200 points to collect information on knowledge management

Knowledge Management - Cases and Thoughts

Today, knowledge management is no longer just a fashionable slogan. Emerging companies have created impressive performance by relying on knowledge management, and aging companies are exuding youthful vitality by relying on knowledge management. So, how important is knowledge management? How much benefit can it bring to enterprises? How can we "manage" "knowledge" well? How will Chinese enterprises face the wave of knowledge management? The author cannot make a comprehensive theoretical analysis on these issues. Therefore, this article will bring together some outstanding cases of knowledge management to serve as a data collection and hope to find some answers.

Part 1 The Importance of Knowledge Management (1)

In today’s stock market, the value of companies such as software development and bioengineering technology often greatly exceeds their actual tangible assets. value. Even in traditional industries such as manufacturing, companies gain and maintain competitive advantages through technical know-how, product design skills, problem-solving experts, personal creativity, and innovation capabilities. Knowledge management is a discipline that studies how to acquire capabilities based on the above knowledge, and how to preserve and distribute these capabilities for the overall benefit of the organization. It helps managers innovate and adapt in the face of change, thereby increasing the value of the organization.

First, by increasing production levels, the investment returns from expanding production scale gradually decrease. Tools for managing and evaluating durable assets such as TQM, Reengineering, and Activity Based Costing are quite abundant and have been used by a large number of companies (for foreign countries). First-class production is a necessary condition for enterprises to gain a foothold in competition. Therefore, companies now regard management knowledge and innovation processes as the most important practices to improve customer satisfaction and increase competitive advantage.

Second, for the same reason as the first point, the global economy has significantly transformed over the past fifty years from a value system based almost purely on manufacturing to one based on intelligence and technology. value system. In the United States, manufacturing employees accounted for only 34 of the labor force in 1980, compared with 57 in 1940 (76 in 1900). In addition, investors now focus most on companies that have relevant management skills and can adapt to changes in the environment, rather than the value of their fixed assets. A company's future and value depend more than in the past on its ability to quickly introduce new products, develop new markets, and respond quickly to threats.

Third, the rise of the “entrepreneurial economy”. With the increasing importance of corporate culture and the rise of venture capital funds (in the United States alone, they increased from US$14 billion in 1985 to US$46 billion in 1997), entrepreneurship The rise of the economy. Because an entrepreneur's important talent is to re-employ value in new business models, the pace of change will continue to accelerate. These new business models continue to pose challenges to existing sales, management, and financing methods.

Finally, technology itself has created the need for knowledge management. The ability to retrieve information, knowledge, and data has far exceeded people's ability to absorb and analyze information in a concentrated manner. If employees have the skills to access information and the tools to grasp trends and opportunities, the company will have a clear competitive advantage in the face of market changes.

Knowledge management ensures that people have the skills and information they need to appropriately assess business problems and opportunities, and to assist people in responding to the changing social, industrial, economic, and customer demand environment. Be prepared.

So, how deeply rooted is knowledge management? Please read the knowledge management research report released by KPMG.

KPMG’s survey results show that knowledge management is not a temporary fad, but a subject worthy of research and attention. The survey results also show that although companies still have many difficulties in implementing knowledge management, truly implementing knowledge management programs can indeed bring benefits.

The survey shows that people’s understanding and attitude towards knowledge management have changed significantly. Only 2% of people think that knowledge management is just a topic that is temporarily popular and will be forgotten soon. In a September 1997 survey by the Information Systems Center of the Cranfield School of Management, as many as one-third of people believed that knowledge management was only temporarily popular.

This shows that knowledge management is becoming more and more important and has also been greatly developed. 10 of them believe that knowledge management has significantly changed the way their organization does business.

The survey results also show that people's understanding of knowledge management deepens as the size of the organization increases. Almost all the interviewees from large companies have heard of knowledge management, while nearly one-fifth of the interviewees from other companies have never heard of knowledge management.

43% believe that their organization should implement an appropriate knowledge management program. Two-thirds of employees at the largest companies think so, compared with only one-quarter at other organizations.

Part 2 Beneficiaries of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management has given its followers amazing returns. In this part, I will list four beneficiaries of knowledge management. , to see how they approach knowledge management.

