The New Long March of Knowledge Management.cn

Talking about Knowledge Management (KM) and setting up a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) has become another management fad. However, when we set out to find companies in mainland China that were successfully using knowledge management, everything became difficult.

We were disappointed to find that a considerable number of companies (including companies that call themselves "learning organizations" such as Lenovo and Digital China) are still in the thinking stage, and they are not sure how to follow the trend; of companies do buy and install a so-called knowledge management system, but it's not clear how it relates to other systems such as CRM (customer relationship management). A manager of China Resources Group said that they have been trying to find a mature knowledge-based enterprise in China as a model, but have not yet found it.

Few Chinese companies are really implementing knowledge management. China Hewlett-Packard Co., Ltd., Samsung Data Systems (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (Samsung SDS) and Sanjiu Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. are, to some extent, pioneers in the field of knowledge management in China. These three companies are all initially implementing their recognized knowledge management systems, but the methods and guiding ideology are not exactly the same.

The parent company of China Hewlett-Packard enjoys a high reputation in the field of knowledge management, but its knowledge management practice in China is completely different from that of the parent company, and it has basically nothing to do with IT. absorb nutrients.

The Chinese branch of Samsung SDS, also located in Beijing, is copying the successful experience in Korea. They place as much emphasis on IT equipment and technology as they place on company culture and management support.

The knowledge management of Sanjiu Pharmaceutical was born out of the company's initial pursuit of office automation. The company has long wanted to build an effective internal affairs platform. The knowledge management of Sanjiu Medicine based on information technology is inseparably integrated with office automation.

These three models have taken the first step of knowledge management in different directions. Although there are various shortcomings of the forerunners, they are all representatives of the highest level of knowledge management in China, which is enough to inspire the latecomers.

China Hewlett-Packard: It starts with human interaction

"When I was appointed as Chief Knowledge Officer in November 2001, quite a few software vendors approached me and asked if HP would buy their Software." As China's first chief knowledge officer, Gao Jianhua broke the dream of many knowledge management software vendors who wanted to make a fortune: "The essence of knowledge management is a management issue, and IT is just a tool. If there is no substance, the system will not only Is it just a decoration?"

Gao Jianhua's choice of knowledge management model does not involve a large budget. Unlike the R&D department at the US headquarters, China's HP, which is mainly engaged in sales and service, has not purchased (and does not plan to purchase in the near future) any expensive knowledge management software. He believes that the exploration and practice of knowledge management by HP China should not start with hardware construction and software development, but should start with cultivating a corporate culture suitable for knowledge management and improving knowledge management capabilities.

In September 2001, HP established a Knowledge Management Committee with representatives from each department. HP China's motivation for adopting knowledge management is summarized as integrating HP's internal scattered resources to serve HP's overall strategy. Then, three goals of implementing knowledge management were determined:

1. Improve organizational intelligence. HP China has more than 1,000 employees scattered in many cities in China. Hewlett-Packard hopes to twist a large number of high-IQ talents into a single rope and synthesize the past vectors into one direction, so that the company's strategy can be implemented from top to bottom.

Second, reduce duplication of work. Gao Jianhua referred to Hewlett-Packard China's business as "front-end" for short, which means that it is closer to its customers and is not in the "back-end" like product development. With the current acceleration of human mobility, the risks of sharing existing knowledge continue to increase. The company has many successful experiences in business, and most of the knowledge has been formed in the minds of each employee, which needs to be shared.

Third, avoid organizational memory loss. As an organization, the company must have its own memory, and the past cases and changes in the direction of the company need to have continuity, so as to ensure that the company does not repeat the same mistakes and develops in the right direction.

In order to achieve these three goals, HP first organized and documented the required knowledge. Gao Jianhua first hopes to be "written down" is the company's strategic planning and employees' experience and wisdom. This includes a series of standard documents that are categorized and summarized, covering everything from business development to how to communicate with customers, so that employees can quickly grasp the basic knowledge about the business and how to expand business processes.

Gao Jianhua attaches great importance to process planning. He believes that the focus of knowledge management work is whether to combine some links in the existing process with the value chain of knowledge management, and to quantify the effect of the combination. For example, HP used to have customer-facing after-sales service calls in each of its business units, and customers often called in to find another department. Going back and forth like this wastes a lot of customers' time and makes them lose confidence in HP. To this end, HP specially unifies the knowledge of the customer service centers of various departments to ensure that they know the customer service numbers of other departments, so that customers can transfer no more than 2 calls for inquiries.

Just as China HP chose a native Chinese to lead knowledge management, its implementation also chose a form familiar to the Chinese (not even a centralized database was established): through centralized training and a method called "" The "Master and Apprentice" activities give employees the opportunity to absorb and digest the experience and vision of their predecessors; HP is working hard to build a library of industry experts, contributed by industry "knowledge masters" who understand product solutions; HP holds regular readings for all employees At the meeting, employees are recommended to read relevant business books and personal growth books, and communicate after reading; managers within HP are required to regularly give lectures at the HP Business School to share strategic ideas with internal and external personnel.

