Infosys' Knowledge Management

Initiatives

Case study
Reference no 906-045-1

This case was written by P Indu, under the direction of Vivek Gupta,ICFAl Center
for Management Research.It is intended to be used as the basis for class
discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a
management situation.The case was compiled from published sources.

O 2006, ICFAl Center for Management Research (ICMK).

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 INFOSYS' KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT INITIATIVES
"At Infosys, Knowledge Management is central to our core strategy of providing differentiated
value to customers and enabling their business growth. KM has helped us develop a pervasive
culture of beneficent knowledge exchange across geographies. "I

- Nandan M Nilekani, CEO, President and Managing Director, Infosys, in 2006.

"The aim of any KM initiative is to move towards a culture where knowledge sharing is built into
the organizational fabric. Creating such a culture of sharing is governed by principles that have
much in common with Metcalfe's Law - as more people grow convinced of the benefits of
participating in the knowledge-sharing movement, it becomes easier to convince more people to
buy in. "2

- Vivekanand P. Kochikar, Principal Knowledge Manager, Infosys Technologies, in 2002.

IN THE HALL OF FAME

In November 2005, Infosys Technologies Limited (Infosys), a leading software company based
in India, was inducted into the Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Hall of
~ a r n e lnfosys
~. was the first Indian company to be featured in the Hall of Fame and was also the
first to win the Global MAKE award for the third time in a row. Infosys was recognized for
organizational learning and its knowledge management initiatives. A panel comprising of
executives from Global Fortune 500 companies and KM experts chose the winners of the 2005
MAKE awards (Refer Table I for the traits of the companies that won the 2005 Global MAKE
Awards).

TABLE I
TRAITS OF 2005 MAKE WINNERS
Creating a corporate knowledge-driven culture
Developing knowledge workers through senior management leadership
Delivering knowledge-based products/solutions
Maximizing enterprise intellectual capital.
Creating an environment for collaborative knowledge sharing
Creating a learning organization
Delivering value based on customer knowledge
Transforming enterprise knowledge into shareholder value
Source: www.infosys.com.

lnfosys was one of the 2 1 winners; the others included Dell, HP, Accenture, IBM, Microsoft and
GE. Commenting on the winners, Rory Chase, Managing Director of Teleos, which administers
the MAKE program, said, "The Global MAKE winners are effectively transforming enterprise
knowledge into wealth-creating ideas, products and solutions. They are building portfolios of
intellectual capital and intangible assets which will enable them to out-perform their competitors
in the future."'

IInfosys, Annual Report 2006.

Anjali Prayag, "Sharing Makes it Better," The Hindu Business Line, February 25, 2002.
Conducted by KNOW Network, in association with Teleos. KNOW is a global community of knowledge-
driven organizations dedicated to sharing best Knowledge Management Practices. Teleos is an independent
knowledge management and intellectual capital research firm
"Infosys Inducted into Global MAKE Hall of Fame," www.infosys.com, November 21, 2005.
lnfosys institutionalized the best practices existing throughout the organization using KM. The
company also used K M to facilitate reuse of those best practices, assisting the company face the
challenges of a competitive business environment. This helped the company deliver higher
quality, better employee productivity, greater market awareness, faster time to market and
increased customer satisfaction. S. Gopalakrishnan, the COO of lnfosys said, "At Infosys,
knowledge management has helped us connect people, bring together geographically dispersed
workgroups, and create an enduring culture of sharing and caring. It has also provided us a
platform for creative and collaborative problem solving, and the means for creating a symbiotic
relationship between the individual and organizational objectives for deve~opment."~

BACKGROUND NOTE

Infosys was incorporated as lnfosys Consultants Private Limited on July 02, 1981 by a group of
seven professionals6. From the beginning, Infosys relied heavily on overseas business. One of the
founders, Narayana Murthy (Murthy) stayed in India, while the others went to the US to carry out
onsite programming for corporate clients. One of Infosys' first clients was the US-based sports
shoe manufacturer Reebok.