Case 1 BP Amoco used knowledge management to save US$700 million (2)

In 1998, Greens and his team used knowledge management methods to save BP Amoco 700 million US dollars. “Greens was the No. 1 money maker in the knowledge management industry.” In 1997, John Browne, the chief executive of British Petroleum, asked him to lead a project to share best practices. , reuse knowledge, accelerate the learning process, and other means to improve company performance. British Petroleum is currently BP Amoco. Greens, along with nine people on his team, used the first year to dig in and make some adjustments to their approach, saving $20 million that year. They started working single-mindedly in 1998, increasing the company's financial surplus by $260 million for the year. How did he do this?

In the rigid, decentralized management of BP Amoco, the heads of 126 business units have to sign a "performance contract" with the company regarding financial, environmental and other performance, and then most of them just You can take care of yourself. So Greens looks for people with tough goals who need help and aren't afraid to ask for it.

Two key principles of knowledge management are revealed here. First, "plan your pilot projects carefully to make them successful" by identifying people who want to make them work while avoiding cynicism and flattery.

Second, "Every company has significant cultural characteristics that you can rely on." At BP Amoco, the "performance contract" is as serious as an oath, and people will do their best. Go all out to ensure their commitments are fulfilled.

In 1998, President Greens launched 15 projects that could use knowledge management to make money, including: helping the company enter the Japanese retail market; shortening the downtime of a polyethylene production plant; An oil refinery in Rotterdam went out of business for maintenance - a scheduled shutdown.

Greens illustrates another key principle with the following statement: "If you say, 'Tell me everything you know about such-and-such,' people will resist. Not because they don't want to tell you, but because it sounds like a daunting task, but if you ask very specifically, they'll happily answer. "This is what Greens calls "peer assistance." .

Another Greens method is "post-war commentary".

This is borrowed from the U.S. Army’s practice of learning by doing, using just 15 minutes to ask these four evaluative questions: What should have happened? What actually happened? Why did the change occur? What lessons can we draw from this to guide practice? The "reflection" method refers to a more detailed post-mortem analysis. These three techniques are all very useful in their own right, and they can also be applied to the creation of networks. President Greens created 20 of these knowledge assets, with topics such as "What does BP Amoco know about restructuring?" "What about establishing sales points in new markets?" "What about refinery shutdowns?" What about maintenance? "Wait. Greens emphasized: "They are not the most important thing. The most important thing in any intellectual asset is the connection with the people involved."

Greens' other two methods are to use technology and people contact. One is to facilitate seeking expert help, he established a voluntary intranet "phone book" on the internal network; more than 12,000 employees (the company's total number of employees is 100,000) have included themselves in "Connect". Another method is a new technology that can be used to convene computer desktop video conferences, send multimedia emails, and allow people in remote places to share "whiteboards" in real time. It's powerful enough to allow someone in Venezuela to virtually sit next to a colleague in Alaska. Greens says "virtual teamwork" is the only expensive part of his job. This does require a lot of investment.

Greens invented almost nothing. BP Amoco's "tools" are living proof that repurposing good ideas can bring billions of dollars in value. Greens estimates that 30 to 40 of BP Amoco's business units have integrated knowledge management tools and concepts, and more are catching up. More than 300 people have volunteered as part-time knowledge management managers. Greens said: "I think I lost my job."

Enlightenment

Everyone is a source of knowledge, and everyone can have inspiration. The so-called knowledge management naturally includes the development, management and application of the knowledge of subordinate employees. This requires a deeper level of cooperation between managers and their subordinates. Some state-owned enterprise leaders are aloof and far from the requirements of knowledge management. In fact, this requirement is not excessive at all: first, equality, not equality in level, but equality in creativity; second, contact, close and convenient contact.

Case 2 Sun relies on its knowledge network to enhance sales capabilities (4)

The chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems has always believed that "only computers connected to the Internet can be called It’s a real computer.” With the explosive growth of the World Wide Web and enterprise LANs, this view has proven to be the most important technological prophecy of our time.

Sun actually practices this view. Recently, Sun Microsystems launched a new, very powerful knowledge system to enhance its sales process.

Sun's headquarters is located in the famous "Silicon Valley" in California, and its SunWEB intranet closely connects the company's more than 20,300 employees around the world. The latest statistics show that the company has more than 1,000 network Web servers supporting more than 250,000 web pages. Distributing company documents through this internal network can save $250,000 per year. The company's current expenditure in this area is only equivalent to the original 5.