HP has formed a good mechanism to encourage employees to participate in knowledge sharing. Usually, participation in the above knowledge management activities is necessary and linked to personal performance appraisal. For example, dozens of knowledge masters within HP are all industry experts, they may just be ordinary employees, and their performance in sharing knowledge provides them with more opportunities for promotion.

Gao Jianhua opposes the "movement" of domestic enterprises in knowledge management. He said that if knowledge management is as vigorous as the previous ERP, CRM, etc., it will only be a waste of money. He emphasized that knowledge management is an institutionalized thing, and its premise is that the company first forms a culture of open and free communication.

Jianhua Gao admits that as a subsidiary of a multinational company engaged in "front-end" (marketing, etc.) business in China, HP's knowledge management efforts are still in the exploratory stage, after all, their activities have only been carried out for more than a year, and due to The merger with Compaq was delayed for a while.

Samsung SDS: Using Korean Knowledge Base

Samsung SDS Headquarters was established in 1985, and its business scope includes system integration, software development, consulting and training, and currently ranks 38th among global software companies. Knowledge management at Samsung SDS began under the personal decision of the CEO at the company's headquarters. In 1996, through evaluation and consultation, Samsung SDS established a knowledge management promotion strategy, established a knowledge management promotion organization and decided to develop its own knowledge management system.

Wu Jingzhi, Vice President and Director of R&D Center of Samsung SDS Beijing, explained the motivation of the company's knowledge management system: to form an expert-led organizational culture, to cultivate technical talents, and to quickly integrate new employees; to ensure the competitiveness of high value-added businesses , establish core competitiveness, improve productivity, and optimize customer service; establish a global operating system, and complete global knowledge management through knowledge sharing tools.

Specifically, the implementation process of Samsung SDS knowledge management is divided into 4 stages: 1996-1998: Self-developed knowledge management system, including organizing and establishing knowledge base. October 1998-1999: The system has been greatly updated and improved. In order to reuse the product of the project, the business process was established; 109 knowledge managers were selected to ensure knowledge experts in each business department. November 1999-December 2000: Through the introduction of electronic money, a knowledge management reward system was established, 450 knowledge managers were selected, and business procedures and knowledge management procedures were integrated. Since 2001, it has promoted the humanization of the entire system, applied the concept of "Knowledge Portal", and established a community knowledge activity system.

Wu Jingzhi said: "The key to the success of Samsung SDS lies in the management's long-term active promotion of knowledge management implementation." Samsung SDS has specially set up personnel and departments for this purpose: the chief knowledge officer is responsible for strategy and policy formulation; the knowledge management department Responsible for establishing and implementing the company-wide knowledge management system, and planning and implementing various knowledge management activities; the knowledge manager of the business unit is responsible for establishing and implementing the knowledge management system of the business unit, and guiding the members of the business unit to participate in knowledge management activities; The administrator is responsible for excavating the content suitable for the characteristics of each department and guiding the participation of department members, and guiding the department members to participate in knowledge management activities; the knowledge supervisor is responsible for managing the knowledge in the responsible area (knowledge verification, knowledge update) and recommending excellent knowledge.

Samsung SDS attaches great importance to the establishment of a knowledge base. Within the company, a knowledge base known as "spring water" has been continuously upgraded. Among them, 70-80% are shared by all employees, and the rest of the company's strategy is only open to the company's top management. The biggest problem that Samsung SDS encountered when it started to implement knowledge management was inherent to the IT company: technicians were reluctant to share data and technology. In order to attract employees to participate, Samsung SDS initially had to adopt "electronic currency" to reward employees who contributed knowledge and downloaded knowledge.

In Wu Jingzhi's view, in IT technology and management culture, knowledge management should be more inclined towards the latter. Oh Kyung-sik was pleased to see that the company culture of Samsung SDS has undergone tremendous changes after implementing knowledge management. Wu, who used to work at Samsung Airlines, feels that with the help of the knowledge management system, new people who join Samsung SDS do not have to suffer from the hardships of their predecessors: knowledge management enables them to enjoy the experience of their predecessors, so they are less stressed and more productive. efficiency.

As of 2001, there are more than 100,000 knowledge materials and more than 200,000 knowledge resources in the Samsung SDS knowledge base. Hundreds of knowledge supervisors are busy clearing out expired knowledge, and Samsung SDS employees who love giving and sharing are now reluctant to see their stuff deleted by the system. For knowledge managers, the new challenge facing Samsung SDS knowledge management system is how to continuously update and improve the system to make it more user-friendly and more convenient for employees to communicate with each other.

For 6 years, Samsung SDS's top-down knowledge management promotion has achieved good results: In 2002, Samsung SDS won the first Asia MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge-based Enterprise) Award. According to Wu Jingzhi, as of 2001, the entire Samsung SDS has saved 160 million RMB through the knowledge management system.

