Infosys Technologies: The Implementation Challenges of

Knowledge Management Initiatives

Kavya SS PGP/14/276 Kritika Gupta PGP /14/277 Kulbhushan Baghel PGP/14/278 Lokesh Singh PGP /14/279 Mahtaab Kajla PGP/14/280

Submitted by: Group: R-42

Agenda

Q & A Session

Learnings

Influence

Case Analysis

Introduction - KM

Presentation Time: 12 mins

Q & A Session: 3 mins

Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of

strategies and practices used in an organization to identify,

create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights

and experiences.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management

KM Cycle

Company Analysis

Infosys Technologies

Ltd.

One of the world’s largest

Software Development Contractors

Headquartered in Bangalore,

India

Revenue: $1.6 bn FY ’05,

$5.04 bn FY’10

Workforce: 50,000 Year’05, 114,822 Year’10

First Indian company in Nasdaq-100

Vision Statement "To be a globally respected corporation

that provides best-of-breed business solutions, leveraging

technology, delivered by best-in-class people."

SIT

UA

TIO

N A

NA

LY

SIS

Company Analysis

“Knowledge belongs not only to those

employees who create it, but also to the

entire company"

CO

RE

BE

LIE

F

KM Program: Timeline

• Transferring Human Capital to Organizational Resources

Early Actions; ‘90s

• Low patronage

• Informal Communication

Kshop; ‘99 • Information

Overload

• Higher Search Cost for Reusable Knowledge

KCU; ‘01

• Identification& Fulfillment of teams’ knowledge need

KM Prime; after ‘02

KM Program

• Transforming employees knowledge into company’s resources

’90

• Creation of Intranet Knowledge Portal – Kshop

• Accumulation and reuse of organizational knowledge

’99

KM Program: Kshop

A Employee Issues

B

C

D

Low Patronage by Employees

Communication Media

Communication by means of Informal Networks

Specialized Knowledge

Proliferation of local repositories of specialized knowledge

Processes Issues

No reinforcement and coupling of different processes

KCU Incentive Scheme

Started in 2001 by KM Group of Infosys

Primarily started to jump start contributions to Kshop

For Infosys employees who contributed or reviewed contributions to Kshop

Awards- KCUs which could accumulate and exchanged for money/prizes

KCU scores displayed on scoreboard

Increased visibility of prolific contributors

Advantages of KCU Scheme

More than 2400 new knowledge asset contributions to

KShop : project proposals, case studies and reusable

software codes

Almost 20% employees contributing atleast one knowledge

asset

More than 1,30,000 KCUs generated

Problems with KCU Scheme

• Information overload

• Higher search costs of reusable knowledge.

• Heavy burden on limited number of reviewers resulting in quality degradation

• Destroying the spirit of community and asking culture within the company

First set of initiatives

Major Focus:

Decouple knowledge sharing from economic incentives

Emphasis on recognition and personal visibility for

knowledge sharing contributions more than monetary

awards

Formulation of new composite KCU score emphasizing the

usefulness and benefit of contribution to Infosys

The contribution was rated by actual users also

Demanding tangible proof to justify higher ratings

Reduction in number of KCUs awards for reviewing

contributions

Raised the bar for cashing in KCU incentive points for

monetary rewards

Second set of initiatives

Major Focus:

Improvement of KM Practices within project teams and

practice communities

Modified project templates with automated tools

Implemented Project tracking tool on Kshop to log details

and deliverable

Enabled knowledge codification and extraction

Third set of initiatives

Major Focus:

Removing variances across project teams in

knowledge codification

Introduced hierarchy of roles to broker knowledge sharing

between project teams, practice communities and wider

organization

KM Prime

Responsible for identifying and facilitating the fulfilment

of team’s knowledge needs for each project

Ensuring that team codified and shared critical

knowledge gained during the project after project

completion

Third set of initiatives

Knowledge champions

Spearheaded and facilitated knowledge sharing and

reuse in critical technologies

Swap stories on Kshop to Promote tacit individual and

team level knowledge and experiences.

Influence

New contributors per quarter declined by nearly 37%

Number of new knowledge assets contributed per quarter

declined by 26%(approx)

Slowly new knowledge assets contributed, stabilized and

then increased at a more manageable pace

Lower search costs reported

Increase in quality and utility of knowledge assets available

Learnings

Knowledge management requires much more than just

technology

Attention to the cultural and social facets of knowledge

management

Continuous campaigning required besides investing time

and resources to manage the content

Questions