Presentation I have given to a few professional bodies on the link between intellectual capital, knowledge, marketing and performance

1. Using Technology to Enhance
Competitiveness and Leverage
Intellectual Capital
Robert Sawhney
Managing Director, SRC Associates Ltd (Hong Kong)
CCH Singapore
17th Aug 2011
www.srchk.com 1

2. Objectives
• Understand the role of knowledge and
technology in enhancing competitiveness
• Identify the link between a knowledge
orientation and performance
• Touch on social media and its role in
leveraging IC and enhancing performance
• Learn about the structured and free access
approach to knowledge
www.srchk.com 2

3. Knowledge orientation vs KM
• "If only HP knew what it knows it would make
three times more profit tomorrow"
(Lew Platt, ex CEO Hewlett Packard)
• "The capabilities by which communities within an
organisation capture the knowledge that is
critical to them, constantly improve it and make it
available in the most effective manner to those
who need it, so that they can exploit it creatively
to add value as a normal part of their work"
(GlaxoSmithKline)
www.srchk.com 3

4. Cont’d
• Hence, firms with a strong knowledge
orientation are said to have a distinctive
capability in KM
• These are organizational routines oriented
towards the management of knowledge
www.srchk.com 4

5. Roughly what we are trying to do
www.srchk.com 5

6. Case Study: Deloitte
• Use of social media and technology for
enhancing collaboration and knowledge
sharing began to accelerate in 2008
• This started with Yammer
(https://www.yammer.com/about/product)
where over 3000 staff use the service for
collaborating
• Has led to new services and innovation,
contribution of A$20m to bottom line
www.srchk.com 6

7. Cont’d
• Has also increased staff retention due to feeling of community
• Also set up a YouTube channel in 2008
• The firm also has a Innovation Academy which is a managed
platform that fosters idea generation, learning and collaboration.
The idea being to use social media to drive innovation and revenue
• This led to the staff inspired Leadership Academy, a subscription
based multi million dollar business for Deloitte
• Tap into tacit knowledge, make it explicit, modify it and use it for
client value
• The firm started using twitter (@Green_Dot) in 2009 and claims to
generated a number of new clients by distributing its thought
leadership
• In essence, the firm trusted its staff to use social media and it paid
off!
www.srchk.com 7

8. Something to chew on!
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn3NqvSt
ekY&feature=related
• Single, double and triple loop learning
www.srchk.com 8

9. Structured vs free access appraoch
• Technology is a vital enabler of collaboration and
knowledge sharing but firms need a strategy for knowledge
work
• Free access - Their need for access to IT sources—ranging
from the Internet to various online databases and social
media to work tools such as e-mail, spreadsheets,
presentation tools, and more complex business intelligence
analytics—is presumed to be equally eclectic and
unpredictable
• Good if people can control but research shows that
knowledge workers spend 25% of their time looking for
information but only 16% of content within a firm is located
in places which are accessible to the worker
www.srchk.com 9

10. Cont’d
• Structured provision - Structured-provision
technologies first appeared in the early 1990s
and have improved considerably of late. They
often have a range of functions. The most
important is workflow technology that controls
how knowledge workers get information and job
tasks (i.e case management systems)
• Can result in large increases in productivity for
certain tasks but can also lessen autonomy and
hence create resistance among professionals.
Also require extensive system and process design
www.srchk.com 10

11. Examples
• Freshfields (global law firm) – in 2007, firm decided old intranet was too
cumbersome, out of date and needed changing
• Instead of spending large amounts of money on an IT driven upgrade,
decided to use a confluence wiki
• Used a small group of early adopters to roll out incrementally
• The working group was also multi-disciplinary, consisting of the project
manager, developers, usability and information architecture experts, who
met with representatives from different practice groups, offices and
central support functions to clarify their information structure needs for
the new intranet. The project manager was then able to create an action
plan based on the actual rather than perceived needs of the various
stakeholder groups
• Developed over 6o wikis for different practices and by 2008, when
approval was needed for full roll out, many of the decision makers had
already used it and were fully in support
• The wiki is now the preferred knowledge sharing platform in the firm
www.srchk.com 11

12. E&Y
Processes
Strategy Strategy • Create policies and procedures
• Identify critical factors / decisions • Identify knowledge leaders,
that will drive business results resources and roles
• Establish business case • Develop and deploy knowledge
• Develop executive sponsorship processes to acquire, filter,
develop, maintain, update and
deploy necessary content
People / Organisation
• Define measurements &
incentives Content
• Define knowledge competencies • Identify strategic knowledge
& behaviours Technology Infrastructure needs and sources
• Develop knowledge processes • Establish basic connectivity • Develop classification scheme
for education / training that meets Business needs
• Establish robust content management
• Deploy communities / networks capability • Reorganise existing content
that meet strategic needs • Establish community enablement • Establish connectivity to external
• Anticipate and manage changes content
• Establish project enablement
in work habits and behaviours • Establish shared services for
• Establish shared infrastructure for
• Establish shared services knowledge where needed
search/navigation, collaboration,
content management, content delivery
12

13. Cont’d
• Developed the Centre for Business Knowledge which became
critical to the firms strategy in the early 90s
• As part of its ongoing client centricity, the firm decided to
incorporate Factiva into its knowledge systems in 2001
• E&Y’s knowledge infrastructure pivots on Kweb with over 1700
databases and 1.5m documents
• Ernst & Young has integrated external content from Factiva into the
KWeb, so employees can search both Ernst & Young’s intellectual
capital and external content, and also subscribe to email news feeds
(Factiva Track Folders) on their clients and topics of interest from
within their web-based, knowledge navigation tools - Community
HomeSpaces (CHS). A CHS provides a central point for communities
to access their most important tools, resources and information
• Firm has over 25 different KM tools
• In 2005, satisfaction with the usability of Kweb declined
www.srchk.com 13

14. Cont’d
• Firm decided to evaluate review and re-design
1. Process:
2. Expert review
3. Field studies
4. Re-design
5. Usability testing
6. Iteration
7. On going monitoring
www.srchk.com 14

15. Knowledge, marketing and
performance
www.srchk.com 15

16. Final Framework
Which clients?
Which industries?
Which services?
What value?
www.srchk.com 16

17. Thank You
• If you want any of the full references for work cited or have any questions,
please feel free to contact me:
• bob@srchk.com, www.srchk.com
• Blog: www.marketingasia.typepad.com
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertsawhney
• LinkedIn – Robert Sawhney
• My books:
www.srchk.com 17