For Samsung SDS Beijing, management has realized that replicating the experience of the Korean headquarters is a must. They believe that it will be more convenient for Samsung SDS employees working in China to participate in the knowledge management of the entire company through English in the future. At present, all the Chinese employees of Samsung SDS can share is the knowledge in Korean. In order to facilitate Samsung SDS employees scattered around the world to participate in knowledge management, Wu Jingzhi said that starting from March this year, the above-mentioned knowledge base will have a global English version, although the content will be much less than the Korean version at the beginning.

Sanjiu Medicine: Combining Office Automation

In 1998, Zhao Xinxian, the president of the group, put forward the view that Sanjiu Enterprise Group is a knowledge-based enterprise. According to his point of view, Sanjiu Enterprise Group has changed from an academy-run enterprise with an investment of 5 million yuan to a large-scale enterprise group with assets of 20 billion yuan, and he has changed from a professor to an entrepreneur. These changes are inseparable from the accumulation of knowledge and innovation.

Since it is a knowledge-based enterprise, how to extract knowledge and manage it? At the beginning of 2002, after the investigation of various knowledge management tools, Sanjiu Medicine finally decided to use the Lotus Notes system to build a knowledge management platform. They named the system the Knowledge Management Office System. This system not only meets the needs of office automation, but also realizes the precipitation and sharing of knowledge. Different from the western strategic positioning, Sanjiu Medicine's knowledge management system not only provides reference and basis for decision-making, but also integrates personnel management, financial management and so on.

However, Sanjiu Medicine does not have a simple previous system, but focuses more on the construction of organizational culture. Before using the tool, Sanjiu Medicine did a crucial thing: internal demand research. In the form of investigation, the horizontal investigation method of the project team is adopted. Each department has a person involved in the project team. This person is not necessarily the head of the department, but he must know the situation of the department very well. The project team is headed by Guo Xin, Minister of Enterprise Management.

The research will show demos of knowledge management tools to each department and identify what each department does. It is also necessary to analyze which processes are reasonable and which are unreasonable, and should be changed when formulating the process. Sanjiu Medicine made a silent reform of moisturizing when it needed to investigate, but it did not merge departments.

Different from the western countries that invest a lot of money in IT construction, Sanjiu Medicine has only invested more than 300,000 yuan including hardware. In July 2002, the knowledge management system officially started trial use. The system mainly completes six major missions: knowledge and experience management, administrative office management, human resources management, equipment resource management, cultural community management, and special affairs management. These are the main management needs of Sanjiu Medicine. This is an Internet-based access system that can be accessed by company personnel at any time and anywhere, as long as they can access the Internet.

Sanjiu Medicine has another innovation in the knowledge management system, that is, a reminder of "to-do" is set on the upper right corner of the main interface. After the relevant leader enters the system, the things that he needs to do in more than 30 modules are extracted from it. He only needs to look at the to-do list to know how many things are waiting for him every day. This is very helpful for improving management efficiency.

This knowledge management system also has an online survey function. The object of the survey can be a certain job, a certain person or a certain policy closely related to the interests of employees. For example, the enterprise management department once conducted a survey on the attendance system. This survey asked whether it was reasonable to clock in and out of get off work four times a day. In addition to voting, you are also free to give your opinion. During the survey, each employee can see the changes in the histogram, but the opinions of each person are anonymous. The investigators responded to each question. Such investigations provide an important basis for management decisions.

Forums are the most actively used feature by employees. If you have any questions or ideas, you can come here to express and exchange ideas. The topics are serious or lighthearted. In addition, there is a greeting card system that can send blessings and greetings.

Using the knowledge management system, employees of Sanjiu Medicine can exchange one or more tasks at the same time in different jobs, breaking the boundaries of time and region, and realizing the accumulation and sharing of knowledge. If you have a problem at work, you can always visit the company knowledge base to see if it has an answer. If not, then they can explore through the knowledge management system until they find a solution, then put the answer in the knowledge base, and let other employees share the innovation.

Guo Xin concluded that although opinions, opinions, experiences and problems can be discussed and exchanged in the system, it is impossible for drug research and development to be done through this system; the financial system must be used for finance; the sales company has an ERP system; the production department The supply department has a CRM system. But these systems are independent, and knowledge management can string these systems together. The knowledge management system is a platform that supports various systems, and all databases are integrated in it. Sanjiu Medicine hopes that through this simple start, the organizational culture of the company's communication and sharing will be well established, and then the second phase of development for specific businesses will begin.

But they are now also facing a common contradiction in knowledge management. Let employees contribute knowledge, and everyone will worry about losing their competitiveness in the enterprise. In most cases, employees are willing to share the experience of others, and they ask for more and contribute less. Sanjiu Medicine hopes to change this situation through company performance appraisal in the future.

Contradictions are always present, especially in the early stages of knowledge management. However, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Companies such as TCL, Shenzhen Petrochemical, Rainbow Group, Astride, and Guanghua Electronics have started a new long march of knowledge management, just like China's HP, Samsung SDS (China) and Sanjiu Medicine.