User:Jnimmo/E&Y Exec Summary

Current Situation
Ernst & Young (E&Y) is one of the largest professional services firms in the UK, employing over 7000 staff, and more in overseas locations. With six distinct service competencies, most staff are also grouped by industry specialism in addition to the service line. E&Y is experiencing substantial growth and strong competition. Customer retention and ability to cross-sell products essential. E&Y uses knowledge management (KM) systems strategically and is admired as a leader in the KM field. Their knowledge is managed centrally by the CBK, but the knowledge itself is decentralised. They host over 1 million documents. E&Y has recently decided to globalise their KM efforts, but has a constant struggle to “win the hearts of the users”. They are now considering how the system should be further developed to support their global workforce.

Main Issues
Staff Motivation to KM

E&Y are currently finding it challenging to maintain a knowledge sharing culture. This is a problem because staff are expected to share knowledge, but are not rewarded or recognised for their contributions, meaning that staff are not fully meeting business goals. Additionally, there are no processes for dealing with consultants who are not sharing knowledge, further eliminating incentives for employees to meet E&Y's knowledge goals.

KM Architecture

With the decision to globalise and create a 90% mobile workforce, the current KM system will not be flexible enough to meet business needs as a result of information overload. This is a problem for E&Y because of the need to promptly either upgrade or replace the current KM system to meet business needs.

Delivering Value

E&Y is finding it hard to measure the benefits of KM, and staff do not seem to fully realise the potential for KM. Staff need to fully support KM in order to transform E&Y from an informated company into an intelligent enterprise, where knowledge can flow freely between departments.

Alternatives
Implement a new globalised knowledge management system, and introduce incentives for sharing knowledge.

Pros: * Allows worldwide access for clients and staff. * Meets globalisation objectives * Use of Intelligent agents will help staff find relevant content quicker and help reduce information overload. * Simple interface will improve user experience and help increase motivation

Cons: * High cost * issues if the mobile workforce do not have internet access when they need to access knowledge (unless the new system had offline capabilities).

Enhance the functionality of the existing system and provide incentives for staff to share knowledge

Upgrade the current system to categorise knowledge better, and allow for global access over the internet.

Pros: * Quicker than developing a new system (saves time) * Lower upfront cost than implementing a new system

Cons: * Current architecture may not be flexible enough for the changes * Ultimately still an old system (an old system with a new interface is still an old system). * May not have the expertise to strategically improve the system. * Much of the current knowledge is stored in Lotus Notes databases, which

Add a data warehouse for formal information to the existing system

Pros: * May be simpler to implement than other options (reducing cost)

Cons: * Adds complication to existing system * Excessive formalisation leads to user rejection * Data warehouses do not allow the storage of multimedia

Recommendation
Implement a new globalised knowledge management system, and introduce incentives for sharing knowledge.

Select a vendor to provide a KM system to E&Y, and improve Human Resource processes to help improve staff motivation. The new system should provide a rating functionality to track the usefulness of articles contributed. It should be user friendly, globally accessible over the internet, and make use of intelligent agents to overcome differences in vocabulary when globalising. Put HR processes in place to ensure all staff are sharing knowledge, and introduce an incentive programme for quality contributions. This should help nurture the knowledge sharing culture by encouraging staff to share. This option relies on the assumption the mobile workforce have internet access when they need to access the KM system.

Issues discussed

 * Delivering value
 * hard to quantify
 * Alignment with Business strategy
 * no doubt of commitment to KM at the top
 * differences about what KM means or represents
 * Challenge of globalisation
 * Difficult to locate information spread across too many PowerPacks
 * Challenge of “winning the users hearts”
 * Last paragraph
 * CBK Centralised/decentralised?
 * Human resource process alignment with knowledge sharing strategy
 * “every time the CBK puts an innovation in place it needs to be communicated to the firm which can be challenging”
 * No pecuniary recognition for sharing knowledge
 * Users feeling overwhelmed by the system

Some notes from readings about KM:


 * When knowledge flows freely throughout a company, is exchanged, grows, is validated, it transforms an informated company into an intelligent enterprise.
 * The Perils of Excessive Formalisation - use of intelligent agents to pull up knowledge that may be limited by department specific descrption or vocabluary
 * “The catch phrase is ‘People first, technology next.’. It’s the building people to work around technology mentality that leads many initiatives of this type down the road to failure.”