denotes premium content | Dec 5 2008 Feature
posted 1 Dec 1999 in Volume 3 Issue 4
Ark Group Course Review: Developing an
effective knowledge management intranet
Amsterdam, October '99
In this review of
the October '99 KM Intranet Tour, CIBIT host, Noam Shalgi shares his experiences of
the unique visits to ABN Amro Bank, Siemens and PricewaterhouseCoopers. It is
without doubt a perfect example of knowledge sharing at work.
After many
successful Knowledge Management (KM) and intranet events in the UK and the States,
ARK group has decided to conquer the European continent as well! The
first 'Developing an effective Knowledge Management Intranet' event, held in the
Renaissance Hotel in the centre of Amsterdam on October 14th & 15th, proved
to be a very successful step in this direction. It looks as if Amsterdam is good
enough to attract people from all over Europe. We had participants from the UK,
Denmark, Germany, France, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal, and of course
Holland.
The course
opened with a workshop held by Kenniscentrum CIBIT of Utrecht, Holland. Senior
KM Consultant, Eelco Kruizinga explained basic KM principles and how to design
a KM strategy to best suit an organisation. This was approached using Kenniscentrum
CIBIT's useful framework. He than discussed the implications of KM strategies
when designing a corporate intranet. According to Kenniscentrum CIBIT
s view, the focus should be on people and what makes them share knowledge,
rather than on pure IT functionality.
I then described the use of a market
as an inspiring metaphor for KM activities. Think of your intranet as a place
where supply and demand meet. How do you encourage people to supply their
knowledge to others or to make use of what others supply? How can one create a
transparent market, where everyone knows what's for sale?
The aspects of
a Knowledge Market were demonstrated during an interactive exercise. Participants
wrote on a flip-chart what they would like to 'buy', i.e. hear from other participants, and
what they could 'sell', i.e. knowledge and experienced they have had which might be
useful to others. The flip-charts were then displayed on the walls so everyone
could make a shopping list for the coming days i.e. 'who should I talk to in
order to gain more insight into issues relevant to my own organisation?' This
exercise proved to be a very useful one. People quickly understood how much they
could learn, not only from the speakers during the event but also from
co-participants!
ABN Amro
After lunch on the first day, we were
taken by bus to the first site visit; a look behind the scenes of the ABN Amro
Global Transaction Services Intranet. ABN Amro, one of Holland's largest banks,
offered the participants access to the GTS intranet. Participants were able to
learn how working with the intranet looked and felt by actually navigating it
themselves. ABN Amro has explicitly chosen a global layout and structure, where
users have to communicate in English. This should increase availability to
employees knowledge world-wide.
Paul Iske, Vice President of Knowledge Management at
ABN Amro, gave a presentation about the company's strategic view on intranets. One
formula he mentioned is worthwhile remembering: NT + OO =
EOO,
which stand for 'new technologies plus old organisation means expensive old
organisation'. In other words, one must make some organisational adjustments
when implementing new technologies. Ineke Overing concluded this visit by
mentioning some useful Do's and Dont's from ABN Amro GTS's experience. These
included:
The first day ended with a very tasty Indonesian meal, the famous “rice
table”, with an endless number of dishes. Sharing the meal helped to continue
what started during the Knowledge Market: lively conversations about intranets
and sharing lessons learned from the participants’ own experience.
Day Two started with a site visit
to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Their vision of a global intranet is different to
ABN Amro. The activities of PricewaterhouseCoopers were once strongly
divided according to country. Now they try to create a global environment. Unlike
ABN Amro they decided to let each country decide what to publish on the intranet
and why. Documents may be published in English or in the local languages.
This avoids the potential situation where people wouldn't publish in English due
to language obstacles. The fact that PricewaterhouseCoopers has used Lotus
Notes databases for years helped them link to the intranet very easily. As
Peter Janssen of PwC said, it is just a question of 'Dominon-ising'.
Siemens
The last part of the course involved a
demonstration of Siemens' intranet. Siemens see intranets as an enabler. Their
intranet contributes to creating Communities of Practice. According to the
company, intranets are no substitute for human contacts, only an addition.
They chose to
create links between intranets which already existed in many parts of the
organisation, without demanding a global layout or structure. In this way, users
of existing intranets didn't have to get used to a new layout, and were
introduced at the same time to many new intranet components.
The company has
explicitly thought of how to attract people to use the intranet (in other words,
how to stimulate people to participate in the Siemens Knowledge Market!). They
decided that using the intranet should be fun. Therefore, they added some
components of the well-known category 'Nice-to-have'. These include an on-line
news service which shows up-to-date global news, and also news about Siemens.
Users can choose for themselves which type of news they would like to receive.
According to the speakers from Siemens, Anne Jubert and Robert Schatz, these
personal aspects attracted people and stimulated them to use the intranet. They
have learned that this attitude works!
The course ended with a summing up of
what everyone learned during their visits. One interesting conclusion was that
many delegates expressed their wish to stay in contact with others after the
course. So when you go to an ARK event you know, it's not only a two day course,
but also the launching of a new Community of Practice.
Noam Shalgi is a Senior KM Consultant
within Kenniscentrum CIBIT. He can be contacted at:nshalgi@cibit.nl