Infosys hired its first set of employees in 1982 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai.
These employees were provided training and were sent abroad for onsite projects. After its
revenues started increasing, Infosys started spending more on training and product development.
The company's revenues in 1982 were Rs 1.2 million.

At that time, computers were not manufactured in India. A task like importing a computer
required a license and the process would take several months. lnfosys did not have the required
space to install many computers, so the computers it purchased were installed on the premises of
one of its customers. New employees were trained and products like proprietary banking software
were developed at this site. At the same time, Infosys concentrated on acquiring domain
knowledge in segments like retailing, finance, distribution and telecommunications.

The revenues of Infosys grew steadily to reach Rs 10.3 million by 1985, Rs 19.1 million by 1987
and Rs 25.4 million by 1989. However, the company faced several problems mainly due to
restrictions imposed by the government on foreign trade. Some of the founders were of the
opinion that these restrictions were hampering the company's growth tremendously - so much so
that they even contemplated dissolving the company. But Murthy persisted and promised to take
the company to greater heights within five years.

Till 1990, Infosys experienced moderate growth. Until that time, organizational learning
comprised of on-the-job learning and informal learning from superiors. The company began to
grow at a significant pace after the liberalization of the Indian economy in 199 1. The company's
revenues grew from Rs. 55 million in 1991 to Rs. 145.2 million in 1993. In the early nineties,
Infosys realized that in order to sustain growth in the future, personnel with generic analytical
skills and high learning ability were needed. Infosys decided to recruit such personnel and then
train them in specific job skills. Towards this end, lnfosys established its in-house Education and
Research Department (E&RD) in 1991. The main objective of the department was to provide
high quality education and integrate it with career growth, to conduct research which would be of
use to the company and evaluate new technologies and tools.

In 1992, the E&RD encouraged lnfosys employees to provide written documents about their
experiences on the job, their learning on various topics relating to software development and use

"lnfosys Recognized as a Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise," www.domain-b.com, August 14, 2003.
The group comprised Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, S. Gopalakrishnan, K. Dinesh, SB Shibulal,
NS Raghavan and Ashok Arora. Ashok Arora Ieft Infosys in 1983 to join a US-based software company.
of new technologies, tips on living in other countries, etc. Such information formed a part of what
was called the Body of Knowledge (BoK). The BoK was updated regularly by the E&RD and the
department also contributed extensively to it. Print copies of BoK were shared among the
employees. The BoK was the first step taken by lnfosys to bring together the knowledge gained
by employees as a part of their day-to-day work.

The E&RD was organized into four groups - Programming Languages & Methodologies,
Operating Systems & Networking, Database Management & Transaction Processing, and
Software Engineering. This organization facilitated consolidation of knowledge and building of
expertise. The department conducted induction courses for new recruits. For conducting the
course, the department designed a program which combined an instructor-led component, a
participant-led component and self study, with the instructor-led component accounting for over
90% of the program.

By 1995, the E&RD developed around 40 courses and had 12 faculty members. They handled
about seven batches of fresh trainee engineers, with each batch comprising of 30 to 120 trainees.
The department also organized some 30 short-term courses for Infosys employees every year.

By 1996, lnfosys was rapidly globalizing its operations. Every year more than 1000 new
employees were joining the company. The E&RD had over 50 employees and due to greater
training needs, instructor-led training was becoming difficult and the department was incurring
higher costs. In mid-1996, the scope of the BoK had increased with the introduction of a web-
based BoK. Using the web-based BoK, the employees could submit their contributions and
search for required information using the intranet. The information in the BoK included write ups
submitted by the employees which covered their own learning, as well as information pertaining
to technology, management issues, methodology and cultural issues.

In 1996, lnfosys launched Sparsh, a corporate intranet. This enabled easy access to the BoKs and
other information to the employees. The other contents of Sparsh included virtual classroom, e-
mail, technical bulletin boards, and repositories. Soon, Sparsh evolved into a central information
portal at Infosys.

Till late 1996, the contributions to the BoK were very few as only a few employees came forward
to share their knowledge. Then, the E&RD went in for an aggressive campaign through electronic
bulletin boards and internal promotion. It also announced rewards for the best write-ups by
employees. Still, only a few employees had the ability to write down their experiences and
contribute to the BoK. By 1997, every month the BoK received about ten entries and total
contributions to the BoK stood at 400.

