Knowledge Management Assignment

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. WHY IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IMPORTANT FOR ORGANIZATIONS................. 3

1.1. Intoduction ........................................................................................................... 3

1.2 What is Knowledge ?............................................................................................3

1.3. Where Corporate Knowledg Lies……………………………………………………………………….4

1.4. Classification of knowledge………………………………………………………………………………. 5

1.5. Knowledge Management ....................................................................................... 7

1.6 Why are organizations investing in knowledge management initiatives? ……………….8

1.7 Knowledge Management and Information Technologies…………………………………….…9

1.8 FIVE LAWS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT………………………………………………………10

1.9 How Consulting Firms Manage Their Knowledge……………………………………………..…..11

2. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AT INFOSYS. ................................................................... 13

2.1. CORPORATE PROFILE. ........................................................................................ 13

2.2. INTRODUCTION – KM IN THE INFOSYS CONTEXT ……………………………………………14

2.3. INFOSYS’ KM STRATEGY………………………………………………………………………………… 15

2.4. THE INFOSYS KM FRAMEWORK ………………………………………………………………………17

2.4. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE AHEAD …………………………………………………………………….18

3. Implications of Knowledge Management…………………………………………………………18

4. BIBLIOGRAPHY & REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………..20

 1.1 INTRODUCTION

"A company that is not managing knowledge is not paying attention to business,"
observed Thomas Stewart, author of Intellectual Capital, in his keynote presentation at
TRAINING 2000.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT revolves around the concept that one of the most
valuable corporate assets is the experience and expertise floating around inside employees'
heads. In order to manage this intellectual capital, executives must devise a way to capture and
share that knowledge with co-workers. If done right, Knowledge Management is supposed to
create a more collaborative environment, cut down on duplication of effort and encourage
knowledge sharing—saving time and money in the process.

1.2 What is knowledge?

To define the knowledge it is necessary to differentiate between data, information and

knowledge. There is direct relation between data, information and knowledge. Data are results of
observations, measurements, or facts presented as numbers, words, sounds and/or images. They
don’t have a meaning, but they are the bases for information generation. Information is the
meaningful arrangement of data which results from the analysis of the data and it is presented as
report or charts or graphs appropriate for a particular use. Knowledge is the application and
fruitful use of combination of information, thoughts, procedures, and insights. Knowledge
incorporates experience, familiarity and learning.

Therefore, data is the raw material for information and knowledge. The starting point to generate
the knowledge is the data, which can be arranged and analyzed for the creation of information.
Information has more meaning than data and can be presented in various forms. Then,
knowledge is the applied information and it is dependent on the people who are using the
information. The personal experience and insights shape the final knowledge based on the same
data and information.
According to Webster’s dictionary, “knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something
with familiarity gained through experience or association. Knowledge has been classified as
explicit or tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge can be codified it is recorded and available, and
is held in databases, in corporate intranets and intellectual portfolios. It is digitized in books,
documents, reports, white papers, lights tacit knowledge exists in people’s minds. It is difficult to
articulate in writing and is acquired personal experience.

1.3 Where Corporate Knowledge Lies

A study of more than 700 US companies shows that only a small portion of corporate knowledge
is in a shareable form. The majority is in the employee’s brains and documents not easily shared.

Where Corporate Knowledge Lies

Employee Brains
Electronic
20% 42%
26%
Knowledge Bases
Paper Documents
12%
Electronic
Documents
 1.4 Classification of knowledge

Knowledge is in two different categories as explicit and tacit knowledge. The distinction
between explicit and tacit knowledge is important. Explicit knowledge can be codified in a
tangible form, whereas tacit knowledge is possessed by people and is inexpressible. Knowledge
is codified when it is recorded or transmitted in the form of symbols or in a tangible form
whereas tacit knowledge is non-codified which is acquired by informal learning. Tacit
knowledge is rooted in a social and cultural milieu whereas codified knowledge is context-
dependent.
 Explicit Knowledge Tacit Knowledge

