the attempt to recognize and archive knowledge assets within the
organization that are derived from the employees of various departments or
faculties and in some cases, even from other organizations that share the
similar area of interests or specialization. (Joseph , 2001) Besides, it is
defined as the process of transforming information and intellectual assets
into enduring value. It also connects people with the knowledge that they
need to take action, when they need it (Jillinda J.Kidwell, Karen M Vander
Linde, Sanda L. Johnson, 2000) Moreover, KM is concerned with making
the right knowledge available to the right processor such as human or
computer, at the right time in the right presentations for the right cost.
(Holsapple, Joshi, 1999).

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT - COMPONENTS

The vision of the organization coupled together with the knowledge

processes and the technology, which acts as an enabler form the three key
components of a KM system.

The Knowledge management process usually involves several of the

following stages or sub processes in the use of knowledge:

* Knowledge creation
* Knowledge identification
* Knowledge collection
* Knowledge organization
* Knowledge sharing
* Knowledge adaption
* Knowledge usage

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 IN FUNCTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
ORGANIZATIONS

The key functions of Knowledge Management are as summarized below:

* Building, renewal and organization of knowledge assets

1. Knowledge creation and sourcing

2. Knowledge compilation and sourcing

* Effective distribution and application of knowledge assets

1. Knowledge dissemination
2. Knowledge application and value realization

The four basic functions of knowledge management are

Externalization: Externalization is capturing knowledge in an external

repository and organizing it according to a classification framework or
taxonomy. The role of externalization is to make your captured knowledge
available to knowledge seekers through internalization or intermediation.

Internalization: Internalization tries to discover bodies of knowledge

relevant to a particular user's need. With internalization, we extract
knowledge from the external repository and filter it to identify what is
relevant to the knowledge seeker. Internalization helps a researcher
communicate a problem or point of interest and map that against the bodies
of knowledge already captured through externalization. Internalization
focuses on the transfer of explicit knowledge.

Intermediation: Intermediation brokers tacit knowledge. It matches a

knowledge seeker with the best source of knowledge. By tracking the
experience and interests of individuals, intermediation can link people who
need to explore certain subjects with people who appear to harbor
knowledge in that area

Cognition : Cognition is the application of knowledge that's been

exchanged through the preceding three functions and is the ultimate goal of
knowledge management.

TOOLS USED FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN

ORGANIZATIONS

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 Some of the tools used in the organizations for managing knowledge
effectively in the organization are summarized as follows:

After Action Reviews (AAR): The structured debriefing of participants by

suitably trained person at the conclusion of a project or identifiable event.
Actual outcomes are compared to plans in a 'blame-free' environment with
the intention of capturing lessons learned for future reference and use.

Ask the expert: A facilitated 'market-place' where requests for 'expert'

advice are made, responded to; ideally being stored for reference and use
by others.

Communities of Practice (CoP): Support groups of individuals with

similar work responsibilities but who are not parts of a formally designated
work team.

Competence Mapping Systems: Producing an accessible ontology and

directory of deliverable skills i.e. allows 'experts' to be easily found. Helps
leverage existing knowledge, reaffirm core-competences, create new
"collective competencies" and identify skills gaps and clusters

Exit interviews:  An attempt to capture, organize and make available for
re-use some of the explicit knowledge of departing employees that would
otherwise be lost to the organization.

Intellectual Capital Audits:  Beyond simply reporting on financial

activity, organizations can measure relative performance of that most
critical of resources, organizational knowledge or "intellectual capital".
When viewed in the context of the corporate goals, these can be taken as
indicators of future performance.

Knowledge centers:  Extended (digital) libraries where ideas, views,

articles, papers, case studies, best practices, expert interviews etc. can be
shared, typically within an organization.

Peer Assists:  Facilitated and structured workshops where one group's

knowledge and experience are tapped into by a second. With appropriate
guidance, Peer Assists can uncover underlying issues/assumptions, display
the issue/problem in a fresh light and enable new ideas leading to effective
solutions.

Skunk works:   Where an organization is 'seen' to encourage rather than

discourage groups that work outside more normal lines of control i.e. high
levels of autonomy - perhaps on advanced technical research projects.

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 Story-telling:   Past stories can provide context and relationship between
bits of information in ways that other 'presentations' are unable.