However, still there was lot of information that needed to be shared within the organization. In
order to facilitate this sharing, a 'Process Assets' system was developed. This system captured
the data filled in by project leaders after completion of any project. The information included a
brief description of the project, the target audience etc. The project managers could also add in
additional information. This information was made available to all employees.

In mid 1998, the need for an integrated architecture to support the learning needs of employees
was felt. The new architecture was designed to make available courses on concepts and
technology, experimental knowledge in the organization, learning resources like manuals and
journals and details of the projects carried out by employees. The architecture had several
intranet-based learning components (Refer Table 11 for the intranet-based learning components).
 TABLE 11
INFOSYS: INTHANET-BASED LEARNING COMPONENTS --
- Online Classes: These included computer based training- systems
. and virtual classes that
involved online training sessions, coupled with class room based sessions. Through online
classes, employees could have online discussions with the instructors.
- Library Catalogue: Regularly used journals and manuals were procured on CD-ROM
based media and integrated into intranet for employees to use.
- Body of Knowledge: Central repository of experiential knowledge, through which
employees could share the knowledge. It consisted of write-ups of experiential learning and
covered a wide range of topics, which included technology, methodology, management and
cultural issues.
- Training Information and Administration System: A system where courses were
announced online and employees could nominate themselves online.
- Process Assets: A system through which knowledge generated during the projects was
captured. Employees could also contribute to and access these details.
- Yellow Pages: Also known as People Knowledge Map, a system through which employees
could record their expertise based on pre-defined knowledge hierarchy.
jource: http://fie.engrng.pitt.edu.

As the number of employees in lnfosys was increasing so were the training needs. In order to
address this issue, technology-based learning was integrated with regular classroom learning.
This helped to reduce the duration of classroom sessions. Several other changes were initiated to
customize the training sessions to the needs of employees. For instance, half of the training was
carried out through classroom sessions and the remaining part was carried out through computer-
based training. For computer-based training, the employees were required to set aside some time
every day on the course. This program allowed employees to learn at their own convenience. The
effectiveness of the computer-based training was validated and no significant difference was
found in the performance of the employees who underwent complete classroom training and the
ones who completed their training through computers.

Among the courses offered through computer-based training was the IBM Mainframe Operating
System course, which was earlier a 24-hour contact program. After its introduction as part of
computer-based learning, the contact hours were reduced to 12. Some courses were fully
computer-based programs. One such course was on web technology, earlier a ten-hour contact
course. 'The course was modified and offered over a period of nine days as an online course. The
trainees could hold online discussions with the instructors and clarify their doubts.

The online library began functioning by the end of 1998. The library consisted of regularly used
magazines and journals. In the same year, lnfosys designed and deployed a People Knowledge
Map, which was a self-service application that enabled employees to record their expertise. These
employees could be contacted by any others seeking information or help in the specified area.

In 1999, Infosys introduced a formal KM system. Nilekani, then COO and MD felt the need for
dedicated resources, technology infrastructure, cultural change and leadership commitment to
manage knowledge within the organization effectively. A steering committee consisting of
important personnel from the company and representatives from the board of directors, was
formed to drive the initiative further.

THE LAUNCH OF KSHOP

All the efforts to manage knowledge at lnfosys evolved into a full-fledged K M program by late
1999. The mission of KM efforts at lnfosys was 'to ensure that all organizational learning is
leveraged in delivering business advantage to the customer'. lnfosys was of the view that to
leverage on organizational learning, it was important to consolidate the knowledge that was
available within and outside the organization. The consolidation would facilitate the reuse of
knowledge, thus saving on the effort and cost that would be required to redo any piece of work.
To this end, lnfosys established a KM group with nine employees, in 1999. The main objective of
the KM group was to drive a company-wide KM program (Refer Table 111 for lnfosys - KM
Vision).

