Internal Assessment Test 2

Case Study - Software development - Infosys' KM strategy

This Infosys Knowledge Management (KM) case study offers a comprehensive insight into
how strategic KM practices can drive organizational success in a knowledge-intensive
industry. From an HR perspective, it underscores the critical role of employee engagement,
motivation, and collaboration in harnessing and leveraging intellectual capital. By integrating
People, Process, and Technology, Infosys exemplifies how organizations can create a culture
of continuous learning and innovation, aligning individual contributions with broader business
objectives. The case also highlights the challenges of sustaining KM initiatives and the pivotal
role HR professionals play in embedding KM into organizational systems, incentivizing
knowledge sharing, and fostering a workforce that thrives on collective intelligence

The primary driver for Infosys' knowledge management strategy is that, as the company
climbs the value curve, it increasingly needs
Infosys KM vision is to create an organization
• where every action is fully enabled by the mechanisms for speedy and efficient
power of knowledge
• which truly believes in managing knowledge
consolidation of expertise. The turbulent
for innovation scenario of the e-business era, with its
• where every employee is empowered by the
knowledge of every other employee premium on speed, agility, and competitive
• which is a globally accepted knowledge leader
intensity, has given a further fillip to this need

The mission is to ensure that all organizational learning is leveraged in delivering business
advantage to the customer, and that Infoscions in contact with the customer have the
collective knowledge of the organization behind them. The Infosys KM strategy is described
in detail here

Existing Initiatives

A number of initiatives related to knowledge dissemination, sharing and reuse have been
happening in a decentralized way for quite some time now. Although most of these have been
in place since before the term 'Knowledge Management' was coined, they can retrospectively
be categorized as KM-related
The company maintains a Body of Knowledge (BoK) on the intranet, which enshrines
experiential learning gained by past projects. Entries are contributed by Infoscions and a
review mechanism screens them from content, applicability, presentation and IPR aspects.
Several project- and PU (Practice Unit) - specific BoKs also exist. Since only a small proportion
of employees will distill and write up experiences, a 'Process Assets' system has also been
developed to capture 'as-is' project deliverables into an intranet-based repository

• Given the knowledge intensive nature of Infosys' business, a clear understanding of its
'knowledge capital' is essential, but cannot be obtained via traditional financial statements.
Infosys has adopted various models for evaluating its intangible assets and disclosing them in
its financial reports

• A Knowledge Directory, providing pointers to expertise available within the organization,

has been developed and deployed. Known as the People-Knowledge Map (PKM), it provides
an intranet-based interface via which people can register or locate expertise. The system is
driven off a proprietary knowledge hierarchy that has been created, which consists of a multi-
level taxonomy of topics that represent knowledge in Infosys context. The hierarchy consists
of about 1000 knowledge nodes, with the top-level being technology, process, project
management, application domain and culture, and deeper levels representing a fibre grain of
topics

• A web-based virtual classroom has been developed and deployed on the intranet, and
allows access to various courses whose content has also been developed internally. This
system incorporates a discussion forum where participants can post and respond to course-
related queries. In addition, several online tutorials have also been purchased and deployed
over the intranet

• The company-wide intranet, Sparsh, consists of about 5000 nodes spread throughout
various India-based development centers (DCs), and the US-based marketing offices

• Practices that have worked are also propagated through regular seminars and best-practice
sessions, held both within units and organization-wide.

An integrated KM strategy

A move towards an integrated KM strategy was initiated in 1999, and a coherent KM effort is
now under way. Infosys' Km strategy revolves around the key constituents of People, Process
and Technology. It aims to address various challenges underpinned by Infosys' proprietary
KMM (Knowledge Management Maturity) model

The KMM model draws significantly from the SEI's Capability Maturity Model (CMM). It has
two-fold purpose -to provide a framework, which can be used to assess current level of KM
maturity, and to act as a mechanism to focus, and help prioritize efforts to raise the level of
KM maturity

