K.N.Mishra
Vice President Process Owner(Knowledge Management)

About Knowledge Management

While the concept of knowledge management (KM) has been around since the early nineties, its acceptance as a tool to solve specific business issues has only recently been recognized. However, to many organizations, implementing a knowledge management strategy can initially appear to be a daunting and overwhelming task. Many questions must be addressed before users feel comfortable investing in a KM solution, including: Where do I begin? What technology do I need? How do I ensure the process is managed correctly? How do I measure the effectiveness of my knowledge management solution?

TCIL embarked on this journey in the year 2001 and over the years, has gained vital insights from the modus operandi of Tata Steel. TCIL began with building a knowledge repository with all the employees actively participating in it. This Oracle repository was placed on the corporate intranet. Employees vividly shared their learning obtained through failures, successful experimentations, literature, training programmes and the like. Two years later, in the fag end of 2003 fiscal, we had the establishment of the KM Cell. Valuable inputs from Mr.Ravi Arora of Tata Steel guided us in the formation of 18 knowledge communities with a clearly defined process owner for Knowledge Management as a whole. In his very own words, it's just 25-30% that any IT Tool can support the KM drive. The rest 70-75% is what is demanded from physical knowledge sharing processes and a Knowledge Management framework that will see it through. Our employees have been greatly benefited from the 'Knowledge Manthan' sessions of Tata Steel and we are keen to extend a similar concept in TCIL as well, to facilitate active brainstorming sessions and share live experiences. Our major challenge presently is with refining our knowledge database and keeping it current with business needs.

Knowledge that has an impact on your business strategy is broken down into two distinct categories -- tacit and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the information and expertise that is difficult to document. It is the knowledge stored in employees' minds, such as anecdotal experiences with customers that is often shared around a water cooler or over the phone but never captured electronically. Explicit knowledge is that which can be found in documents, databases, e-mails and logged instant message chats.

It is important to remember that more than 50 percent of a KM solution is about change management and ensuring that our organization's culture and behavior patterns are appropriately accounted for in the KM strategy. The key lies in successfully transforming intellectual assets into useful business solutions through innovation for a competitive edge.

February month of the year is marked as 'Gyan Vardhan' month at TCIL with the sole objective of facilitating flow of necessary knowledge resources, most of which are intangible, to the right place at the right time and to the right people for the right outcomes.

Top