In my pervious blog I mentioned that our organization" VOSAPA inc." is a Mobile Phone Retail Company. Now it's time to unfold the basic structure of our organization for the purpose of implementation of Knowledge management system using KM School. The basic structure is simple, Emmanuel as CFO, Abhijith as CS&PO, Vaida as CMO, Praveen as CIO, bankie as VPHR and I, Salis khan as CEO. Our main office is in London with 7 branch offices all over the country. Our 430 retail outlets are connected with 7 different warehouses with 4500 knowledge workers. We anticipate bringing innovation and customization in our services and preserving intellectual and providing practical sources of knowledge in our organization. We have decided to implement Knowledge management system in our organization. The objective of the project is to create, improve, manage knowledge asset, "improve the knowledge environment "and "Delivering acquired knowledge to knowledge works" (Thomas, 1998). The focus of KMS is mainly to improve the knowledge and skill of our Customer care and retail centre staff and to aid other departments in delivering their organization goals.
To start KMS project in organization, we have to first understand the organization culture, goal and economic condition. We categorize the key area to address for major change and minor change. Moreover, we isolate the key department, Admin\HR which will be the stakeholder in this project, for human capacity development such as training, environment, policies, IT for development of basic infrastructure like application, network, storage and other technical support. Success indicators of KMS project decrease the customer waiting time in retail centres, provide customized mobile phone, deal with targeted clients and improve the supply of mobile phone between warehouses and retail centres.
We study different Knowledge management Schools to identify what fits accurate in this situation but 'as suggested by one of the organization during class discussion that there is not one life cycle which truly fits an organization it should be tailored to fulfil organisational needs', we agree with the idea and decide to use Earl 7 Schools (2001) primarily and other schools of thought to form an hydrate solution. Earl (2001) proposes that these schools are not mutually exclusive and we can find two or three in some organizations. Therefore we are not using all.
We select Cartographic schools for Earl 7 School (2001), to deploy Directory in our HRMS (Human Resource Management System) which contains the profile of all the employees, especially areas of expertise, list of pervious project, current project, location and contact detail. It is like the yellow page of our organization. It will help us to locate the accurate person who has the knowledge of particular problem. As Hansen at al (1999) explains the importance of Bain's "people finder" database which help in finding consultant which could help them in solving problems.
From the Technocrat category in Earl 7 School (2001), System methodology is chosen to deploy a web base solution portal in each department. This will as a common electronic repository which contains solution of common occurring issues and best practices. Employees can add more tips, tricks and experiences, which use to resolve problems and beneficial to others. This web base portal is managed by a team from each department which scrutinize new solution posted by employees and analyse the impact of system, policies and procedures and allow it to be used by others. This approach helps people to retrieve knowledge without contacting the person who develop (Hansen at al 1999)
One aspect of this project is to create knowledge community within our organization. Earl (2001), in Organization School of Behavioural Category explains, "The essential feature of communities is that they exchange and share knowledge interactively". To achieve this we set up Express in our intranet portal to share and pool in knowledge among our employees. They create forum regarding ongoing projects and sales and marketing campaigns where employees can share their experiences, give feedback and ideas about products and services. MExperss is an internal messaging service which can be used for desk to desk video conferences and chatting. It helps in solving external and internal issues.
We have introduced an open office culture to create the knowledge friendly environment and decrease the gap between management and employee. Here, every employee can sit where ever he or she wants. There is no separate sitting arrangement for management. This automatically decreases the barrier between the management and employees. Everyone can access the manager or even director easily and management can implement their decision very quickly and effectively. Our HR department introduces T.V lounges and kitchens in every office where employees can meet and share knowledge through discussion. This idea is based on the spatial school.
It is perhaps what Earl (2001) suggest as "An important feature of knowledge communities is that they bring together knowledge and knowers."
Knowledge management models don't provide any idea. We have to think how to convert explicit knowledge captured during KMS to improve the tacit knowledge of our employees. We have come up with an idea that every employee must undergo two training sessions in a year, first to improve the technical skills and second to improve the managerial or behaviour skills depending on the job group. Every manager must undergo training to improve their management and inter personal skills. Before every job group changes, every employee must pass exam which is held after the trainings mentioned above so that we can judge their abilities. Sherelle Folkes (2006) interviewing Tim Whiting Reading CEO of Phone 4 u explains "we have to ensure we are growing the capability of all of the people in the organisation all the time."
This is first phase of this project; you will find complete implementation and result on our organization website: http://vosapainc.blogspot.com/
soon
Reference
- Hansen, M.T., Nohria, N. and Kierney, T. (1999), "What's your strategy for managing knowledge?", Harvard Business Review, March-April, pp. 106-16.
- Earl, M.J. (2001), "Knowledge management strategies: toward a taxonomy", Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 215-33
- Sherelle Folkes interviewing Tim Whiting Reading CEO of Whiting's arithmetic 27/02/2006 viewed on 06 febrary 2009 http://www.phones4u.co.uk/Info/info_latestnews.asp title Mobile News magazine article - Interview with Phones 4u CEO, Tim Whiting
- Thomas H. Davenport, David W. De Long, Michael C. Beers (1998), "Successful Knowledge Management Projects", Sloan Management Review. January 15, 1998 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 43
