KM IMPLEMENTATION @ TCS

BackgroundTCS started operations in 1968 as a division of Tata Sons Limited, one of Asia's largest business conglomerates, with a wide range of interests in engineering, telecommunications, energy, financial services, and chemicals. TCS started about 40 years ago. TCS was established in 1968 .In FY2006 revenue of US$2.97 billion (from US$2.24 billion in FY2005) and has over 74,000 employees. It has been awarded as triple certification for Quality (ISO 9001:2000,) Security (BS 7799-2:2002) and Services (BS 15000-1:2002) and in it has got 2006 Indian MAKE Award. It is the first company in the world to be assessed at Level 5 for integrated enterprise-wide CMMI and PCMM. Its Global presence operations is in 47 countries, 179 offices.It has the First and largest Software R&D Centre in India and software Exporter in India. It is the first company in the world to be assessed at Level 5 for integrated enterprise-wide Capability Maturity Model Integration and the People Capability Maturity Model.

About the TCS

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that delivers real results to global business, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT, BPO, infrastructure, engineering and assurance services. This is delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model (GNDM), recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata group, Indias largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 198,500 of the worlds best-trained consultants in 42 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $8.2 billion for year ended March 31, 2011 and is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India.

Introduction to KM
Knowledge management is essentially about getting the right knowledge to the right person at the right time. This in itself may not seem so complex, but it implies a strong tie to corporate strategy, understanding where and in what forms knowledge exists, creating processes that span organizational functions, and ensuring that initiatives are accepted and supported by organizational members. Knowledge management may also include new knowledge creation, or it may solely focus on knowledge sharing, storage, and refinement.

KM in TCS
The concept of KM was introduced in TCS in 1995 and the framework for it was defined in 1996. The framework identified the KM components in the business and assessed the culture in TCS to determine its readiness to adopt KM initiatives. Managing knowledge is of prime importance especially for companies like TCS which depend heavily on knowledge for their existence and growth. TCS has gained an expertise in the knowledge management system over the years through its KM initiatives. The KM initiatives of TCS were appreciated by Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) survey, which placed the company among Asia's most admired knowledge enterprises. The knowledge management system aims at capturing the large amount of valuable knowledge hidden in human mind and deliver it to other people who can benefit from it, and to ensure that information can be acted on swiftly to the firms advantage. Knowledge management is a strategic initiative undertaken by TCS years ago in order to protect the intellect within the organization even if the employees have to leave TCS. KM has changed the way people use technology, it places an edge on managing people's mindsets by enabling employees to overcome their inherent resistance to share knowledge with others. TCS has encouraged capturing, storing and sharing of knowledge within the organization and at the same time provided the ability to measure the effectiveness of KM. Technology also plays a vital role in converting tacit knowledge into explicit information and preventing information in the organization.

Challenges
TCS had to undertake the KM initiatives because of high Attrition Rate in IT industry which left the organization with no other option but to implement Knowledge Management System in their company. Also company wanted to sustain and maintain the growth rate and in order to bridge the gaps between various cultures coming together due to mergers and acquisitions taking place all across the world. Knowledge Management (KM) helps TCS to overcome these challenges by delivering tremendous value and providing a solution to enable every person in the organization to access knowledge with the anything, anywhere, anytime paradigm.

KM Implementation
TCS implements its knowledge management initiative through seminars and workshops. A brown bag lunch is a structured social gathering during an organizational lunch time period which is used specifically for the purpose of transferring knowledge, building trust, social learning, problem solving, establishing networking or brain storming. It allows staff a real time exchange of knowledge and experience. Discussion forums help the employees to discuss regarding any queries and problems and get them solved. Technology also plays a vital role in

converting tacit knowledge into explicit information and preventing information. Apart from these TCS has designed a web portal ULTIMAX and KNOWMAX which they use internally for their work. Every employee depending on their grade kind of roles and responsibilities they have in the organisation has access to this portal. This portal is secured and only authenticated employees can log in to the portal. It contains lot of information and whenever needed more facilities are being added to the portal. While implementing a KM solution TCS incorporates three key foundation pillars of people, process and technology, and one must also ensure its continuity, which makes it critical to assess the initiative's maturity.

