Transcript No Slide Title

Best Practices & Approaches for
Using IT to Support KM
Knowledge Technologies 2001
Cindy Hubert
Manager, Knowledge Management
APQC Custom Solutions
March 6, 2001
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Discussion Topics for Today
 Where IT fits in a KM
Strategy
 Definitions
 Useful KM Principles
 How IT supports KM
Approaches
 Lessons Learned
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The American Productivity &
Quality Center (APQC)
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Founded in 1977 - funded by 100 corporations
Non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3)
Annual revenues $12 million and staff of 100
 Membership - 500 organizations
 Best Practices research and publications
 Benchmarking
 Consulting and Advisory services
 Conferences and training
Board of Directors
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45 senior executives from corporations,
education, and government
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The APQC Mission
Connect
Disseminate
Discover
Services
Membership
Consortium
Alliances
Publish
Train
Coach
Consortium Studies
Client Support
Methods
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APQC’s Key Milestones
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The White House Conference on Productivity
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Groundbreaking Research
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White Collar Productivity
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People, Performance, and Pay
International Benchmarking Clearinghouse
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Membership
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Best Practices
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Benchmarking Methodology and Code
Knowledge Management Initiative
APQC Education Initiative and BiEIN
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APQC’s Work in Knowledge
Management
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Research on KM since 1993
Research Consortia started 1995
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Over 150 firms in APQC’s KM Consortia
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45 Best Practice firms studied in detail
Shared knowledge with thousands of KM
practitioners
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Publications
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Training
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Conferences
Helping firms implement KM using best practices
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APQC KM Consortium Studies
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Emerging Best Practices in KM (1996)
Using Information Technology for KM (1997)
Europe - The Learning Organisation & KM (1997)
Expanding Knowledge Externally (1998)
Creating a Knowledge Sharing Culture (1998-99)
Successfully Implementing KM (1999-2000)
Building and Sustaining Communities of
Practice (2000)
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A Few of the Early KM Adopters
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Consulting firms
British Petroleum
Buckman Labs
Chevron
Dow
Hewlett-Packard
IBM
J&J
Monsanto
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Pillsbury
Sequent Computers
Shell
Texas Instruments
USAA
US West
The World Bank
Xerox
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Benefits of Best-in-Class KM
 Reducing cycle time – NPD, Quote to Cash, Employee onboarding
 Eliminate redundant efforts
 Reuse materials, expertise and problem solving experience to
benefit partners and customers
 Collaborate across businesses to stimulate innovation
 Avoid making the same mistakes twice
 Learn effectively at the time of need
 Locate and leverage expertise and experience
 Find needed information quickly and easily
 Be perceived as a “smart partner” by customers
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What is Knowledge Management?
 Systematic approaches to help information and
knowledge flow
 to the right people
 at the right time
 in the right format
 at the right cost
so they can act more efficiently and effectively.
 Find, understand, share and use knowledge to
create value.
Knowledge is information in action
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What is Knowledge Management?
Process
People
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Knowledge managers
Formal Communities of Practice
Training and communications
Measurement and reward systems
Knowledge sharing culture
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Forming Communities of Practice
Collaboration process
Shared standards
Common taxonomy
Survey, census, requirements analysis
Metrics and reporting
Cross-organizational integration
Feedback loop
Technology
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Collaboration
Expertise database
Workflow & project management
Repositories
Content management
Learning
Portals
Search engines & locators
Document management
Problem resolution systems
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Ultimately, it’s all about…
 Delivering Knowledge
for Effective Decision Making
 Delivering Results to
Stakeholders
 Using Knowledge to Build
Business Capabilities
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Where do you focus?
Based on model developed by
Treacy & Wiersma,
Harvard Business Review,
Jan-Feb. 1993
Product and
Service Offerings
Customer
& Market
Operational
Excellence
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Results from KM leaders
Organization
Target
Value Proposition
Approach
Chevron
Reduce operating
costs
Communities of
Practice (COPs),
facilitate transfer
of Best Practices
Standardized
Microsoft
platform,
Plumtree portal
$2 billion
reduction in
annual operating
costs
(1991 vs. 1998)
Faster revenue
growth, lower
costs
COPs, central KM
managers,
content
management
Microsoft
platform and
Exchange
10-fold increase in
revenue with
5-fold increase in
employees
Knowledge in the
hands of
employees and
customers
Technical COPs,
intranet &
extranet
Web enabled
Increased
production from
1500 to 6000
bbl/day for
customer
Cap Gemini
Ernst & Young
Schlumberger
Technology Results
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More Results….
Organization
Best Buy
IBM Global
Services
HP
Target
Value Proposition
Approach
Technology
Results
Bring creative,
new solutions to
market faster,
Shorten the
learning curve,
Lower costs
COPs, Steering
Committee,
Design teams
KM Program
Office
Enterprise portal
Skill-based
people finder
Community sites
Reduced customer
request time,
increased sales
productivity
Revenue growth,
industry
leadership
COPs, knowledge
managers,
Intellectual
Capital
Management
System
Lotus Notes,
Raven, Domino
400% increase in
service revenue,
time savings of
$24M in 1997
Revenue growth,
customer demand
COPs, knowledge
maps
Focused on
people and
process solutions
70+ COPs speed
adoption of
consulting
approaches
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KM Approaches
Key Element
Central to KM Approach
Best Practice
Partners
Intranet
Communities of
Practice/Networks
E-mail
Extranet
Collaboration Tools
(Lotus Notes, etc.)