TABLE I11
INFOSYS - KM VISION
To be an organization
Where every action is fully enabled by the power of knowledge.
Which truly believes in leveraging knowledge for innovation.
Where every employee is empowered by the knowledge of every other employee.
Which is a globally respected knowledge leader.
Source: www.infosys.com.

In order to maximize value and maintain cost leadership in a highly competitive scenario, it was
necessary for lnfosys to use knowledge diligently. The company felt that knowledge
dissemination should be carried out through a central system in order to maintain uniformity.
These factors led to the introduction of Kshop, a knowledge portal launched in the year 2000.

The Kshop was started in a small way on five PCs which also acted as servers. Taking the
feedback from the employees, the KM group made several changes to Kshop. At the same time,
several repositories that were managed by different project groups were integrated into Kshop.
The group took adequate care to organize the content on Kshop into different content types.

Kshop had four pillars - people, content, process and technology. The four pillars facilitated
creation, transfer and reuse of knowledge. Through Kshop, the scope of BoK whose creation and
use was limited to one project was expanded to encompass the entire organization. The scope of
Kshop was increased to include corporate repository and repositories of different departments.
Kshop contained lot of content which was classified along four dimensions (Refer Table 1V for
the four dimension of Kshop).

The Kshop identified two types of content - Internal K-Assets and External K-Assets. Internal K
Assets consisted of industry specific knowledge assets, body of knowledge, project snapshot
documents, internal white papers and reports, reusable artifacts, discussion groups and chat
sessions and internal FAQs. The External K-Assets included glossary of business and technical
terms, technology summaries, online journals & books, external white papers and reports,
technology & business news and external FAQs.

TABLE IV
FOUR DIMENSIONS OF KSHOP REPOSITORY
I Knowledge Area: This content was proprietary
. . to lnfosys and consisted of details of about I

t-
I
2000 knowledge areas.
tutorials, etc.
---
The Nature of Knowledge: Case studies, project details, write-ups, publications, white papers,

Target Audience: The audience at whom the content was targeted, which included project I
managers, developers, programmers, etc.
Source of Knowledge: The content that was a part of Kshop could be from either external
I sources or internal sources. d
Source: www.csrc.lse.ac.uk.

The KM Group reviewed the content obtained from all these sources. After thorough review to
ensure quality, usability and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) non-infringement, the content was
published in the KM database. Before publishing the content, the in-house legal department was
consulted to manage IPR issues. The content could be accessed by the employees through
indexed searches.

The business units, where all the developmental activity was carried out, did not have time to
organize knowledge pertaining to a particular domain or a particular technology. To address this
issue, Infosys created two consulting groups to capture and spread knowledge. The two groups
were Domain Competency Group (DCG) and Software Engineering & Technology Laboratories
(SETL). The topics covered by the DCG were industry dynamics & trends, key players,
regulatory practices, accounting practices, etc. DCG also helped the business managers who were
directly interacting with the clients and the managers who were responsible for new accounts.
When the managers approached the clients with new proposals, DCG provided these managers
with the details of Infosys' expertise and how lnfosys could add greater value to the clients.
Another function of DCG was to help business managers draw the functional specifications of the
projects. The focus of SETL was on technology competency and technology architecture and
framework. Employees who were a part of SETL also wrote for external journals.

Kshop also had a content submission intervention, through which employees could submit
content pertaining to different knowledge areas. The content submitted was reviewed by a K M
content editor, who also checked for IPR compliance. The quality of the content was checked by
identified experts within the organization. For retrieving relevant content, Kshop had a powerful
search engine.

In order to encourage employees to use and contribute to Kshop, the KM group introduced
Knowledge Currency Units (KCUs) in 2001. All the employees of lnfosys who contributed or
reviewed the content of Kshop accumulated KCUs. They could convert KCUs into rewards.
Kshop also had a scoreboard of KCUs, which displayed the amount of KCUs accumulated by
each of the employees. With the introduction of KCUs, employees were motivated to submit
content to Kshop. Within one year of the introduction of KCUs, more than 2400 knowledge
assets in the form of project proposals, case studies, reusable code, etc were contributed (Refer
Exhibit 1 for Kshop).