 Independent of people, free from  Dependent of people, associated with

personal bias, based on the ideas, observations and practice,
rationalization of information inexpressible

 Objective  Subjective

 Context-dependent  Rooted in a social and cultural milieu

 Codified in a tangible form  Non-codified, intangible know-how

 Recorded or transmitted in the form of  Acquired by informal learning,

symbols learning by doing

 Exists in different shapes such as  Rooted in practice and is meaningful

formulas, designs, reports, documents
and diagrams
 Easily transferred
 Relatively easy to acquire, convey, and
store
within specific circumstances, alive in
the people, based on practice and
experience
 More difficult to transfer
 More difficult to acquire, convey and
store

Summary of comparison for tacit and explicit knowledge

From my point of view explicit knowledge is the raw knowledge similar to information. I believe
the definition of information is very close to explicit knowledge. Information and/or explicit
knowledge is the basis of tacit knowledge.

1.5 Knowledge Management

Knowledge management can be described as the way organizations collect, increase and
organize knowledge for their specific actions and within their specific cultures to increase
organizational efficiency. It is the ability of an organization to retain or improve organizational
performance with experience and knowledge.

KM is the systematic leveraging of information and expertise to improve organizational and

operational innovation, responsiveness, productivity and competency.

Knowledge management is based on the transfer or exchange of knowledge. Knowledge transfer

as the diffusion of knowledge from one individual to others. Knowledge transfer occurs as a
result of socialization, education and learning.
 1.6 Why are organizations investing in knowledge management initiatives?

In the current competitive environment, creation, management and utilization of knowledge to

generate business intelligence is a crucial differentiator.

The Knowledge Management Consulting initiative offers customers to collect , organize and
utilize the enterprise knowledge base to achieve shared intelligence, improved performance,
competitive advantage and higher levels of innovation in their business operations.

Enterprise executives understand that timely, accurate knowledge can mean improved business
performance

Knowledge management is based on the idea that an organization’s most valuable resource is the
knowledge of its people. This is not a new idea – organizations have been managing “human
resources” for years. What is new is the focus on knowledge. This focus is being driven by the
accelerated rate of change in today’s organizations and in society as a whole. Knowledge
management recognizes that today nearly all jobs involve “knowledge work” and so all staff are
“knowledge workers” to some degree or another – meaning that their job depends more on their
knowledge than their manual skills. This means that creating, sharing and using knowledge are
among the most important activities of nearly every person in every organization.

Benefits of Knowledge Management (KM) to organization:

KM can offer the following:

 KM can offer competitive advantage

 May help to reduce cost and increase organizational efficiency

 Enable’s organization’s to be flexible enough to react and adapt to changing business

and customer requirements
  Enhancement of innovation and creativity

 Ensuring of sustainable excellence

 Improves “working on the go” by implementing knowledge repositories.

 Increases employee productivity, and makes management decisions more efficient.

1.7 Knowledge Management and Information Technologies

IT systems format, filter and summarize data to convert them into appropriate information,
playing an important role for knowledge exchange. IT facilitates the rapid collection, collation,
storage, and distribution of data, which assists knowledge creation and transmission. IT
facilitates knowledge transfer by data exchange

IT has positive effects on knowledge management by facilitating the transfer of data, information
and explicit knowledge. However it is more effective when knowledge exchanging participants
have similar backgrounds. The characteristics of tacit knowledge make it difficult to share it via
IT. IT alone cannot provide all the necessary conditions for the successful sharing of tacit
knowledge. Therefore for an effective knowledge sharing IT should be supported by other
means. Confidence and trust between the participants and willingness to share the knowledge is
necessary.

As a result IT is only effective when there is a high degree of common knowledge, trust and
willingness to share the knowledge between participants of the knowledge sharing process. The
most important factor is the degree of tacitness of the knowledge. When knowledge has highly
explicit components, the use of IT will likely to be more successful for knowledge sharing. IT is
less suitable for the transfer of tacit knowledge.
However, for organizations it is the effective management of tacit knowledge which determines
the degree of competitive advantage. Therefore, IT investments should have an emphasize on
tacit knowledge. Since IT transfers effectively only explicit knowledge, it is important to
understand the relationship between IT and tacit knowledge therefore IT should be supported by
other mechanisms for an effective knowledge management.

