INSTITUTE OF FINANCE AND INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT

IT FOR MANAGERS PROJECT 1 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

TEAM NUMBER 11 TEAM MEMBERS: Abhishek Majumdar Amol Madhavrao Chopade Rakesh Prasad Sathish Vinay Krishna

Submitted to Prof. BUTCHI BABU Date: 13/09/10

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Prof. Butchi Babu for introducing IT FOR MANAGERS to us and for giving us a chance to do this project. We are grateful for his continuous support without which this project would not have been completed. I express my sincere gratitude to my parents, friends and all others who have directly or indirectly inspired and helped me to complete my project with unremitting zeal and enthusiasm.

Contents
S.No 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Introduction Perception Of Knowledge Management Knowledge Management Why Knowledge Management Concepts Of Knowledge Management Role Of IT In Successful Knowledge Management Implementation Of Knowledge Management Knowledge Management In Wipro Conclusion References Contents Page No. 4 5 7 9 11 14 15 17 20 21

INTRODUCTION
This project claims that information technology is and will be quite helpful for knowledge management, however knowledge science cannot be established only by information science. This project also considers the difference between information and knowledge simply, but considers deeply the power or ability to convert from one to another, which is the ability to understand and learn things, or the ability to think and understand things instinctively or automatically. The growing importance of knowledge as a critical business resource has compelled executives to examine the knowledge underlying their businesses, giving rise to knowledge management (KM) initiatives. Given that advances in information technology (IT) have made it easier to acquire, store, or disseminate knowledge than ever before, many organizations are employing IT to facilitate sharing and integration of knowledge. But considering the complexity of KM initiatives and the variety of IT solutions available on the market, executives must often confront the challenging task of deciding what type of IT solutions to deploy in support of their KM initiatives. This project aims to shed light on the IT-KM match by investigating the role of IT in successful KM initiatives.

Perceptions of Knowledge Management:

Most of the respondents first read about knowledge management in the literature but very few had taken a course on it. This is understandable as knowledge management is now a hot topic in the literature of the profession but only a few schools are offering a course in knowledge management. Most of the professionals disagreed that knowledge management is just another fad like total quality management, which corroborates the findings by Ponzi & Koenig (2002) that knowledge management is at least lasting longer than typical fads and, perhaps, is in the process of establishing itself as a new aspect of management.

Source Of Knowledge abt KM

Source Of Knowledge about KM Read in Literature Took Course in School At Professional Conference Attended Workshop Other

11% 3% 8%

13%

65%

However, the respondents were equally divided on whether knowledge management is a new term for what information professionals used to do. Also, a majority of them agree that information management is just an aspect of knowledge management, which is in line with the thinking that information management involves management of explicit knowledge (e.g. documents) while knowledge management involves the management of both explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. Not surprisingly, there was almost a unanimous agreement that information professionals have important roles to play in knowledge management programs.

Strongly Disagree KM is just another fad 10 like Total Quality (15.9%) Management KM is a new term for 3 what information (4.8%) Professionals were already doing Information 1 management is (1.6%) just another aspect of KM Information professionals have important roles to play in KM programs 0 (0.0%)

Disagree 38 (60.3%) 26 (41.3%)

Not Sure 8 (12.7%) 5 (7.9%)

Agree 6 (9.5%) 24 (38.1%)

Strongly Agree 1 (1.6%) 4 (6.3%)

13 (20.6%)

3 (4.8%)

36 (57.1%)

36 (57.1%)

0 (0.0%)

2 (3.2%)

30 (47.6%)

31 (49.2%)

Perception of Knowledge Management

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
The term knowledge management was first introduced in a 1986 keynote address to a European management conference (American Productivity and Quality Center 1996). Knowledge management is the name of a concept in which an enterprise consciously and comprehensively gathers, organizes, shares, and analyzes its knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and people skills. Knowledge management involves data mining and some method of operation to push information to users. Some vendors are offering products to help an enterprise inventory and access knowledge resources. KM is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves codifying what employees, partners and customers know, and sharing that information among employees, departments and even with other companies in an effort to devise best practices. It's important to note that the definition says nothing about technology; while KM is often facilitated by IT, technology by itself is not KM. This term had immediate and vast appeal and, at the same time, spawned strongly felt criticism. The key to the knowledge-based economy is not knowledge-infused products but tacit knowledge that provides the capacity for these knowledgeinfused products and for non-codified knowledge services (Sveiby 1997). The major criticisms of knowledge management are that: It has traditionally conjured up too close an association with information management and information technology (IT). It implies that knowledge can be managed. It tends to be so broad and vague as to have little meaning. It tends to focus on the nuts and bolts of knowledge creation, capture, sharing, use and reuse, rather than providing a true vision and strategy that conveys how knowledge-based enterprises will function and succeed in the new knowledge-based economy.