IMPROVING THE FUNCTIONS OF KSHOP

One of the consequences of the success of the KCUs was information overload. This made it
difficult for employees to obtain the required information. This sent them back to their informal
networks to retrieve the documents quickly. The reviewers were also too few and they were
heavily burdened with the increase in content to be reviewed. It was also felt that knowledge
sharing had become a means to earn money and so employees had stopped exchanging
knowledge informally. Some of the project groups were not ready to share their knowledge and
were confining the knowledge generated within the group. The KM group realized that KM
required cultural and social change within the organization and that superior technology was not
enough.

This made the KM group modify the KCU scheme in April 2002. The new scheme emphasized
knowledge sharing and visibility rather than monetary rewards. Under the new scheme, a
composite KCU score was introduced; this took into consideration usefulness and benefit of the
contributed content. The contributions were now rated not only by the volunteers and reviewers,
but also by the actual users.

Most project teams in Infosys worked under stringent deadlines and this meant they could not
spare enough time to contribute to KM efforts. In order to obtain contributions from project
teams which were important for the KM efforts, the KM team introduced automated tools, by
modifying the forms and templates. In each project team, one person was identified to play the
role of KM Prime. The KM Prime facilitated KM activities at the project level and also
encouraged the colleagues in the project team to contribute to Kshop. After the completion of the
project, the KM Prime ensured that the project team shared the knowledge gained during the
project with the company.

Another effort started by the KM Group was to identify knowledge champions, who were
responsible for facilitating knowledge sharing and reuse. Their responsibility was stressed for
critical or emerging technologies and methodologies.

After these changes, the number of quality contributions to Kshop increased, while the total
number of contributions reduced by 37% in the two quarters after the introduction of the new
scheme. After the initial decline, the number of contributions stabilized. The reviewers could
spend enough time on the contributions and the quality and utility of the knowledge assets
increased. By 2003, there were around 6,000 knowledge documents in Kshop and two documents
were being downloaded every working minute.

By 2003, the number of documents downloaded from Kshop increased to four every working
minute. The KM team kept track of the number of documents downloaded from Kshop. When an
employee downloaded documents, data regarding the name and employee number, the document
that was accessed by the employee, and the time spent by himlher on the Kshop, etc, were
captured. This helped the KM team determine which documents were accessed most often. The
project managers could also see the documents that were being used by their team members. In
order to protect the confidentiality of the content, access to some content was limited to only
members of a team. Only project managers could access some of the important content.

While recruiting new employees, Infosys paid great attention to the learning ability of the
candidate. Recruitment itself was a rigorous process; on an average only 1% of the applicants
were recruited into the organization. Training for all the new inductees included training for
usage of the KM system. Some of the assignments required new employees to browse through K-
shop for the answers.

Kshop was widely used by the employees for their day-to-day activities. Employees could post
their query on Kshop and they could get response from employees across the organization.
Another system that facilitated knowledge sharing was rotation among project groups and
knowledge domains. Apart from transferring knowledge from one part of the organization to
another, this enabled employees to learn new technologies. There were formal methods through
which knowledge sharing took place in Infosys. Every quarter the business managers met to
share problems, issues, solutions and best practices in their divisions. These meetings also
facilitated transfer of knowledge.

As of 2003, there was a central KM group, which was responsible for internal publicity of K M
efforts. The group was also responsible for identifying 'KM practice champions' among the
employees. The practice champions helped the KM group to further strengthen the KM efforts in
the organization.

KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND SHARING

Almost all the projects that Infosys undertook were broken down into onsite and offshore
components. In the initial stages of the project, activities like planning and design took place at
the client's location. This was also the case with the final stages like testing and implementation.
Other activities like prototyping, coding, system testing, detailed design, documentation and
technical support were carried out at the Development Centers (DC), most of which were located
in India.
KM processes at Infosys operated at three levels - project level, customer level and
organizational level. At the project level, every project management team had a project
management coordinator with specific KM goals. At the account level, all the customer accounts
of the company had a KM roadmap drawn for them. The teams catering to a specific customer,
shared knowledge about the customer by orientation programs, online discussions, and by
collaborating on the projects. The organization level knowledge sharing was carried out through
Kshop. Through Kshop, the knowledge that teams gained at the project level and at the customer
level was shared with the other employees.