1.8 FIVE LAWS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge sharing is becoming the central driver of the new millennium economy. More
and more companies are now recognizing human capital as the major asset to business success,
access to knowledge and just-in-time learning. The continuous changes and innovations in
information technology and telecommunications will make knowledge even more accessible.
As the unit costs of computing, communications and transactions decline towards zero, all
economic sectors are going through major and rapid transformations. Economic success in this
fast pace environment requires considerable agility and adaptability. Those countries, sectors and
organizations that can adapt will flourish in the new millennium.

The five laws of KM are:

1 Knowledge is key to business survival

2 Communities are the heart and soul of knowledge sharing

3 Virtual communities need physical interaction

4 Passion drives communities of practice

5 Knowledge sharing has an inside-out and an outside-in dimension

 1.9 How Consulting Firms (like Infosys) Manage Their Knowledge

CODIFICATION PERSONALISATION

Provide high-quality, Provide creative, analytically

reliable and fast rigorous advice on high-level
information-systems problems by channelling
implementation by reusing individual expertise.
codified knowledge.
REUSE ECONOMICS: EXPERT ECONOMICS:
Invest once Charge high
in a knowledge fees for highly
asset; reuse it many customized solutions
times. to unique problems.
Use large Economic Use small
teams with a high Model teams with a low
ratio of associates ration of associates to
to partners. partners.
Focus on Focus on
generating large maintaining high
overall revenues. profit margins.
PEOPLE TO PERSON TO PERSON:
DOCUMENTS: Develop
Develop an networks for linking
electronic Knowledge people so that tacit
document system Management knowledge can be
that codifies, Strategy shared.
stores,
disseminates, and
allows reuse of
knowledge.
 Invest Invest
highly in IT; the moderately in IT; the
goal is to connect Information goal is to facilitate
people with Technology conversations and the
reusable codified exchange tacit
knowledge. knowledge.
Hire new Hire MBAs
college graduates who like problem
who are well suited solving and can
to the reuse of tolerate ambiguity.
knowledge and the Train people
implementation of through one to one
solutions. Human mentoring.
Train Resources Reward
people in groups people for directly
and through sharing knowledge
computer-based with others.
distance learning.
Reward
people for using
and contributing to
document
databases.

Anderson Consulting, Examples McKinsey & Company

Ernst & Young Bain & Company
 KNOWLEDGE MANGEMENT AT INFOSYS

2.1 CORPORATE PROFILE

Infosys is the leader in providing IT consulting and software services to the world's finest
organizations. Infosys Technologies Limited was established in India in the year 1981. Infosys
specialises in offering a complete range of software and consulting services such as business-
technology consulting, Internet and e-business consulting, system integration, custom application
development, re-engineering and sustenance amply supported by the company’s execution
methodologies and delivery models. Over the years, Infosys has grown into one of the major IT
companies in the world and now has offices in different parts of the world such as the U.S.,
Japan, Canada, U.K., Germany, Belgium, Australia, France, Scandinavia and Hong Kong.

Infosys’ business model focuses on having a long-term strategic relationship with clients
and a significant portion of their revenue comes from repeat business. Their solutions include
building next generation communication, networking and e-infrastructure products for their
clients. Their global delivery model leverages cost-competitive development centres in different
parts of the world to provide high quality, rapid time-to-market solutions on time and within
budget.

