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

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Accenture <ul><li>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. </li></ul><ul><li>Great revenue increment in 2001, 2004(two digit increment) </li></ul><ul><li>Embarked upon a new strategy  ”High Performance Delivered” </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Substantially increase company’s focus on outsourcing </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Oriented to improving shareholder value for its clients </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Emphasizing the creation and application of intellectual and technological assets to apply in work with clients </li></ul></ul><ul><li>organizational structure also evolved </li></ul><ul><ul><li>5 operating groups  18 industry groups which made up the five operating groups, eight capability groups </li></ul></ul>

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

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Knowledge Management <ul><li>Substantial budget pressures on both the training and knowledge management groups </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Several of the most senior knowledge managers left Accenture </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>30% of all the knowledge managers left or were laid off </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Cost reduction by moving knowledge management functions “offshore” </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>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 </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Although the learning and KM activities remained largely separate and decentralized within Accenture’s business units, there were some joint initiatives </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Developed a personalized learning management system called “myLearning” </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><li>As the content of KM proliferate, information finding problems happened </li></ul><ul><ul><li>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 </li></ul></ul>

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

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The new knowledge exchange <ul><li>Accenture changed the foundation of the Knowledge Exchange, from Lotus Notes to Microsoft’s Sharepoint </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Design of the new Knowledge Exchange were </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>to leverage existing and packaged software </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>to extend SharePoint only to support critical requirements </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>The solution was designed </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>to be simple, cost efficient and effective without an attempt to recreate all existing Lotus Notes functionality </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>to contain all high-value content </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Opposed to trying to get everything working from the beginning </li></ul></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>from an end-user perspective </li></ul></ul></ul>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

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The new knowledge exchange(cont’d) <ul><li>The strategy identified key insights that drove the overall design: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Search quality is the most important aspect of the infrastructure </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>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 </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>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 </li></ul></ul>

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

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STRATEGY SESSION <ul><li>20 people critical to the delivery of Accenture’s KM capability came together to meet and discuss the future direction of KM </li></ul><ul><ul><li>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 </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Knowledge Management Mission </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Drive value from knowledge to enhance revenue, reduce cost and foster innovation </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Knowledge Management Vision </li></ul><ul><ul><li>To create a world class knowledge-sharing culture and environment that contributes to Accenture’s success </li></ul></ul>

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

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

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

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