Of course, this is not enough. More importantly, providing services such as product catalogs and technical information online can strengthen the company's connections with customers and suppliers.

As a leading provider of hardware, software and other services for corporate intranets and online transactions, more than 90% of Sun's sales revenue is now provided by new products that have been developed for less than a year. of. And it is still trying to continuously expand its product line while shortening the life cycle of each product.

As a result, companies find it nearly impossible to quickly and effectively train salespeople to adapt to new requirements. It is no longer possible to rely on traditional classroom training methods, which often require sales staff to be away from customers for long periods of time, flood them with a large amount of information, and have high travel and accommodation costs. The cost of centralized sales force training at headquarters is approximately $2,225 per employee per week, not including the cost of lost sales opportunities. Therefore, how to help a company's sales staff develop their knowledge and skills without cutting off contact with customers has become very important.

As a result, Sun developed an intranet-based knowledge and training system called "SunTAN". The network's beautiful and easy-to-use interface connects sales training information, sales support resources, product updates and materials, competitive strategies and a range of other content stored on the intranet.

SunTAN manager developed a "distributed learning system" based on the "layered storage management model". In other words, they can ensure that as much network bandwidth as possible is used for their product introduction or learning. For example, a demonstration media about the company's new server product is sent to the server in the Kunming sales center. Customers in southwest China could then view the demo at a much faster rate (by accessing the server in Kunming rather than the one in the United States). Similarly, SunTAN operators can also upload information resources to the server for users to download directly to the local server for application. This ensures faster connections and the ability to utilize richer multimedia methods such as video, audio and animation to improve service quality.

This method is attracting more and more attention. Moreover, the advantages of this on-demand learning method over the previous traditional classroom learning method are also obvious. When a report is stored in the form of a video, this new multimedia can free users from the boring, monotonous constant infusion of information and become more engaging. Computer training may become more like a TV with enhanced capabilities in the near future. "We're starting to do things in training that people simply couldn't do before," says employee training manager Jerry Neece. In fact, SunTAN promises to revolutionize the way companies learn. “With this new way of distance learning, you no longer need to memorize all the knowledge,” he added. “The only thing you need to remember is where the knowledge is stored, that is, where you can get it when you need it. The information you need."

Most importantly, SunTAN promises to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of sales personnel. "I think the salespeople are very knowledgeable about the server product line because they know that almost 80% of the company's sales revenue comes from them," Neece explained. "But what about other products? When you want to know about them, you often want to find information related to them as quickly as possible. This is the value of SunTAN. Because it is a system that can query in real time, you can quickly Find the information you need quickly. I think it will help us expand sales revenue. According to the 80/20 principle, if 80% of a company's sales revenue comes from the sale of its main products, then you can use SunTAN. This way can achieve the goal of increasing overall sales by increasing the sales of another 80% of other products.”

Enlightenment

The so-called innovation is often the application of principles in one field to another. On one field. Because many things are similar. For example, no one would put a soy sauce bottle in the study and an ink bottle in the kitchen. The principle is simple: things should be placed where they are used. But in real life, we are exhausted because of the simple truth of "not knowing": When I was in high school, I went to the Affiliated Hospital of Yunnan University to see a doctor. The arduous procedure made me shudder: first go to the first floor of Building 1 to register, and then go to the hospital. Go to the third floor of Building 2 for medical treatment. After getting the prescription, go to the pharmacy on the second floor of Building 2 to calculate the price, and then go back to the charge room next to the registration room of Building 1 to pay.

After getting the receipt, go back to the pharmacy in Building 2 to pick up the medicine - you're done.

It is not difficult to imagine how much damage a similar situation in management would cause to an enterprise! Sun just made excellent use of this principle: placing the information closest to the user, distributing the information originally stored on the headquarters server to various sales centers as needed, and using the most advanced methods, and Problems caused by network congestion are avoided.

As I said before, seek truth from facts and handle problems flexibly.

Case 3 Microsoft made its intranet an easy-to-use knowledge management tool (5)

Knowledge management and information technology are closely related. As the world’s most famous software company, Microsoft built its intranet into an easy-to-navigate knowledge management tool.

In 1995, in order to solve the * sharing problem, Microsoft created a resource center that could accommodate a large number of documents, various research results, and market survey data. Its information services team began to implement this intranet project. To make information easily accessible throughout the company.