Each project team in Infosys was responsible for designing, developing, testing and
implementing the project. During the process, a lot of knowledge was generated and exchanged
within the project team. Each project team was organized into modules, with each module being
responsible for one aspect of the project. Instead of a sequential model with the project being
carried out sequentially, Infosys adopted an iterative model of project deployment, where the
deployment was carried out in parallel phases. This model resulted in overlap in the modules, so
that team members needed to constantly interact with each other. This resulted in all the members
in the project team having a general understanding of the project apart from gaining expertise in
their field of activity.

At every DC of Infosys, there were KM Champions who coordinated KM activities at the DC by

interacting with the central KM group. Kshop also minimized the overheads associated with
content creation by obtaining the content from several sources like existing project databases.
Each of the project teams had a coordinator who was responsible for achieving KM goals in the
project. All the customer accounts also had a KM roadmap and knowledge sharing was facilitated
by orientation training, online discussion boards, etc. During the various stages of project
development, the managers needed to complete several reports like assessment forms, evaluation
forms, review reports, project progress reports, etc. The KM team developed software which
captured inputs from these reports. The project managers were also encouraged to search the
knowledge repository for solutions to the problems they encountered at any stage of a project.

Another source of knowledge was the weekly activity report (WAR). The report had details of all
the tasks that an employee carried out during the week, on an hourly basis. Each of the activities
was assigned specific codes. The data included information about effort, schedules and defects
encountered during the projects. Microsoft project7 was used for schedule management. It
enabled the users to define a project, build the project plan, track the project by managing the
resources, schedules and costs, close the project and finally review the project information. The
data collected from the employees during the project was compiled and analyzed, in order to
determine how the project was carried out and what problems were encountered while executing
the project.

In the year 2000, Infosys adopted the Capability Maturity Model (cMM)'. CMM gauged the
maturity levels of the processes and methodologies of companies. CMM consisted of five levels,
with each level having steps that allowed the company to acquire knowledge and move from one
level to another. As the company moved from one step to the next, further improvement was
reflected. lnfosys operated at the highest level of 5 in the CMM; companies operating at this level
are assessed to have mechanisms in place to prevent defects and to manage change.

' Microsoff Project is a project management system that is used by project managers to manage and plan
various project related activities.

Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a set of instructions followed by an organization to gain control
over software development process. At CMM Level 4, the performance of a process is controlled through
quantitative techniques. At Level 1 of CMM, the processes are adhoc and stable environment is absent, at
Level 2, project management is used for tracking cost and for scheduling and some of the processes are
repeated. At Level 3, standard processes for the organization are established.
For implementing CMM, Infosys used a mechanism through which the project teams could learn
from completed projects. After completion of the project, the members of the project team were
asked to identify what was right and what went wrong during the project. At the end of the
project, a closure report containing important details about the project, duration, resources
deployed, time taken, any deviations, and corrective actions was written. The closure reports not
only created knowledge but also served as a key mechanism to link knowledge creation and
deployment at the work group level with the rest of the organization. Infosys' CMM Level 5
certification enabled the company to try out new initiatives, learn from them and assimilate the
results to change the routines and processes.

By the end of 2002, lnfosys had all the elements of a KM system in place at each level in the
organization and the company conceptualized a staged framework for implementing KM. It
called this the KM Maturity Model (KMM), and it was largely based on CMM. The objective of
the model was to provide a framework through which the organization could assess the prevailing
KM maturity level and to focus on the efforts to raise the KM maturity level higher. This model
was generic and could be used in any organization that aimed to use knowledge as a tool to
achieve success. The four focus areas of KMM were knowledge acquisition, knowledge
dissemination, knowledge reuse and virtual teamwork (Refer Exhibit I1 for the details of KMM).