In analogy with the CMM, the KMM model consists of 5 maturity levels, with a set of Key
Result Areas (KRAs) defined at each level. Each KRA defines a particular capability in terms of
people, process or technology, and effectively serves as a unit of KM capability

The Content Architecture

Content Architecture has been defined for knowledge assets, and consists of a set of defined
types. Internal content represents Infosys' internal expertise, such as BoK, project snapshot
documents that provide a window into projects, internal white papers, reusable code and
others artifacts, discussion groups, chat sessions, etc. External content represents expertise
existing outside Infosys, including reviewed websites, glossaries of business and technology
terms, technology summaries, online journals and books, external white papers, technology
and business news, etc. Each item in the content repository will be associated with one or
more nodes in the knowledge hierarchy to facilitate ease of submission and retrieval. The
flow of content into the KM repositories has been charted and envisages different stages such
as review by identified internal experts, streamlining and editing, publishing, certification and
maintenance

The technology architecture

A central KM portal is under development that will provide access to knowledge assets as
defined by the content architecture. The recommended means of navigation will be via the
knowledge hierarchy- a visual depiction of the hierarchy will facilitate this

The long-term technology vision for KM is that all web sites containing knowledge assets,
whether belonging to different competency groups within the organization, to projects or to
individuals, will mirror the central KM architecture, to facilitate integrated access to users
The People Architecture

KM implementation needs the right balance between functions that will be managed by a
central group and those that will be performed in a decentralized way. Infosys has chosen a
'facilitated approach', which envisages the following: the technology architecture
management will be done by a central KM group and all stages of the content management
process will be anchored by it - creation of internal content however must happen in practice,
and will be facilitated by the KM group. In addition, the strategy envisages logical ownership
of content by different competency groups/individuals, at appropriate nodes in the
knowledge hierarchy.

Making it happen

A slew of measures to promote and publicize the KM initiative internally are on the anvil - this
includes a combination of hard, performance correlated incentives and soft, peer recognition-
based measures. The creation of Knowledge Currency Units (KCUs), which people can earn for
contribution towards knowledge sharing, is one example. A KCU scoreboard on the central
KM portal will give high visibility to strong contributors. The aim is to establish a strong, visible
correlation between attaining a high profile in the organization and contribution to KM.

'Knowledge summits' are planned every quarter, where knowledge sharing will be highlighted
and contributors felicitated. One of the important tenets of facilitating knowledge sharing is
to minimize the overhead of doing so; hence, quality processes are being relooked at for
possible modifications that will ensure contribution to knowledge sharing

Top management involvement is valuable in ensuring success of Infosys' fledgling KM effort.

A steering committee oversees the initiative, and has representation from members of senior
management representing various key functions. Various high-level strategies and planning
also have sessions devoted to KM

Challenges for the future

The Infosys KM effort has come out of infancy, but is hardly past adolescence. Major inroads
are being made on the 'hard' front of putting systems in place. However, there is still a long
way to go on the 'soft' front - ensuring large-scale awareness and usage of the systems by all
quarters within the organization for business leverage.
An important future objective includes giving the customer direct benefits from the KM effort
- plans to make this happen include an extranet that will expose internal knowledge, suitably
screened for IPR issues, to select Infosys customers

Questions – Answer any 3 out of 4 questions below in not more than 3 A4 pages. Write
by hand, scan and upload as PDF to LMS

1. Evaluate how Infosys’ Knowledge Management (KM) strategy aligns with its mission to
deliver business advantages to customers. How does the integration of People, Process,
and Technology within its KM framework contribute to achieving organizational goals?
2. Discuss the role of Knowledge Currency Units (KCUs) and other incentive mechanisms in
promoting knowledge sharing among employees at Infosys. What challenges might arise
in ensuring their effectiveness, and how could these be addressed?
3. Explain the purpose and structure of the Knowledge Management Maturity (KMM) model
used by Infosys. How can this model help HR professionals assess and improve KM
practices within an organization?
4. Identify the key challenges Infosys faces in creating widespread awareness and adoption
of its KM systems. Suggest HR interventions that could enhance employee participation
and leverage KM systems for greater business impact.