Document Sharing
Systems
Sponsors
70%
45%
60%
35%
50%
27%
40%
9%
30%
22%
30%
13%
Source: Detailed Questionnaire 14
APQC’s Consortium Benchmarking Study 2000
“Successfully Implementing Knowledge Management”
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Knowledge Transfer Approaches
Tacit
Facilitated
Transfer
Networks
& CoPs
SelfService +
Explicit
Resources Required
+
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Useful KM Principles
 Provide useful information at teachable moments
 We know more than we can write down.
 “I don’t know what I know until you ask me.”
 “I can tell you more than I can write, and I can
show you more than I can tell you.”
 Behavior that is rewarded and recognized gets
repeated.
 People value and support what they help create.
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Critical Issues
 Myth: People hoard knowledge.
 Truer: What people hoard is their time
and energy
 They reserve it for high payoff activities
 The limits to sharing knowledge are
 Time
 Access
 Context (situation and consequences)
 Relative payoff
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Knowledge Transfer Approaches
Tacit
Intranets
SelfService +
Portals to key
info
Search
Yellow Pages
Explicit
Resources Required
++
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Best Buy – A Technical Infrastructure
 Enterprise Portal
 Integrated Search
Engine
 Knowledge Repository
 Personalization
 Skills-Based People Finder
 Personal Information
 Location Information
 Skills & Competencies
 Collaborative Tools
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Work Group
Management Tools
Re-useable Templates
Video Conferencing
Lesson Learned:
The three most important factors of an
enterprise portal: content, content and
content.
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Schlumberger
 Intranet
 People finder
 Catalogue of employee knowledge so
others can find experts
 Future Plans
 Integrated video, messaging and
information sharing; simulation is a vital
part of the future plans
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Self-Service +
Design Challenges for IT
 Design strategies
 Grassroots or bottom-up efforts
 Top-down efforts
 Understanding work flows
 End user understanding
 End user involvement in the design
process
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Knowledge Transfer Approaches
Tacit
Networks
& CoPs
K. Sharing
CoPs
Learning
Communities
Explicit
Resources Required
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Definition of Communities of Practice
Groups of people who come together to share and to
learn from one another face-to-face and virtually.
They are held together by a common interest in a
body of knowledge and are driven by a desire and
need to share problems, experiences, insights,
templates, tools, and best practices.
Community members deepen their knowledge by
interacting on an ongoing basis.
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Coming of Age of a New Organization Form
Communities of Practice:
 Boundary spanning
 A channel for knowledge to flow
 Means to strengthen the social fabric
 The locus of knowledge creation and use
 Solve the problem of getting knowledge to
those who need it.
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Communities Provide Knowledge
 Reliance of operating
units on community
knowledge =74%
 Communities set
standards that units
need to follow = 66%
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Types of Communities
Helping
Best-Practice
Knowledge Stewarding
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Media and KM Tools
 Communities use a rich variety of media to
communicate and work.
 Email is still the killer app
 F2F is still the most effective
 More infrastructure –
 Growth in KM tools, portals,
and intranet applications
 Facilitation
 Help
Desks
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Best Buy - Community Sites Application
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Community Sites
 Contain both explicit
and tacit knowledge
 95% re-usable format
 Extensive usability
testing
 Redundant
infrastructure
 Database/ parameter
driven
 Nested Community
Strategy
Lesson Learned:
Let the community and business
leaders design their sites.
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Keys to Sustaining Communities
 Keep the passion
 Encourage evolution
 Assess health
 Hold renewal workshops
 Institutionalize
 Make communities visible
 Create a mechanism for influence
 Ingrain community into daily work
 Build into normal budgeting & planning
 Continue support
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Knowledge Transfer Approaches
Tacit
Between and
to all Units
Facilitated
Transfer
Best
Practices and
Standards
Expert
Facilitators
Explicit
Resources Required
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Lessons Learned IT Parameters to Consider
 IT must be ridiculously easy to use
 Tool should include built-in tracking
mechanisms so activity can be measured
 Tool should be able to be monitored by the
pilot group with minimal help from the IT
group
 Changing and adding content should be quick
and easy
 Able to integrate with or be part of the
corporate information technology platform
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Key Points
 The importance of making connections of people to people and people to
information - is the driver to use IT in KM
initiatives
 IT for KM has become affordable for most
organizations
 The rise of the knowledge portal has
contributed to the “branding’ of KM in
organizations
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Key Points
 BP organizations have reduced the number
of KM systems to a small set of
standardized applications
 IT is helping to build KM into work
processes, from project management to
product development
 “Smarter” search engines allows
information to be organized on the natural
flow of knowledge, rather than codification
systems
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KM Action Strategy “Learn by Doing”
Steps include:
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Selecting projects to learn how to leverage
knowledge sharing for business results
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Looking for quick wins and sustainable
advantage
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Creating new capacities to find and share
knowledge
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Launching a variety of KM projects to build
depth into the KM solution
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Expanding successful approaches to new
issues and areas
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“KM is about connection rather than
collection…The best tool for knowledgesharing is still the coffee-maker. What we
really need to do is to put a coffee pot in the
network.”
Tom Stewart
KM Magazine, March 2000
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