Knowledge management at accenture

Knowledge management at Accenture Richard Ivey School of Business 20090770 Jongsung Lee

Accenture
A well known global firm that became a public company with a successful initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in July 2001.
Great revenue increment in 2001, 2004(two digit increment)
Embarked upon a new strategy  ”High Performance Delivered”
Substantially increase company’s focus on outsourcing
Oriented to improving shareholder value for its clients
Emphasizing the creation and application of intellectual and technological assets to apply in work with clients
organizational structure also evolved
5 operating groups  18 industry groups which made up the five operating groups, eight capability groups

Knowledge Management
In 90s
Adopted a knowledge-oriented strategy: build a knowledge management organization under the chief information officer
By the mid-1990s, the firm built thousands of knowledge repositories on the Lotus Notes platform: Knowledge Exchange
From 2000 to 2002
Responsibility for KM was shifted from CIO to the training and learning organization at Accenture
Learning & knowledge management were combined into a single new group called capability development in 2001
In 2002, the toughening fiscal conditions, training budgets had been cut substantially for Accenture employees

Knowledge Management
Substantial budget pressures on both the training and knowledge management groups
Several of the most senior knowledge managers left Accenture
30% of all the knowledge managers left or were laid off
Cost reduction by moving knowledge management functions “offshore”
Capability Development organization had developed a KM staffing model in which decentralized groups would employ a few “ onshore” knowledge managers with high domain expertise and a high need for contact with their internal client; the rest would move offshore
Although the learning and KM activities remained largely separate and decentralized within Accenture’s business units, there were some joint initiatives
Developed a personalized learning management system called “myLearning”
As the content of KM proliferate, information finding problems happened
Accenture employees dedicated to developing new content often remarked that they found it more and more difficult to get the attention of partners and employees

KNOLEDGE MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY
The problems for managing existing KM system
The KM system was being replaced or augmented with Web-based portals
Most major Accenture groups had their own portals
Despite one central “Accenture Portal” that contained links to many decentralized portals, it could be confusing to find the information one needed
Duplication of documents throughout the organization was very high
The local optimization done by each local company, didn’t seem to work well
It was very important that there be a clear governance structure for the new Knowledge Exchange to improve the consistency of the experience
Target for the new KM system
Barfield who was in charge of KM strategy, decided to develop a governance structure that incorporated senior representatives from each part of the organization

The new knowledge exchange
Accenture changed the foundation of the Knowledge Exchange, from Lotus Notes to Microsoft’s Sharepoint
Design of the new Knowledge Exchange were
to leverage existing and packaged software
to extend SharePoint only to support critical requirements
The solution was designed
to be simple, cost efficient and effective without an attempt to recreate all existing Lotus Notes functionality
to contain all high-value content
Opposed to trying to get everything working from the beginning
from an end-user perspective
user Internal Content Accenture Portal: Knowledge & Resources Search (find.accenture.com) Job Aid / Topic page/ Community of Practice Collaboration: Submit question to experts/CoP’s Direct link via browser favorite Contributions/Accenture developed content Accenture purchased content(Research) Browse to other topic pages/COP myLearning courses method Answer from Accenture experts Accenture Discussions

The new knowledge exchange(cont’d)
The strategy identified key insights that drove the overall design:
Search quality is the most important aspect of the infrastructure
Topic pages are very important for providing context to users who do not immediately find what they need or who are seeking a broader range of content about a subject
While collaboration capabilities are not as widely used, this is a required capability for those who can’t find what they need or are working in an area that requires expertise

LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Training is an investment, not a cost: Vanthourrnout(later Chief Learning Officer)
Training function at Accenture was revitalized
Accenture employees were again rating training as one of the areas that most drove their satisfaction on the company’s annual employee satisfaction survey

STRATEGY SESSION
20 people critical to the delivery of Accenture’s KM capability came together to meet and discuss the future direction of KM
There was a general feeling that the new Knowledge Exchange would provide a strong technical foundation for a renewed contribution from KM to Accenture’s corporate goals
Knowledge Management Mission
Drive value from knowledge to enhance revenue, reduce cost and foster innovation
Knowledge Management Vision
To create a world class knowledge-sharing culture and environment that contributes to Accenture’s success

Issues
The way in which content was added to the system had to be designed
Using SharePoint templates
An initial typology for documents had been developed
Focused on business processes, so that it was easy for people to find relevant documents
Users be represented properly in the management and future development of the Knowledge Exchange
KM would support, as completely as possible, the entire business cycle within Accenture from initial sales proposal to final client delivery
Document obsolescence
How can integrate learning and knowledge management?
Too tightly integrating them might focus knowledge management on reuse and training and reduce its impact on innovation and collaboration

Knowledge Management Vision(cont’d)
Five critical goals for KM
Fostering and sustaining a knowledge sharing culture
Improving the time to competency for new hires
Enabling and enhancing Accenture’s sales capability
Ensuring and improving the ROI for KM
Improving margins and delivered quality on client engagements such as outsourcing and large consulting commitments through speed to capability, use of best practices, etc.

Five forces
Making the knowledge available to the employees Accenture can make entrance barriers high
Can analyze customers based on the customer information in KM system
Can acquire the experts’ techniques to customers
Can help delivery(finding the information of suppliers can be a help)
There are plenty of information of substitution of products/services

Discussion Issues
Which one do you think the most important among people, process, and platform to implement KM system? Justify your answer.
How can you improve the ownership of employees for KM?

Knowledge management at accenture

by sekretnay on May 25, 2010

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