USING ADVANCED KM SYSTEMS

By 2005, lnfosys had highly sophisticated KM systems in place. Uniformity of data was
maintained across the DCs of lnfosys worldwide. All the centers could access real time data. The
centralized KM system in lnfosys was accessible to all lnfosys employees, from any of its DCs.

lnfosys employees needed to have a high level of expertise, given that most of Infosys'
customers, which were global corporations, expected service providers like lnfosys to provide
them the latest and best products and services. According to MP Ravindra, Vice-President,
Technology Education & Research at Infosys, "We want to make sure that our folks who go into
projects for our customers can deliver value more readily than our competition. That is the central
theme of lnfosys knowledge management activities."'

By the year 2005, Sparsh was enhanced to accommodate information pertaining to employees
and other information related to the day-to-day activities in the company. Sparsh had emerged as
a tool that served as a window to all the systems in Infosys. All the trainees were required to
upload their profiles on Sparsh a s soon as they entered the company. Once employees logged
onto Sparsh, they could access other systems like Payana which enabled them to book tickets and
plan for their travel. Employees could even use Sparsh for requesting taxis, finding out about bus
routes, and learning about leisure activities and employee interest groups in Infosys.

THE ROAD AHEAD

According to an internaI survey on a sample of 2,700 employees conducted in Infosys in 2003,

80% of the projects managers believed that the performance of their team, including quality of
work and productivity improved as a result of KM systems. About 70% of the managers opined
that knowledge sharing practices helped deliver definite benefits to customers. Employees said
that they saved a considerable amount of time by using the existing knowledge architecture.
Around 73% of the employees claimed to have saved one person day in six months, while 14%
stated that they saved eight person days in a span of six months as a result of reusing the existing
knowledge. The survey also showed that 99% of the employees were of the opinion that KM was
essential for the company to remain competitive. More than 75% of the employees opined that

"How Infosys Embeds Knowledge Management to Drive Customer Intimacy," K M Review, April 2004.
KM was considered important by their superiors, in senior and middle levels. More than 85% of
the employees said that they tried to reuse existing knowledge whenever possible.

As of 2003, there were 5,900 knowledge assets in the knowledge repository of Infosys; this grew
to over 16,000 knowledge assets by 2006. By mid-2006, on each working day more than 4,000
knowledge assets were downloaded by the employees. This amounted to annual saving of over
50,000 man days of effort. The benefits from KM included on an average 5% improvement in
productivity in specific software development projects. In the units where the use of KM was
high, the time taken to induct new employees had reduced considerably. According to J K
Suresh, Associate Vice-president and Principal Knowledge Manager of lnfosys Technologies,
"Through the development of a culture of beneficent knowledge exchange across the enterprise,
Infosys has been able to create a sustained environment for continuous learning and collaboration
among people across geographies and functions. This in turn facilitates optimal value delivery of
knowledge infused services and products to c~stomers."'~

In spite of the company's efforts to spread knowledge across the organization, even in 2006,
several units in the company continued to develop their own systems of storing and retrieving the
data according to their convenience using informal networks rather than Kshop. These units had
individually introduced their own need-based knowledge web pages and newsgroups, which
helped them in interacting with their clients. Some employees were clearly unwilling to share
their knowledge with the organization.

But for the most part, managers were of the view that business units should not be possessive
about their content and should contribute to the Kshop, which would help the organization in the
long run. Several business units reacted positively to the Kshop, especially the ones, which
worked on routine projects. They found that Kshop was very useful in getting to know about the
happenings in the organization.

Analysts opined that Infosys' emphasis on recruiting people for their knowledge and learning
ability could have some adverse effects on the KM system. Such highly creative individuals
might prefer to create knowledge rather than reusing existing knowledge. In spite of several
technological advancements in e-learning, Infosys still emphasized classroom-based learning for
its new employees. And in the process, it incurred heavy training costs.

lnfosys remained positive about its KM efforts. The company said it had identified KM as one of
the three leadership areas along with collaborative and convergence technologies. It created
technology roadmaps in all these areas to anticipate changes in the next two to five years. Infosys
firmly believed that in the light of continuous changes in the business environment, managing
knowledge effectively remained a key contributor to the success of the company.

IU
"Infosys Wins the Prestigious Global MAKE Award," www.indiainfo.com, December 01, 2004.

