2009 Promise and Reality award finalists
KM REALITY AWARDIn many organizations, knowledge management is just rhetoric. This award recognizes an organization in which knowledge management is a positive reality. The recipient of the KM Reality award is an organization demonstrating leadership in the implementation of knowledge management practices and processes by realizing measurable business benefits. The knowledge management program will have:
- been in place for a minimum of two years,
- demonstrated senior management support, and
- defined metrics to evaluate the program and its impact on organizational goals.
The KM Reality finalists:
Autodesk—The implementation of the ActiveMedia DAM solution marked a turning point in knowledge management for Autodesk. The company was able to establish procedures and standardize on their marketing naming and processes, streamlining their business efforts and creating a knowledgebase to build on for years to come. From customers to partner agencies and internal stakeholders, the company has successfully implemented knowledge management around its assets.
Greenheck Fan—The company produces build-to-order air and fan enclosures that can be specifically designed to customers’ individual requirements. It is essential for a high volume of product, process and selling knowledge to be shared and communicated to resellers in order to make them effective. Greenheck deployed a system developed by Cincom that resulted in an increase in reseller sales of custom air enclosures; higher order accuracy rates; and 100 percent increase in bidding, estimating and quoting. Increased inventory turned over in the first 12 months of operation due to better communication and knowledge transfer with partners.
Cornell University—The business intelligence and performance management initiative began from a decades-long desire by college business officers and deans to have key performance indicators (KPIs). Through a solution from Tableau Software, the team was able to deliver 10 times as many knowledge views and analytics, include two additional functional data areas and reduce the team size by half.
European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo—The European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) is the largest civilian mission ever launched under the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). With technical assistance from ZyLAB, the central aim is to assist and support the Kosovo authorities in the rule of law area, specifically in the police, judiciary and customs areas. The mission is not in Kosovo to govern or rule. It is a technical mission that will monitor, mentor and advise while retaining a number of limited executive powers. EULEX works under the general framework of United Nations Security Resolution 1244 and has a unified chain of command to Brussels.
eDemocracy project at the Centro di Competenza Oracle in Bari, Italy—The purpose of the eDemocracy project was to develop an integrated platform of semantic and Web 2.0 technologies for gathering data, information and multichannel content, so Italian government officials could connect with citizens, businesses and various community members, in real time, and respond to their queries and concerns.
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland—The bank undertook a major technology initiative to create a “one-stop shop” and to augment it with innovative collaborative capabilities such as automated filtering and alert capabilities, shared bookmarking, etc. In 2001, the focus shifted from technology to be more on the people and the cultural aspects.
Geisinger Health System—With the help of Systems Alliance, the organization established a committee for policy oversight; standardized the look for all policies and procedures; created a system of owner notification 45 days prior to a need for revision; enabled the ability to capture comments about why a policy was retired, developed or revised; captured information about who made revisions and what content was changed; and established an audit trail for all activities related to policy development and approval.
P&G After adopting Vivisimo’s Velocity Enterprise Search Platform, they were able to eliminate many of the point solutions. This simplified the environment and improved user and content owner satisfaction. Users could now find the information they were looking for quickly and content owners could now include their content in enterprise search. The overall goal was to create a stepwise change in the findability of information. This project was to span across all global offices and be deployed quickly for a minimum total cost- not a small order considering the breath and depth of P&G’s reach. With the new software, P&G successfully met their goals and enabled users to spend less time searching for the right information and more time making connections. This led to not only faster decisions but also higher quality action based on the most relevant information being delivered with each search. In the business world, being collaborative and having the right information is critical to success.
Premier—With the assistance of StreetSmarts, Premier developed a comprehensive knowledge bank of clinical, financial and outcomes information, and also promotes a business culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Kuwait Oil Company—Through homegrown solutions, the company successfully dealt with an aging and retiring work force to provide processes and tools that deliver the right content to the right people at the right time, and in the right context, so they can make the best decisions, exploit business opportunities and promote innovative ideas.
MphasiS, an EDS company—The company established a successful KM initiative that was aimed at providing knowledge sharing for sales enablement, increasing reusability, increasing process efficiency and decreasing people dependency, creating a formal and structured information sharing culture and making information and knowledge always available.
MWH Global—The international environmental engineering firm, with more than 7,000 employees on six continents, developed knowledge generation and reuse practices that led to increased quality, efficiency and speed in delivering projects for clients, and that provided the ability to offer global knowledge to local project leads for differentiation, project wins and further innovation.
Perkins Eastman—The homegrown KM initiatives are aimed primarily at increasing communication and collaboration across the firm by identifying employee expertise, as well as capturing and disseminating best practices through communities of practice. The goal in doing so is to ensure that through seamless collaboration the standard of quality in each project, regardless of the office, market or project team, meets the expectations of the firm as a whole.
R.V. Anderson Associates Limited—With the assistance of Inmagic, this knowledge management implementation consisted of two key factors: a wide-reaching rollout and a strong foundation of planning and design to support the project. R.V. Anderson planned a very straight-forward rollout with behind-the-scenes investments put into the design of the knowledge database. The project team was staffed with information management experts who could speak for all the various groups and project needs to ensure the knowledge sharing and interface would accommodate everyone.
The United States Air Force—In conjunction with the Triune Group, the Air Force has developed a workshop-based KM system, and believes it leads organizations in everything from taxonomy development to governance. It has also developed its own KM maturity model that includes a self-assessment tool, enabling organizations to determine where they are on a knowledge-sharing spectrum. It also created a knowledge retention (a video capture process) and discovery system.
Wipro Technologies—Wipro targets the following key result areas among others to derive value from the KM initiative: operating margins; productivity; quick value from acquisitions; innovation; more efficient collaboration among employees and with customers, alliance partners and other external entities; and faster readiness for deployment in customer projects.