Various Fortune 1000 companies leverage on the expertise of Infosys to align their
business and IT strategies and successfully transform themselves for the new economy. Infosys’
also partners leading-edge technology companies looking to be the architects of the Internet
infrastructure. The sustained growth of Infosys as a technology company delivering business
advantage comes from their presence at the top of the technology evolution and maturity curve.
In a world where excellence in execution is the key to success, Infosys has an enviable record of
completing 85% of its projects on schedule. Infosys' well-defined processes and a strong Body of
Knowledge enables the company to capture effectively the best practices of every project
implemented.
 2.2 INTRODUCTION – KM IN THE INFOSYS CONTEXT

The primary driver for Infosys’ Knowledge Management (KM) strategy is that, as the
company climbs the value curve, it increasingly needs effective mechanisms for speedy and
efficient consolidation of expertise. The large consulting organizations are the most enthusiastic
users of KM, and as Infosys’ business profile evolves to more closely mirror the profile of these
organizations, KM becomes an imperative. The turbulent scenario of the e-business era, with its
premium on speed, agility and competitive intensity, has given a further fillip to this need.

The goal of Knowledge Management (KM) in the Infosys context is that all
organizational learning must be leveraged in delivering business advantage to the customer. The
objectives are to minimize effort dissipated in redoing learning that has already happened
elsewhere, and ensuring that Infoscions (as employees at Infosys are called) in contact with the
customer have the collective knowledge of the organization behind them. The company thus
aims to move towards a "Learn Once, Use Anywhere" paradigm.

The conception and implementation of the KM strategy is anchored by a Central KM

group, which forms a part of the E&R department. The group currently consists of four fulltime
staff, and has a sanctioned strength of eight. When ramped up to its full strength, the group will
have three sub-groups – one each to oversee KM research and content management, technology
architecture development and maintenance, and internal publicity and brand management.
Efforts are also on to identify Practice Champions - members of the practice units who will
devote time to facilitation for content generation
 2.3 INFOSYS’ KM STRATEGY
The Infosys KM strategy can be described under the following headings:

Existing Initiatives

1 The company maintains an organization-wide Body of Knowledge (BoK), which

enshrines experiential learning gained by past projects. Entries are contributed by
Infoscions, and a review mechanism screens their content, applicability and presentation
aspects. Each contributor must declare that the work is experiential, and that it does not
violate third-party IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) – in case the IPR belongs to a third
party such as the customer, clearance from that party must be obtained. This system is
available on the intranet, via an easy-to-use interface that incorporates search utilities.
Incentives for contribution exist, as do mechanisms to publicize contributions
periodically; prizes are given for meritorious contributions. Several project- and PU
(Practice Unit)-specific BoKs also exist.

2 Since only a small proportion of employees will distill and write up their experiences,
"as-is" project deliverables must be captured too. Hence a "Process Assets" system has
been developed to capture these assets into an intranet-based repository. As part of
project closure, a Project Leader fills in a brief description of the project, the target
audience and others details while uploading into the system. This helps in classification
and focused search.

3 Given the knowledge-intensive nature of Infosys’ business, a key determinant of success

in the global marketplace is the ability to leverage the know-how, innovation and
reputation of the company as well as its employees. A clear understanding of this
‘knowledge capital’ is hence essential, but cannot be obtained via traditional financial
statements represented by the balance sheet and the income statement. The company
believes that a representation of its knowledge assets would provide a tool to its investors
for evaluating the market-worthiness of the company.
4 A Knowledge Directory providing pointers to expertise available within the organization
has been developed and deployed. It is called the People-Knowledge Map (PKM). It
provides an intranet-based interface via which people can register or locate expertise. The
system is designed to be driven off a proprietary knowledge hierarchy that the company
has created, which consists of a multi-level taxonomy of topics that represent knowledge
in the Infosys context. The hierarchy consists of about 800 nodes, with the top level being
technology, process, project management, application domain and culture and deeper
levels representing a finer grain of topics.

5 The company-wide intranet, christened Sparsh, acts as a central information portal. The
intranet consists of about 5000 nodes, spread throughout the various India-based
development centers (DCs) and the US-based marketing offices. Official policies and
documentation, press releases and articles, and web-based in-house information systems
are available from the home page. Sparsh has a knowledge shop that provides access to
several of the intranet-based knowledge systems. It also links project, PU, department
and personal web pages. Access is governed by IPR guidelines. Security and protection
from external intrusion are provided by means of firewalls.