In addition, more specific criticisms have been levelled at particular views of knowledge management. The most common type of definition describes knowledge management as a set of processes directed at creating-capturing-storing-sharing-applying-reusing knowledge (Sydanmaanlakka 2000). This type of definition is criticized for making knowledge management appear to involve somewhat mechanistic and sequential process steps and for focusing attention on explicit knowledge artifacts as opposed to tacit knowledge. Knowledge engineering reflects this view of knowledge management. A definition with similar problems sees knowledge management as delivering the right knowledge to the right persons at the right time. This definition emphasizes explicit knowledge artifacts over tacit knowledge and ignores knowledge creation. Alternative definitions have been proffered that attempt to better capture the complexities of knowledge and knowledge management. For example, Snowden (2000) defines knowledge management as: The identification, optimization, and active management of intellectual assets, either in the form of explicit knowledge held in artifacts or as tacit knowledge possessed by individuals or communities. The optimization of explicit knowledge is achieved by the consolidating and making available of artifacts. The optimization of tacit knowledge is achieved through the creation of communities to hold, share, and grow the tacit knowledge.

WHY KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT?

Importance of knowledge management

For a company operating in the uncertain global environment, source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge. When markets shifts, technologies proliferate, competitors multiply and products become obsolete virtually overnight; successful companies are t hose that are consistently creating new knowledge, disseminate it widely throughout the organization and quickly embody it in new technologies and products. Knowledge management offers the potential to significantly leverage the value of our IT investment and the intellectual capital of our people. Information technology and information management are essential, but alone are insufficient to achieve information superiority. To achieve this, knowledge management strategies facilitate collaborative information sharing to optimize strategic and tactical decisions, resulting in more effective and efficient mission performance. Todays business environment is characterized by continuous, often radical change. Such a volatile climate demands a new attitude and approach within organizationsactions must be anticipatory, adaptive, and based on a faster cycle of knowledge creation. Some of the current challenges businesses face includes: a growing emphasis on creating customer value and improving customer service; an increasingly competitive marketplace with a rising rate of innovation; reduced cycle times and shortened product development times; a need for organizational adaptation because of changing business rules and assumptions; a requirement to operate with a shrinking number of assets (people, inventory, and facilities); a reduction in the amount of time employees are given to acquire new knowledge; and

 changes in strategic directions and workforce mobility that lead to knowledge loss. New products and innovations are increasing at a faster rate than ever before, along with evolutions in customer preference and need. Managers must no longer investigate their customers superficially; they must dig more deeply than surveys and feedback forms. As organizations have become more complex and information more readily accessible, forward thinking managers have grown concerned with how to allow knowledge to flow freely and how to control and manage this vital flow of information and technology at the same time. The Benefits of Knowledge Management Whether to minimize loss and risk, improve organizational efficiency, or embrace innovation, knowledge management efforts and initiatives add great value to an organization. Some of the benefits of KM include: facilitates better, more informed decisions; contributes to the intellectual capital of an organization; encourages the free flow of ideas which leads to insight and innovation; eliminates redundant processes, streamlines operations, and enhances employee retention rates; improves customer service and efficiency; and leads to greater productivity.

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CONCEPTS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge management (K M) involves the identification and analysis of available and required knowledge assets and knowledge assets related processes, and the subsequent planning and control of action to develop both the assets and the processes so as to fulfil organizational objectives. Knowledge management is the management of an environment where people generate tacit knowledge, render it into explicit knowledge and feed it back to the organization. This forms the base for more tacit knowledge, which keeps the cycle going in an intelligent, learning organization. It is the process of creating, institutionalizing and distributing information and best practices to solve business problems rather than continually reinventing the wheel.