At the beginning of the project implementation, the intranet project team first made the directors of each product group at Microsoft understand the importance of this plan, so that they could mobilize their team members to participate in the project, and work with Intranet project teams work together to complete various tasks. Getting help from each product team is a prerequisite for successful project implementation.

To establish an intranet, it is necessary to develop an appropriate and most useful classification directory to help the company search for information within the company. The intranet project team passed a relevance test (distribute directory cards to certain employees. Each card contains information about a certain product, a certain event, employee benefits, etc., and everyone in the company will be able to find it on the intranet. information. They then asked each subject to sort the cards into meaningful categories and analyzed the same categories that emerged during the test. Based on this, they categorize the information on the intranet. At the same time, the way this operates continues to evolve, and they have been paying close attention to the use of the intranet to identify new situations that may arise when people use the intranet.

As a new way, intranet must also encourage employees to use intranet, so that it can achieve its maximum effectiveness. In addition to setting up a dedicated "how to" area on the intranet, Microsoft also strategically promotes the importance of the intranet and emphasizes its significance as a new way to share information. Outreach to departments without Internet access has also led to the establishment of a "user group" on the intranet, where editors, content contributors and webmasters regularly come together to share experiences in building pages and promoting intranet collaboration .

Information about the company's main competitors, partners, and companies related to the company's interests is needed by many people in the sales department, product managers, program managers, and finance, administration and other departments. Microsoft This problem was finally solved by establishing a "dynamic data model" method. Specifically, it is to create a new Web page, representing an origin. The vertical axis is the companies of the company's competitors, and the horizontal axis is various information about these companies. Then connect various appropriate resources to the nodes on the vertical and horizontal axes. Microsoft primarily subscribes to the Dow Jones feed, which allows it to connect rival companies directly to relevant resources. There is no need to update manually and it is available at any time. As a result, positive feedback can be received, so users can easily get an overview and background of a company as well as various news materials through simple intranet browsing. Advanced users can also get information about finance, sales and marketing. In this way, more competitive information can be delivered based on user needs.

Once the basic architecture of an intranet is in place, there is also the challenge of providing relevant competitive information in a timely manner. Microsoft obtains competitive intelligence mainly from the company's sales department and partners through a communication method that combines Web and email by encouraging those who have direct contact with customers or partners to actively upload relevant information.

By encouraging people to contribute valuable information, Microsoft's intranet will become increasingly personalized, customized and personalized based on the functions and information needs of each person's department. .

In general, Microsoft has achieved great success in implementing knowledge management through its intranet. It mainly implements the following functions:

1. A large amount of information, services and tools of different categories can be accessed at the same time. Publishing once and then linking to multiple locations reduces copy labor and the amount of outdated information.

2. Information can be more easily located and published regularly.

3. Improve the comprehensiveness of the application. By running it on the intranet, the application is placed on the page with instructions for use next to it, which reduces support labor.

4. Ensure that everyone has access to the latest information, and communication tools have also been improved.

5. Everyone becomes a developer. By encouraging people across the company to become Web publishers and developers, many departments will be able to designate a moderator, or at least have Web work written into their job descriptions.

Enlightenment

In addition to killing several birds with one stone and saving costs, the most impressive thing about Microsoft’s approach is that it ensures that every employee is involved. This might be what we call a sense of ownership. To make employees have a sense of ownership and actively participate in organizational construction, I believe that the organization should give employees two kinds of trust, namely material and spiritual trust. For the former, Microsoft does not rely on high wages, but on high shares. Every Microsoft employee holds a considerable share of the company based on his position and contribution. Compared to other companies, Microsoft has done this quite thoroughly. As for spiritual trust, Microsoft is also ahead. From establishment to improvement to use, Microsoft's intranet has always been based on the actual needs of employees. Only such an information sharing system can produce huge benefits.

Case 4 Knowledge Management Organization in Ernst & Young (6)

Ernst & Young believes that knowledge management requires the support of senior management, and it also believes that knowledge management requires a framework , and establishing such a framework requires responsive adjustments in organizational structures to accommodate and promote knowledge management.

In Ernst & Young, they tried to adopt business processing and knowledge management systems. This allows employees to easily access the technology and knowledge necessary to make strategic business decisions, and the company continues to make adjustments to these systems. Ernst & Young has established the following related knowledge management organizations to improve the level of knowledge management:

Knowledge Centers

The Business Knowledge Centers (CBK) located in Cleveland, Paris and Singapore are the basic consulting knowledge of Ernst & Young storehouse. This business knowledge center acquires knowledge and information from various internal and external sources, manages and maintains multiple knowledge warehouses, and distributes this knowledge to the company's consultants and clients through different electronic means.

