Knowledge management at Accenture

Richard Ivey School of Business20090770 Jongsung Lee

Accenture

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.

Great revenue increment in 2001, 2004(two digit increment)

Embarked upon a new strategy”High Performance Delivered”

Substantially increase company’s focus on outsourcingOriented to improving shareholder value for its clientsEmphasizing the creation and application of intellectual and technological assets to apply in work with clients

organizational structure also evolved5 operating groups 18 industry groups which made up the five operating groups, eight capability groups

Knowledge Management

In 90sAdopted a knowledge-oriented strategy: build a knowledge management organization under the chief information officerBy the mid-1990s, the firm built thousands of knowledge repositories on the Lotus Notes platform: Knowledge Exchange

From 2000 to 2002Responsibility for KM was shifted from CIO to the training and learning organization at AccentureLearning & knowledge management were combined into a single new group called capability development in 2001In 2002, the toughening fiscal conditions, training budgets had been cut substantially for Accenture employees

Knowledge Management

Substantial budget pressures on both the training and knowledge management groups

Several of the most senior knowledge managers left Accenture30% of all the knowledge managers left or were laid offCost reduction by moving knowledge management functions “offshore”

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

Although the learning and KM activities remained largely separate and decentralized within Accenture’s business units, there were some joint initiatives

Developed a personalized learning management system called “myLearning”

As the content of KM proliferate, information finding problems happened

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

KNOLEDGE MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

The problems for managing existing KM systemThe KM system was being replaced or augmented with Web-based portals

Most major Accenture groups had their own portalsDespite one central “Accenture Portal” that contained links to many decentralized portals, it could be confusing to find the information one needed

Duplication of documents throughout the organization was very highThe local optimization done by each local company, didn’t seem to work well

It was very important that there be a clear governance structure for the new Knowledge Exchange to improve the consistency of the experience

Target for the new KM systemBarfield who was in charge of KM strategy, decided to develop a governance structure that incorporated senior representatives from each part of the organization

The new knowledge exchange

Accenture changed the foundation of the Knowledge Exchange, from Lotus Notes to Microsoft’s Sharepoint

Design of the new Knowledge Exchange were to leverage existing and packaged software to extend SharePoint only to support critical requirements

The solution was designedto be simple, cost efficient and effective without an attempt to recreate all existing Lotus Notes functionalityto contain all high-value content

– Opposed to trying to get everything working from the beginningfrom an end-user perspective

user

Internal Content

Accenture Portal:Knowledge &

Resources

Search(find.accenture.co

m)

Job Aid / Topic page/ Community of Practice

Collaboration:Submit question to experts/CoP’s

Direct link via browser favorite

Contributions/Accenture developed

contentAccenture purchased

content(Research)

Browse to other topic pages/COP

myLearning coursesmethod

Answer from Accenture experts

Accenture Discussions

The new knowledge exchange(cont’d)

The strategy identified key insights that drove the overall design:

Search quality is the most important aspect of the infrastructureTopic 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 subjectWhile 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

LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Training is an investment, not a cost: Vanthourrnout(later Chief Learning Officer)

Training function at Accenture was revitalizedAccenture employees were again rating training as one of the areas that most drove their satisfaction on the company’s annual employee satisfaction survey

STRATEGY SESSION

20 people critical to the delivery of Accenture’s KM capability came together to meet and discuss the future direction of KM

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

Knowledge Management MissionDrive value from knowledge to enhance revenue, reduce cost and foster innovation

Knowledge Management VisionTo create a world class knowledge-sharing culture and environment that contributes to Accenture’s success

Issues

The way in which content was added to the system had to be designed

Using SharePoint templatesAn initial typology for documents had been developedFocused on business processes, so that it was easy for people to find relevant documents

Users be represented properly in the management and future development of the Knowledge Exchange

KM would support, as completely as possible, the entire business cycle within Accenture from initial sales proposal to final client delivery

Document obsolescence

How can integrate learning and knowledge management?Too tightly integrating them might focus knowledge management on reuse and training and reduce its impact on innovation and collaboration

Knowledge Management Vision(cont’d)

Five critical goals for KM Fostering and sustaining a knowledge sharing cultureImproving the time to competency for new hiresEnabling and enhancing Accenture’s sales capabilityEnsuring and improving the ROI for KMImproving margins and delivered quality on client engagements such as outsourcing and large consulting commitments through speed to capability, use of best practices, etc.

Five forces

Competitive

Rivalry

Entrants

Supplier

Buyers

Substitution

-Making the knowledge available to the employees Accenture can make entrance barriers high

-Can analyze customers based on the customer information in KM system-Can acquire the experts’ techniques to customers

-Can help delivery(finding the information of suppliers can be a help)

-There are plenty of information of substitution of products/services

Discussion Issues

Which one do you think the most important among people, process, and platform to implement KM system? Justify your answer.

How can you improve the ownership of employees for KM?