5iKM3 A well-defined framework, 5iKM3, highlights these five levels of maturity for benchmarking KM program: Initial - Express an interest in adopting a KM program. Intent Realize the potential of harnessing knowledge for business benefits. Initiative - first steps to implement KM through identified change management and processes must be taken. Intelligent - harness knowledge from all sources and derive business benefits, after adopting KM as a process, and draw up a KM vision and roadmap for the future Innovative - Reach the most aspired state of maturity, where KM is institutionalized and becomes part of organizational culture. Objectives of 5iKM3 model are Assess and evaluate the state of acceptance and maturity of the knowledge management initiative. Evaluate and benchmark current people maturity in participating in the knowledge management initiative. Measure the benefits from the knowledge management initiatives. Identify and define the knowledge usage for business benefits Identify and define mid-course corrections in managing knowledge in the organization. In addition, HR department has introduced the practice known as Proactive Employee Engagement Program (PEEP) in order to strengthen the communication among employees. It is a tool for individual mentoring where the employee and the group leader (account head) interact on various discussion points like issues, concerns and developmental needs. The group leader

acts as the mentor and provides guidance to the associates. Track records of PEEP sessions are maintained. The aim of PEEP is to provide employees a platform to voice their problems.

PROPEL The Intervention: Culture Building at TCS

Prior to this, the company introduced another HR initiative titled PROPEL. PROPEL was introduced as a revolutionary intervention with the dual objectives of facilitating the exchange of ideas and helping in immediate problem solving, while also encouraging bonding and selfdevelopment among and within teams. As the organization and its relationships grew, it brought its own challenges, whereas change remained a constant. PROPEL has helped the organization build a culture of collaboration, creativity and also networks of relationships through its two modes: 1. Confluences: Listening to the voice of the employee in a team scenario, by creating a platform for open sharing of thoughts on a relevant theme. This is achieved through a balance of fun, introspection and interaction, while evoking commitment to self development. 2. Camps: Platform for problem solving, focus on the Quality, Cost and Delivery measures of throughput resulting in transfer and adoption of best practices within and amongst relationships in the organization.

PROPEL

PROPEL stands for P-Professional excellence, R-Role enhancement, O-Ownership culture, P-Personal growth, E-Employee involvement and L- Learning. These are individual employee meetings across functions and grades. In this practice employees get to talk to each other directly one-on-one with the senior management. It is not the impersonal e-mail or memo, or the public nature of an open-house session. There is no specific agenda for these meetings. If employees have a suggestion that they want to share, an opinion to express, a problem that they want advice on but never got that face-to-face opportunity, they can easily share it by this process. It is a platform to get to know their team members as well. Employees can talk one-on-one with the senior management at TCS. And to ensure that these interactions have the desired results, the partner uses a feedback form where he/she records the suggestions, comments, problems, solutionsin short, a sort of minutes of the meeting. As for its other HR initiative PROPEL, the objective behind the introduction of this practice is to promote the culture of share-care-grow at TCS.

Benefits from KM
TCS has been benefitted from the KM implementation. A lot of information being shared in organization every day has been documented which can be stored and further utilized by other employee. This has resulted in faster and accurate decision making. This information is easily accessible and any query can be solved from anywhere. The Retention rate of employees has increased due to increased value of employees knowledge. TCS brought a revolution in IT industry with its knowledge management system.

Rewards to employees
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has developed a find an expert social application called Just Ask. The app identifies experts through their participation, based on the answers they give. It uses a points systema kind of virtual currencylinked to a companywide points system that employees use to purchase merchandise from the internal company store.

Employees gain pointsas in a social networkbased gameand are also rewarded materially for their contributions. Initially, the only motivation was social, says Krish Ashok, head of TCSs Web 2.0 Innovation Labs. Source: http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Business-Intelligence/Knowledge-Management-andCollaboration-Create-Knowledge-Sharing-513230/2/

Challenges faced during knowledge sharing

Implementation of KM in TCS itself became a challenge for the managers. Employees were reluctant to share their information among others. They could only be advised but not forced. The real challenge was to make them understand the importance of KM in organization. Another issue regarding KM was that it was difficult to handle a large amount of data. Security and privacy concerns were also there. There were questions regarding who should be allowed, who should not be allowed, what should be documented and what should be junked.

Conclusion
However KM initiative was a revolutionary act which has seen high success in the industry. Knowledge management initiatives enable the creation of communities of practice. Social networks are created. Employees feel more secured and comfortable to work in organistion as KM helps to unite all the employees of TCS where they could share their problems and get solutions for the same. Sharing of knowledge within organization has led to the continuous improvement of productivity of employees. It adds value to strategic and operational Decision Support system because of data that is provided by knowledge management system. New social networks and communities within the organization provides access to peoples knowledge and add s innovation and quality to their work. The ability to capture and harness corporate knowledge has become critical for TCS as they seek to adapt to changes in the business environment. Whether it be learning from past successes or failures, identifying opportunities to improve, or simply enabling teams to become more productive, knowledge management lies at the heart of TCS.