Transformation Center

The Center for Business Transformation (CBT) in Las Colinas, Texas is responsible for developing methods, tools and technologies to promote and support all consulting service capabilities.

Knowledge Network

A total regional team of experienced practitioners in areas such as supply chain management, customer service, product development and exclusive services are available via voicemail and groupware networks to timely exchange some important key knowledge and leading practices.

Innovation Center

The Center for Business Innovation (CBI) in Boston focuses its research on business change. The Innovation Center organizes the year-round research calendar and provides a forum where EY advocates, primarily with CEOs and other change managers, to apply leading experience.

Part Three Knowledge Management in China

The innovations in knowledge management and the benefits obtained by the companies listed in the previous part are indeed impressive.

It also gives people a lot of inspiration. So, how do Chinese enterprises face the wave of knowledge management? What problems exist in knowledge management in my country? Mr. Chen Youhong from the School of Economics and Management of Renmin University of China hit the nail on the head: "Our country's office automation is based on the configuration of technical equipment, rather than on the innovation of management theories, management ideas, especially management plans. Implemented in this way "Office automation is high-input and low-output." (7)

To solve this problem, enterprises need to have a culture that advocates innovation and rewards reform, and also needs long-term support from the government. There are two examples that may give us some ideas.

Nokia was selected as the 99th most admired knowledge-based enterprise in Europe (8)

In a competition called MAKE, Nokia was rated as the 99th most admired knowledge-based enterprise in Europe enterprise. This research and review was primarily initiated by Teleos, a leading advocate and promoter of best knowledge practice delivery. This evaluation, MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise), has become an international standard.

Nokia was elected mainly because it has created a knowledge-based culture that emphasizes learning. This culture encourages creation, innovation, and advocates the role of implicit knowledge, and promotes creativity, networking, and Knowledge is shared.

The selected companies were selected primarily by 231 chief knowledge executives and leading knowledge management practitioners, who were asked to rate European companies (with headquarters in Europe) based on 8 different indicators. Score, for example, in creating culture, nurturing innovation, and optimizing intellectual assets.

Second, the UK wants to establish a "knowledge bank" to support knowledge-based enterprises (9)

In order to solve the problem of financing difficulties for knowledge-based innovative enterprises, the British Ministry of Trade and Industry is in charge of science, technology and industrial policy. The Ministry is considering setting up a “knowledge bank” in the hope of exploring a new way to provide financial support to knowledge innovation enterprises.

The British Department of Trade and Industry said that knowledge-based innovative enterprises are an important driving force for the development of the knowledge economy. However, such enterprises generally do not have much asset security at the beginning of their establishment, making it difficult to raise funds from bank channels. Since these companies are often involved in emerging business areas with certain risks, banks usually have concerns about providing loans to them. In addition, knowledge-based innovation enterprises are generally relatively small in scale and are less likely to attract venture capital.

Several plans have been initially formed for the operation of "knowledge bank". One of them is to adopt a fund approach. The fund will attract private sector investment mainly through the issuance of bonds, with the government also able to inject small amounts of capital. These funds will then lend to qualified knowledge-based enterprises through specialized institutions or ordinary banking channels. Another option is for "knowledge banks" to operate through government guarantees to encourage banks to provide loans to knowledge-based innovation enterprises.

I am not worried about the government’s support. Chinese companies themselves are also willing to invest. Indeed, we are already lagging behind. But what about after investing? If the investment is not for the purpose of producing output, but to show that "something has been invested"; or in other words, after the investment, we think that everything will be fine and call ourselves an "advanced enterprise", we will never get rid of lagging behind.

Mr. He Hua, Senior Vice President of Xerox China Co., Ltd., said in his speech at the opening ceremony of the 1999 Xerox Digital File Mathematical Technology Expo: "In traditional working environments, people enjoy a natural resistance to corruption. In this environment, although knowledge is power, the preservation of knowledge is commonplace. We found that to truly improve the sharing of knowledge, we need to create an environment conducive to sharing. "Indeed, we need more than just. Material investment requires more ideological and spiritual investment

Reference: /LancelotYin/archive/2006/09/11/1207202.aspx