11
 EXHIBIT I

KSHOP

Select K-Path(s)! Welcome to the Knowledge Navigator Select the

content-type
" .- " " ' You can retrleve content b y s p e c ~ f y ~ nthe
g k n o r v l e d q c ~I J , ~ ~ I I All P

l knowledge r r
~ e c k ~ nthe
g I I
r
hrough w ~ t h
r

I External Literature r

R e v ~ c w e dWebsites r
Glossary r
Trends r
Others r
Source: VP Kochikar, Presentation at KM World, Santa Clara, 2000.
 XHIBIT I1
KM MATURITY MODEL
1 The KMM defined five KM Maturity Levels which were Default. Reactive. Aware. Convinced and
Sharing. According to KMM, the knowledge life cycle had three stages - knowledge acquisition and
updation, knowledge sharing & dissemination and knowledge reuse.

Infosys' KMM had three prongs - people, process and technology. At each maturity level, there were
different capabilities pertaining to people, process and technology. Higher maturity levels signified
higher capabilities of the three prongs. At each level, key result areas (KRAs) were defined and were
specific to people, process or technology. At the first level, there were no KRAs and at the final level,
the KRAs were not classified separately for people, process, and technologies.

KMM - CAPABILITIES
Level I ~ e o u Process Technology
~ e v- -a
Level 2 Knowledge Awareness Content Capture Basic 1nformation
Information Management
Level 3 Central Knowledge Content Structure Knowledge Technology
Organization Management Infrastructure
Knowledge Education
Level 4 Customized Enabling Content Enlivenment Knowledge Infrastructure
Knowledge Configuration Management
Management
Quantitative Knowledge
Management
Level 5 Expertise Integration
Knowledge Leverage
Innovation Management
Adapted from www.infotoday.com.

At the default level, there was no awareness about the need to manage knowledge in the organization.
Formal training was used for learning and the knowledge within the organization was with the people.
In the absence of a KM system, the learning happened in isolated pockets. At the second level,
knowledge sharing took place on a need basis with only procedural knowledge being shared among the
employees.

At the third level, content that was available in knowledge systems could be used in all the functions.
The data collection in order to create baseline capability was in place and there was also an integrated
approach to manage the knowledge life cycle. Though enterprise-wide knowledge propagation systems
were in place, the awareness about them was low. At this level, the KM activities were starting to yield
some benefits and managers encouraged knowledge sharing activities.

By the fourth level, the KM movement would have gained momentum and would be self-sustaining.
The knowledge system in place would be characterized high quality and utility of information. Across
the organization, the knowledge processes had been scaled up and the benefits of knowledge sharing
were recognized across the organization. A feedback system was also in place.

At the fifth level, the culture of sharing was widely prevalent with the significance of organizational
boundaries slowly diminishing. The organization would have become a knowledge leader with ability
to shape environmental change. Infosys' KMM was designed to facilitate organizational change and
help organizations determine the current KM maturity level and raise it to the desired level.
 DESCRIPTION AND BEHAVIORAL CHARACTERIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE
Level Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Virtual
Acquisition Sharing Reuse Teamwork
Level 1 Formal training Synchronous Accidental Non-
(Default) Unstructured on-the-job mechanisms existent
learning Informal discussions,
word of mouth;

Level 2
(Reactive)
Formal training
Self-driven learning
On-the-job learning
Research confined to the
In isolated pockets
Systems only for
indispensable tasks
Sporadic
I
(
Partitioning

1
Physical
travel
'research group'
Level 3
(Aware)
Level 4
Formal training
Structured on the job Learning
Formal training
Organization-wide
sharin
Regul:r s h a z g
Some
reuse
Large
ti
Happens

(Convinced) Use of internal and scale Virtual

external sources Asynchronous Teamwork
research sharing through
environmental scanning systems
Level 5 Continuously evolving Flows continuouslyLarge Cohesive
(Sharing) formal training without decay scale
Conviction (includes
driven1 customer)
Adapted from VP Kochikar, The Knowledge Management Maturity Model - A Staged Framework for
Leveraging Knowledge, 2002.
Compiled from various sources.