Data, Information and Knowledge:

Data represent observation or facts having no context and are not immediately or directly useful. Information results from placing data within some meaningful context, often in the form of a message. Knowledge is that which a person comes to believe and value on the basis of the systematic organized accumulation of information through experience, communication, or inference DIKE Flow: Data Information Knowledge Expertise Data arranged in a meaningful sequence is what is called as information and capability and experience of using information to make judgments and the ability to link them to decisions or actions is said to be knowledge. When knowledge is applied to specific subject or discipline, for an extended period of time, then it is defined as expertise Knowledge is highly contextual and depends largely on the mental models, experience, values and beliefs of individuals and organizations. The term knowledge management is something which is difficult to define. In an organization which is giving preference to knowledge based working, the knowledge is managed in a better way in terms of quantity and quality in compliance with the organization policies to achieve the ultimate goal of the organization.
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Knowledge is everywhere and it is scattered. In knowledge management, the people are treated as assets and they are termed as human assets. Business organizations which have given importance to knowledge have become a success by implementing new knowledge based methods.

Concepts
Leveraging In-tangible Assets: Cultural concepts: Knowledge sharing, Win-Win attitude Collaboration & Networking Listening skills/External outlook Procedural concepts: Knowledge capture Knowledge dissemination Technical concepts: Knowledge storage Knowledge access Group-work, work-flow, collaborative tools

Instruments of knowledge management :

The process of knowledge management is never complete with the following heads.

Change management Best practices Risk management Benchmarking

Change Management: Change is inevitable. An organization undergoes change due to so many reasons. It might happen because of environmental, economical, legal, political and technological factors. The organization which adopts change quickly will be able to cope with the new developments. In change management the business becomes sensitive to change. The business might be able to achieve the good results on the basis of how sensitive they were in adapting to changes.

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Best Practices: The best practices in business mainly consist of a leader who leads the organization. He or she should be able to lead the human assets by example. The best practices include establishing attainable targets, flat management structure, transparent and flawless communication from top to bottom level and vice versa and constructing futuristic plans for generating positive results. Risk Management: Presence of a good risk management system will help in the smooth flow of the business for a longer period. A good risk management system should be able to understand and measure the risks. The management should sketch new policies and the policies have to be executed on the right time to overcome the risks. When the risks are monitor periodically, then the business is able to diminish various kinds of risks. Benchmarking: Benchmarking, in simple terms is the process of setting standards. The set standards are practiced in the future for better productivity both in qualitative and quantitative terms. Knowledge for business: Knowledge is power. The time has gone when people carried their businesses with good old principles. It is time to adopt quality information and knowledge of the related areas to run business in a better way. Advantages The primary advantages are:

The business can get an advantage in the competitive environment by the implementation of knowledge management and The tricky situations and stress of the business are minimized

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Role of Information Technology in Successful Knowledge Management Initiatives

The growing importance of knowledge as a critical business resource has compelled executives to examine the knowledge underlying their businesses, giving rise to knowledge management (KM) initiatives. Given that advances in information technology (IT) have made it easier to acquire, store, or disseminate knowledge than ever before, many organizations are employing IT to facilitate sharing and integration of knowledge. But considering the complexity of KM initiatives and the variety of IT solutions available on the market, executives must often confront the challenging task of deciding what type of IT solutions to deploy in support of their KM initiatives. This project aims to shed light on the IT-KM match by investigating the role of IT in successful KM initiatives. There are two basic approaches to KM for which IT can provide support: codification and personalization (Hansen et al. 1999). With the codification approach, more explicit and structured knowledge is codified and stored in knowledge bases. The main role of IT here is to help people share knowledge through common storage so as to achieve economic reuse of knowledge. An example of such IT tools is electronic knowledge repositories. With the personalization approach, more tacit and unstructured knowledge is shared largely through direct personal communication. The main role of IT here is to help people locate each other and communicate so as to achieve complex knowledge transfer. Examples of such IT tools are knowledge expert directories and video-conferencing tools. Both these KM approaches are fundamental to understanding the role of IT in KM.

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IMPLEMENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT:

Following steps are suggested K n o w l e d g e c r e a t i o n : to discover, realize, conclude, articulate and discuss for creating new knowledge. K n o w l e d g e c a p t u r e : includes documenting, digitizing, extraction, representation and storage of relevant knowledge Or g an iz ing k now l e dg e : structuring, cataloguing, abstracting, analyzing and categorizing of knowledge for specific usage. K n o w l e d g e A c c e s s : presentation, display, notification, profiling and searching the knowledge for specific application. Kn o wl ed g e A pp lic a ti on o r u s e : includes application of knowledge for business performance, providing service, making new products and continuous learning at organizational level. The set of KM processes primarily involves people. Thus, KM activities are fundamentally linked with collaboration, interaction with people and the systems, which support this.

IMPLEMENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANISATION:

It is inevitable that knowledge management will have a high adoption rate in the next few years. Over time to remain competitive it will be essential to be knowledge-enabled. Just a few years ago email was not a common method for seeking customer service; now customers demand the ability to contact you through channels other than the phone. Going forward, as customers deal with companies that are knowledge-enabled and can quickly and efficiently answer their questions, they are going to expect a greater level of service in all of their support interactions. The bottom line can be summarized with a quote from Gartner, Inc. Those enterprises that include KM processes as part of their customer relationship management initiatives have a higher probability of success than those that dont.

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Outcomes Of Knowledge Management In Organizations

There are three basic outcomes of knowledge management. These outcomes can help individuals, and the organization, shape its knowledge management goals: 1) Make things visible For example, explaining biophysical information, or agricultural information, or rural development information (increasingly with the aim of creating new perspectives rather than transferring pre-packaged solutions) - this is a function of a web database like the ENRAP website (www.enrap.org) 2) Faster policy acceptance Knowledge sharing is linked to interactive policy making where stakeholders enact and promote policies that yield development results. This is often a function of workshops and planning activities among key stakeholders, and the use of practical tools for sharing best practices with regard to adoption and acceptance of policies 3) Facilitate/enhance platform processes Giving voice to different internal and external stakeholders to engage in platforms where negotiation among different parties can take place with regard to local and regional development initiatives. This is part of the function of ENRAP workshops held in India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and the Philippines.

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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN WIPRO Wipros Knowledge Management Vision:

To be an organization where knowledge capture and sharing is the way we work, offering customers speed-to-deploy as well as innovative products and services focused on their needs, and offering employees an environment of continuous learning and productivity improvements.

Wipros Knowledge Management Journey:

Pre-Implementation Phase

Implementation Phase

Culture Readiness Assessment

Awareness Creation & Brand Building

Post-Implementation Phase

Sustaining the Initiative

Knowledge Audits Identified Areas For Collaboration

Knowledge Architecture Defining Process of KM

Qualifying Benefits

Analyzed Existing Infrastructure Evaluated Various Technologies

Designing & Setting Up the KM Portal

Centralized Knowledge Storehouse

Key KNET applications:

DocKNet The repository of documents. Place to go to for anything ranging from technical documents, proposals to training material on various subjects War Rooms It is a virtual workspace for time -bound and task oriented jobs. Konnect The Yellow pages with an associated database of experts, queries, responses and ratings. Popular and very useful. The repository of software reusable components and tools developed in-house.
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Dock Net

Comprehensive repository of all document categories to assist you in various business, client scenarios and other activities It contains a host of documents that includes proposals, whitepapers, presentations etc. with subscriptions and discussion forums Repository aiming to provide single access to all the information, previously available on Sales Support & TeckNet Contributions to DocKNet could come from Verticals and Horizontals o Different verticals deal with different industries o Different horizontals deal with different technologies

Konnect

Platform for collaboration, connecting people (seeking help) to people (withexperience and expertise) Share the tacit knowledge within the organization, above and beyond the explicit knowledge captured in the KNet Repositories Members listed under Konnect are volunteers; membership open to all. Confidentiality is provided to users & experts The deliverables include o Answering queries posted by the user(s) o Ensuring that the right profile is provided in Konnect, making it easier for the user to connect to the right consultant

War Rooms

Virtual space for dispersed team members to collaborate Facilitates document sharing, exchange of information, real-time online discussions, sharing work plans and online updates, monitoring the progress of activities. Access privileges and restrictions exist Only accessible through VPN and Intranet

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Wipros Knowledge Management Process Model:

Assess

Identify Business Challenges Review Portal Vision

Define KM Strategy Technology Roadmap Roll-Out Plan

Recommend

Implement Sustain

Implement KM Plan

Monitor Performance

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CONCLUSION:

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References:
1. http://www.wikipedia.org 2. Application On Knowledge Management In Public Administration written by Karl M Wiig. 3. Knowledge Management @ Wipro presented by Wipro Technologies. 4. Methodology Of Knowledge Management Implementation written by V.Bures, University of HRADEC KRALOVE, Faculty of Informatics and Management.

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