6 The company’s e-mailing system, which every Infoscion has access to, supports bulletin
boards for official announcements as well as technical and personal queries. An e-mail
protocol has been defined and is adhered to.

7 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. Systems for supporting training management – course
announcements, nomination and reporting - and participant evaluation have also been
internally developed and are in use.
 8 Practices that have worked are also propagated through regular seminars and best-
practice sessions, held both within units and organization-wide.

9 A few other such systems also exist. One such system is Odyssey, a system that
provides an umbrella for websites maintained by individual projects and a marketing intranet,
which provides information and reusable artifacts useful at the sales and project initiation stage.

2.4 THE INFOSYS KM FRAMEWORK

Infosys Knowledge Management Service offering is designed to assist clients in:

1 Formulating a “knowledge strategy” for sustaining the knowledge creation and reuse in
the organization
2 Aligning the knowledge strategy towards business goals and priorities to maximize value
creation
3 Designing a collaborative process-framework, to organize, capture and share knowledge
4 Designing content taxonomy and technical architecture for the knowledge management
program
5 Developing and deploying the appropriate technology tools for organization wide
implementation of the program
6 Instituting a “balanced - scorecard” based system for continually measuring the strategic
impact of knowledge management efforts

2.5 PLANS FOR THE FUTURE AHEAD

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 - that of ensuring large-scale awareness and usage of the
systems by all quarters within the organization for business leverage. An important objective for
the future includes giving the customer direct benefit from the KM effort - plans to make this
happen include an extranet that will expose internal knowledge, suitably screened for Intellectual
Property Rights issues, to select Infosys customers.

The criticality of Knowledge Management will increase in the future, given the current
revenue and people growth rates, geographical expansion, diversification into new markets and
more sophisticated services.

3 Implications of Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management (KM) at Infosys has truly come a long way from the time when
employees only shared information through Body of Knowledge documents. Infosys strongly
believes that having a culture of knowledge sharing and reuse is more critical than building a
technology infrastructure. Infosys has therefore embarked on a number of initiatives aimed at
taking the prevailing knowledge sharing culture to even greater heights. Demonstrating the
business value of knowledge re-use and creating a system demand for knowledge sharing / re-use
are other means designed to accelerate this culture-change. Today Infosys has a comprehensive
Knowledge Management infrastructure complete with a dedicated team, a fully functional
technical infrastructure and, most importantly, increasing awareness of the criticality of
knowledge sharing amongst all employees.

Infosys envisions itself as a knowledge organization:

1 Where every action is fully enabled by the power of knowledge;

2 Which truly believes in leveraging knowledge for innovation;
3 Where every employee is empowered by the knowledge of every other employee;
4 Which is a globally respected knowledge leader.
 The Infosys Approach focuses on linking knowledge management to overall business
strategy and is holistic in character; it addresses people and processes, with technology tools
playing the role of key enablers.

Any new effort needs top management push in the early stages and the full cooperation of
the top executives of the company is of utmost importance. The top management of Infosys ably
supported its KM initiatives, which is making it a success, as the top brass was quiet early in
recognizing that

Knowledge is the currency of the millennium, and knowledge management is a key

survival imperative. Hence organisations from all sectors should adopt KM measures with
a view to increase their competency, be more agile and be in a better position to respond to
changes. Knowledge Management is the Holy Grail of the modern company and is a
‘mission critical’ for all managers of today and tomorrow.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY & REFERENCES

BIBLIOGRAHY:

1 The Knowledge Management Yearbook 2000-01

- James H. Cortada, John A. Woods.

REFERENCES

1 www.cio.com
2 www.infy.com
3 www.indiainfoline.com

SECONDARY SOURCE:
Sections 2.3 and 2.4 have been formulated on the basis of input provided by my
seniors working in Infosys:

Seniors @ Infosys:
1 Jatin Trivedi
2 Tina Rathi