NEED FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN IT

ORGANIZATIONS

Knowledge Management is significant in current unstable market conditions

particularly in reshaping the product and project lines in tune with the market
requirements especially in IT companies. It also plays a crucial role in
avoiding the organizations being in a disastrous position of being with the
wrong product, at the wrong time and in the wrong place. The competitors
are no longer limited to a particular location or region as markets are
increasingly becoming global and KM lets an individual or an organization
lead change as opposed to the other way round. Current scenario in the
business environment clearly depicts that only the knowledgeable will
survive. Knowledge is the key driver for decision support and enables
effective decision by making knowledge about past projects, initiatives,
failures, success and efforts readily available and accessible. KM initiatives
are on the upswing due to the reason that managers at all levels within
organizations face mounting pressure to work smarter and faster while
wrestling with the demands of  advance technology and a shrinking work
force. KM techniques and technologies can help organizations to examine
their processes and improve their services to customers. One of the biggest
drivers of the KM movement is the issue of e-governance. The need for KM
is to get a better understanding of things such as, who are the recipients of
the services, who are the providers and where is the room for improvement
and cost control.

Challenges faced by the IT organization in implementing KM

According to many experts in-charge of KM initiatives in IT companies,

creating a culture of knowledge sharing is the prime challenge that most of
the IT companies face in implementing KM. Most people in the
organizations think that knowledge is power they tend to hoard; hence
making them share it within the organization becomes a very difficult task.

The effective way to transfer knowledge for people is to find others who
have it and talk to them. This, however, becomes difficult when companies
grow large or where knowledge content of tasks is high. Various formal
mechanisms are thus needed to make this sharing happen. This can be
through people to people sharing and those that capture expertise to be
tapped asynchronously when needed.

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 KM practices in Wipro, Infosys and Accenture

Knowledge Management systems, to be effective should have easy-to-use

interface, solid reliability, accessibility throughout the target segment and
utilities to mine relevant information. The target segment (like employees,
customers, investors) needs to be taken into account before creating KM
systems. The full commitment to KM from the top management is very
critical in its implementation.

Full fledged KM initiatives at Wipro Technologies, started over two years

ago. Wipro Technologies had created virtual communities to help
employees having common interest to share their views and opinions. They
also maintain a directory of people who have knowledge base in specific
technologies like wireless or Java for instance. This helps knowledge
seekers within the company to tap the right resource for their queries.
Expertise sharing in Wipro Infotech happens through moderated group
discussion, chat and discussion forums.

To promote and publicize KM initiative internally, Wipro InfoTech for

instance has a `saint and thief' award concept, under which both the saint
(person who contributes the maximum knowledge) and the thief (the one
who steals the most from the knowledge repository and deploys them) are
rewarded.

Another major IT giant, Infosys maintains a company-wide body of

knowledge which enshrines experiential learning gained by past projects.
A review mechanism screens the contribution made by Infoscions. Only a
small proportion of employees will distill and write on their experiences,
as-is project deliverables must be captured too. In order to capture the
assets into an intranet-based repository, a process assets system had been
developed in the organization. Infosys has a company-wide intranet called
Sparsh which acts as a central information portal. The intranet consists of
about 5000 nodes, spread throughout the various India-based development
centers and the US-based marketing offices. Infosys has created a
proprietary KMM (knowledge management maturity) model which draws
upon the SEI's capability maturity model. Infosys has also created
Knowledge Currency Units which employees can earn for contribution
towards knowledge sharing, accumulate and encase them for contribution
to knowledge sharing.

Accenture is the former Andersen Consulting: its strengths have long been
in the area of information technology management, so it is no surprise to
find 'knowledge management' equated mainly with information

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 technology. For example, Lotus Software is identified as a partner and the
description reads: This Knowledge Management solution provider enables
workers to capture, manage and share information throughout their
organizations. (http://www.accenture.com/)  which neatly demonstrates the
use of 'knowledge' as a synonym for 'information'. Elsewhere on the site,
'knowledge management' is defined as: …ensuring that the right
information is available in an easily digestible format to employees across
the organization at the point of need so they can leverage experiences and
make more effective business decisions. (http://www.accenture.com/)

CONCLUSION

The IT industry is resource -oriented and it becomes quite important to

ensure that knowledge in the minds of resources is safeguarded. It is found
that, while 26 per cent of knowledge in the average organization is stored on
paper and 20 percent digitally, an amazing 42 per cent is stored in
employees' heads. There have been many instances where the learning and
knowledge is lost when resources move to newer roles, or leave the
organization. IT organizations' major assets are not plants, buildings, or
expensive machines but its intellectual capital. The major problem with
intellectual capital is that it has legs and walks home every day. At the same
rate, experience walks out the door, inexperience walks in the door. Whether
or not many IT organizations admit it, they face the challenge of sustaining
the level of competence needed to win contracts and fulfil undertakings.

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