CASE STUDY

TCS sees synergy in Gen X tools

A team of engineers at India’s largest IT services provider firm. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was working on a project for an important client. While it was co-coordinating work from three geographical units - Europe, South America and India - it was finding it difficult to collaborate through telephone or other voice means as there were language and pronunciation hurdles. It was then that a project manager suggested the use of a central instant messaging (IM) system. Not only could the team coordinate better but it could do so faster and with conviction.

This is simply an instance of how the knowledge management (KM) system at TCS has undergone a sea of change over the last 20 years. It now uses tools that are popular among Generation ‘X’ such as IM, blogging, and jam sessions.

TCS, for instance, uses a single system for IM worldwide. That’s not all, it uses multiple universal access technology, private IP telephony (where an employee can dial a seven-digit number and speak to anyone anywhere in the world), and video conferencing.

“The latest technology was set up two years ago. We have been upgrading regularly. TCS’

knowledge management initiative has always kept pace with the latest technology available at the time. The current KM portal using the latest technology encourages sharing, and acts as a store-house of corporate knowledge,” says Anant Krishnan, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, TCS. Many of the collaboration tools are yet to be integrated into the KM portal.

Currently at TCS, the KM portal - build using Microsoft’s Sharepoint - uses 8-9 channels of communication to get the 100,000 plus employees involved. Other than these channels, the company also uses the ‘Just Ask’ system (embedded into the KM), collaboration tools, Blog platform and Idea Storm.

The Idea Storm is a once-a-year event wherein 2-3 topics are posed by the corporate team on which ideas are invited by everyone.

IM is clearly the most popular method with almost 1,000 online meets happening on the system everyday across the globe. Followed by Just Ask System, which could be a simple question and answer interaction to a detail discussion.

NOTES

However, it is blogging that has caught on quite rapidly. Almost 40,000-50,000 TCS staff blog on the official intranet, including Krishnan.

“I use my blog as a means to gathering inputs on some problem I might face or on specific platform,” he says.

For instance, within this is a system called TIP. It is an anytime open portal for product innovation and potential new ideas. “I get about 25,000 solutions a year on any given issue right from how TCS should innovate its buses to product innovation. Of this 15-20 are reasonable good product and services idea,” adds Krishnan.

TCS has also initiated a feature called My Site. The system, embedded into the KM portal, allows each associate to have a personal page like facebook or orkut. Now, 8,000-10,000 employees are using this.

Krishnan opines that the immediate advantage of the KM portal is to get solutions to practical problems. “In the 80s KM were deployed with an ability to get tactical teams to work on programmes, today most interaction we see are on short run immediate practical solutions,” says Krishnan.

Going ahead the IT behemoth will continue to invest in adopting social networking tools. It will add many more feature in its blogging systems, create Wiki’s among other tools. Krishnan believes as the company becomes larger and as the usage in business will multiply because of the sheer access this allows.

Question: Critically analyse the case in the light of collaborative concepts and list the Tata’s collaborative initiatives.

SUMMARY

Companies that build competitive advantage through effective information and knowledge management must continually refresh and update their intellectual capital. This is the process of organizational learning. Applying the concept of learning to organizations, organizational learning can be described as the collective learning of the organization. Learning Organization is an organization that purposefully takes steps to create architecture to enhance and maximize the potential for explorative and exploitative organizational learning to take place.

Knowledge has to be captured and codified in such a way that it can become a part of the existing knowledge base of the organization. Knowledge capture is a demanding mental process in which a knowledge developer collaborates with the expert to convert expertise into a coded program. After knowledge is captured, it is organized and codified in a manner amenable for transfer and effective use. Knowledge codification is organizing and representing knowledge before it is accessed by authorized personnel.

NOTES

Knowledge management infrastructure is a prerequisite to knowledge sharing which is viewed as a combination of people, technology and content.

A Knowledge Repository is a computerized system that systematically and continuously captures, organizes, categorizes and analyses an organization’s knowledge assets. The repository can be searched and data can be quickly retrieved. It is a collaborative system where people can query and browse both structured and unstructured information in order to retrieve and preserve organizational knowledge assets and facilitate collaborative working.

Collaborative platform is a tool that supports team members or other tools that share information and contribute to knowledge management system. The collaborative platform, along with the communications network services and hardware, provides the pipeline to enable the flow of explicated knowledge, its context, and the medium for conversations.

SHORT QUESTIONS

1. Define organizational learning.

2. Distinguish between organizational learning and learning organization.

3. What are the characteristics of learning organizations?

4. Compare learning organization with traditional organization.

5. Explain knowledge codification in your own words.

6. Distinguish between decision table and decision tree.

7. How knowledge codifications differ from knowledge creation?

8. What is a knowledge map?

9. How does knowledge map differ from decision tree?

10. How would you identify expertise?

11. What is the interviewer effect?

12. Define brainstorming and how it differs from e-brainstorming?

13. What is protocol analysis?

14. What are the distinctive features of on-site observation?

15. Distinguish between protocol analysis and Delphi method.

16. Give the differences between blackboarding and electronic brainstorming?

17. What is concept mapping?

18. What is a knowledge repository? What are its contents?

19. What is knowledge refining?

20. Distinguish between intranet and extranet.

21. What is a portal?

22. What is bulletin board?

In document DBA 1735 Knowledge Management (Page 137-140)