30 Minute Interview

“K-Edge leverages content management and Web 2.0 to support complex knowledge requirements”

Bhanu Kiran Potta, Director - Knowledge Management Group, Perot Systems spoke to Nivedan Prakash about the recently launched Knowledge Management Portal and its operational benefits

What is the thought process behind your Knowledge Management Portal?

We developed K-Edge, our knowledge management application/platform, to provide a single, comprehensive system that addressed the needs of both the employees as well as the organization. We built an overall vision and roadmap for the organization knowledge management on the enablement of sharing of best practices, processes by creating a system that grows and evolves along with the organization.

Some key objectives of this project are:

• Positively influencing productivity by connecting people with the right content and experts in a timely manner to help project acceleration
• Promote reusability in terms of processes, tools, code-set and methodologies
• Identifying new experts across the organization; promoting peer learning and cloud mentoring-enable sharing of best practices
• Capturing and mining tacit knowledge
• Collaborating across time zones with thousands of users spread over a hundred different projects
• Creating an innovation hub to drive new lines of thought and best practices
• Creating a mechanism to obtain feedback from users

What are the unique features of this portal?

K-Edge is an organization-wide global knowledge management and collaboration portal, which was built to support the complex knowledge requirements of a dynamically growing organization. It caters to both the business as well as an individual’s knowledge needs, by leveraging traditional content management solutions as well as newer Web 2.0 functionalities.

Its features include:

• A multidimensional taxonomy that allows people to find projects spread across the organization using different search criteria
• Communities of Practice (CoP) permit collaboration across many different formats, ranging from discussions, wikis, and asking experts
• Social ratings allow users to build significant data value over time by rating content in any form (discussions, questions, and documents) and posting comments
• Organizational announcements reach employees through the portal and RSS streams bring in external news within the company.
• A blogosphere allows users to run their own private blogs which are used as a platform for promoting their thoughts and ideas
• Contest platforms allow users to participate in an organization-wide contest and keep track of their submissions through the contest lifecycle enabling stronger employee engagement
• The REACH initiative allows users to post their concerns and feedback around a range of issues to a central team that re-directs them to various departments to take action
• The Deeksha initiative allows employees to contribute and be a part of social outreach programs that are undertaken by the company, and suggest their own
• Customized power-packed search allows to put all of this together and display a wealth of knowledge in structured manner to the user

These are but a few of the features that when put together form the Knowledge Management Portal. It caters to the knowledge and business needs of over 6,000 users in multiple horizontal and verticals spread across the globe.

Where do you see the value addition taking place?

There has been a marked increase in collaboration and knowledge sharing across the organization. Employees are able to connect with peers and subject matter experts and access content faster than ever before, thereby saving a lot of time. The advantage of having a single platform to conduct day-today activities has had a positive impact on productivity and has contributed to a more positive user experience. The other benefits include creating and nurturing communities of practice within the organization, and identifying and growing new expertise.

We have seen aggressive growth with over 21 communities of practice and 32 special interest groups established in a relatively short duration. Users have started using social networking to create their own knowledge networks and have started leveraging personal blogging to showcase their thoughts and ideas. This has lead to the business being able to tap into a wider set of tacit knowledge. Innovations and best practices creation and sharing through the platform have led to save time in projects. Groups within the organization have started using survey’s to perform dipstick measures and gauge responses from users over a wide range of business objectives.

Further, employees use the portal as a hub to engage associates outside the sphere of work as well. A number of initiatives have been set-up that addresses these specific needs. The REACH initiative has created transparency about resolving certain issues that employees face within the organization, tremendously improving employee experience. The Pit Stop initiative allows employees to connect with one another and discuss a wide range of subjects ranging from real estate to travel and living. This gave them another dimension outside the business sphere to connect with each other. The Deeksha initiative has allowed employees to enrich their lives by performing social outreach programs that allow them to give back to society.

We have recently moved to an advanced competency based framework to track an associate’s career and this entire framework finds a home on the K-Edge portal, which allows associates to keep track of their career progress and what steps they need to take to make improvements going ahead. Managers are able to keep an eye on the growth of their team members as well in a completely automated system.