AGENDA

Company Profile Problems encountered Approaches Implementation Results Post implementation challenges Future challenges

COMPANY PROFILE

Buckman is global, serving customers in more than 90 countries with the core business including paper technologies, water technologies, leather technologies and performance chemicals.

It was founded in 1945, by Dr. Stanley Buckman, started as one 50-gallon process vessel and five employees.

Now the company has become a global business employing 1500 people around the world. Yet there isn’t a more nimble, adaptive, or accessible specialty chemical solutions company on the planet.

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

New Leadersh

ip’s New Id

easApproach to Best PracticesChange for New Needs

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

New Leadership’s New Ideas Change the management stytle from

centralization to decentralization Turn the company from product-driven to

customer-driven mode Determine what became the company’s code of

ethics ( see Exhibit 1)

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED Approaches to best practices

Sending out PhDs to gather best business practices worldwide and share with all associates in the company. However ……

All general managers were connected to a database with IBM’s network for email. However …

Launched the first formal system , then improved……

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

Change for new needs: decided to speed up the decision-making

process so that ……

began to think about how individual knowledge bases could be shared and utilized so that ……

Want to creat a network through which every employees could be connected so that ……

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

Conclusion: All these problems faced that encourage

Buckman Labortories to implement KM …

Next step：Action！

APPROACHES

K’Netix - The Buckman Knowledge Network

Bob Buckman established Knowledge Transfer Department (KTD) in 1992

APPROACHES

What did Bob Buckman do? Company’s entire network was put on

CompuServe. KTD built K’Netix on CompuServe platform and

their aim was to make it user friendly. Every salesperson was given a leased notebook

and modem. Employees now had one ID and could make a

single phone call that established point-to-point link with headquarters.

Access to all of CompuServe’s global information services.

K’Netix

APPROACHES

Forums – Heart of K’Netix Heart of K’Netix was the forums where anyone

could post a message, question and/or request for help.

TechForum was the major forum and was open to all employees.

It consisted of 20 sections and each had a message board, conference room and library section.

APPROACHES

TechForum - Features & Goals Majority of the sections in the forums were devoted to

business areas within Buckman Laboratories and focused on helping customers to improve their productivity.

Few sections were dedicated to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness of Buckman Laboratories.

Private forums were designed for Buckman’s core customers to give advice tailored to their needs.

Customer information center had all information about each Buckman customer.

APPROACHES

Creating Knowledge Base Systems operators (Sysops) were appointed to

monitor the discussion in forums, the content of messages and track requests.

They tried to get the answer within 24 hours; if not they contacted the people directly and asked them to respond.

Sysops appointed two industry experts in each forum to be primary answer givers.

Once a topic is closed, the experts and Sysops would decide which of these would go into the permanent knowledge base.

They also wrote abstracts and summary of discussion points for each section and post the information as summary at the end of each week.

IMPLEMENTATION The Launch of K’Netix

Started with a day’s intensive hands on training

Managers try the system and their initial negative remarks –

﹡Timelessness as they were less enthusiastic

﹡ Need for message filters ﹡Need to measure the Quality of

information

Nevertheless, Bob believed its potential as such.

He was clear with his point on promotion of intelligent people who do the best job of knowledge sharing.

IMPLEMENTATION Breaking the sense of hesitancy Emphasis on utilization :

Freedom to communicate to everyone in line with the code of ethics

Flexibility in work and offering a relaxed environment

Initial Enhancements: Classification of Discussion topics based on

“need to know” Multi lingual discussions with translators to

encourage the employee audience who speak more than 15 languages

IMPLEMENTATION The 4th Wave

A summit to reward 150 best knowledge sharers in K’Netix

Purpose: Building trust in relationship To foster team spirit Realizing the change to close the knowledge gap Work on the ways to improve

Identifying the change with a brainstorm Top cause for less participation of non US associates??? medium of communication? ‘Yes’ was the heated discussion’s echo

Result - Birth of multi language forums

RESULTS

In 1994: Reported sales: $246 million Expenditure: $8.4 million

Plans for 1995: Additional expenditure: $9.7 million

Associates (Selling)

Product (Less than 5 years)

Graudate Associates

1979 16 22 39

1994 65 33 72

5

15

25

35

45

55

65

75

Measurements Cited in Accessing Performance

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RESULTS

POST IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES

New Challenge in early 1996: How Buckman Laboratories competed

successfully against much bigger competitors? Excess capacity in the paper industry

POST IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES

Revised Strategies: Emphasize “customer intimacy” Three “key global market targets”—paper,

leather and water (approximately 75% of current sales)

The essence of customer intimacy was to attract customers in the targeted segments who valued close working relationships and the value-added benefits that Buckman could provide.

POST IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES

Implement New Strategies: By June communicated the strategy to all

associates Developing a detailed implementation Revise the original mission statement

the new mission statement: “We will create, manufacture, and market specialty chemicals to fulfill the needs of our customers throughout the world. We will be leaders in the control of microorganisms and will participate in selected markets where our chemical, manufacturing, or marketing strengths will give us a competitive advantage.”

POST IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES

“Effectively Engaged” with Customers “The number of people in the organization

working on the relationship with the customer relative to the total organization will determine the momentum of the organization.”

New Goal: By 2000 - 80% of associates “effectively engaged”

with the customer Ultimately - “everyone in the company should be

involved with customers in some way”

POST IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES

A new focus on enabling associates to expand their knowledge: Building a Learning Center Ranging from short training courses and

reference materials to advanced academic degrees.

Free courses, with the associate only responsible for a passing grade.

Stressed a change in management’s philosophy As for investments in people, you need to shift

from an expense philosophy to an investment philosophy

FUTURE CHALLENGES

Forum usage after switch

Cost of K’Netix

Building trust in

Virtual World

FUTURE CHALLENGES

Forum usage dropped!

Systems were developed in-house.

Prior to the switch, all employees were given a detailed system’s manual .

But forum usage dropped right after switch!

Should Buckman be worry? ↓30%

FUTURE CHALLENGES

Will cost of K’Netix increase?

With increasing price pressures, questions on the cost of K’Netix was raised.

Does it make sense to continue budgeting 3.5% to 4.5% of revenues each year?

FUTURE CHALLENGES

How to build trust in V-World? Building trust involves

Major culture change Strong Persistence Continual cut-and-paste process

Will the employees at Buckman Labs willing to change?

QUESTIONS?