Lugeen Rayaz Bailur - 141202029

Rani S Shetty - 141202035

Roshan Mammen - 141202046

Chethana - 141202039

Prakrithi B -141202049

GROUP 7 SECTION ‘A’

MIS ASSSIGNMENT

History...• Founded in Berlin in 1847 by cousins Werner and Johann Georg Siemens along

with Halske

• Started as small engineering workshop

• Manufactured telegraph systems, warning bells for railways and wire insulation

• Established branches in many countries

• Werner Siemens discovered dynamoelectric principle

• Series of power-engineering innovations followed in quick succession

• Expanded products in electrical and medical appliances

• Many other components were added during world war II

• Employed over 416,000 people in 190 countries

• Had decentralized corporate structure

• Each company unit has its own groups and services

About the company First stage:

• Till the mid 90’s there was fair competition in telecommunications

industry

• The company manufactured quality products for high specialized

customers

• At the end of the decade, the companies were forced to change from

‘simple’ product provider to a complex customer-oriented

organization that provided customized solution and service

Continued... Second stage:

• Siemens underwent a significant restructuring in 1998

• The carrier and telecom network branches of Siemens merged with

Information and Communication Networks(ICN)

• Due to the restructuring and industry shift, Siemens sought the

importance of knowledge management as a tool to exploit its people’s

capabilities and to keep up with fast-paced changes and demand for

the market

• The BTP decided the knowledge management project should focus on

ICN’s sales and marketing staff

Evolution of Share Net

• From the two process, tacit and codified knowledge, companies used

to omit either one of the process

• But most of Knowledge management systems were focusing on

codified knowledge

• For True knowledge sharing both the process are important

• Therefore the ICN started its knowledge management initiatives by

developing a system called Share Net in 1998 where both the

process were included

ShareNet

• Share Net is a community of Siemens were people come together to

share and discuss their knowledge

• It connects experts of Siemens globally

• Employees of Siemens connect with each other to share and develop

their knowledge to build superior client solutions and solve their

problems

• ShareNet has two parts: library and urgent requests

• The main idea of Share Net is to capture and share explicit company

information

Success of ShareNet• It allowed for the easy sharing of market based knowledge

• For example: a ICN project manager who wanted advice on laying

cable in amazon rain forest sent an urgent request on Share Net

which was answered by a manager in Senegal who had undertaken a

similar project before. Knowledge sharing led to the company

saving millions of dollars

• In Switzerland the company won a contract to build

telecommunications network for 2 hospitals even though it had an

higher bid. This was due to data for Share Net about a similar

project and the reliability of the company in that case

• Became a tool for intra-organizational knowledge sharing

Problems

• People were reluctant of knowledge sharing due to the

perception that their ideas were their alone.

• Another perception was the negative perception regarding

reuse of the ideas in the organization

• There was difficulty in extending Share Net to be a knowledge

sharing tool across global R&D divisions of Siemens

Problems• Telecom industry market collapse and demand for routers fell globally and Siemens

was not immune to the problem

• Siemens had to go for cost cutting and undertook restructuring and layoffs in end of

2001

• In 2002, ICN was reorganized and ShareNet was placed into Competence and

Knowledge Management department

• ShareNet operations were made lean by cutting down the team

• ShareNet was considered a non essential cost and ShareNet managers had to justify

its benefits

• Share Net had 18200 users by the end of 2001 but out of that only 5% were heavy

users, 15% were moderate users contribute and 80% were just readers

Problems: Future of Share Net

• By July 2002 Share Net had 19000 subscribers

• Over 20000 knowledge objects had been deposited in the

system

• There was a dilemma on whether to keep Share Net a free

Intra Knowledge tool or to charge the users and thereby realize

the cost of its operations

ShareNet Team Challenge• Cost of maintain such a knowledge sharing network was a major

challenge

• If any division decided it did not want ShareNet, whether its users

had to be cut off

• If any division did not take ShareNet, price for other divisions

would rise to cover entire network costs due to which other

divisions too would turn it down

• Linking ShareNet to ICN’s strategy

• If ShareNet had to be kept as a single network or split into different

networks

ShareNet Team Challenge• Justification for the need of Share Net in sales is the number of projects it has

won in each various countries

Country No of Projects won due to Share Net

Country No of Projects won due to Share Net

Belgium 1 Brazil 1

China 1 Columbia 2

Ecuador 1 Hungary 1

India 2 Italy 2

Jordan 1 Mexico 1

Netherlands 1 Poland 1

Portugal 4 Romania 2

Russia 1 South Africa 1

Thailand 2 Turkey 2

United Kingdom

1

Revenue Calculations Average number of active contributors 300

Number of knowledge objects per contributor

15

Number of knowledge objects in the system

4500

Percentage of reused objects 10%

Number of reused knowledge objects 450

Cost saving per reused object 3000

Total projected cost saving 1350000

Percentage of reused objects resulting in new projects

10%

Projected number of new customer projects

45

Revenue per project 2500000

Additional revenue 112500000

Additional profit(5% of revenue) 5625000

Need for Knowledge Sharing• From the given figures it is understood that the advantages of

having a easily accessible knowledge network far outweigh the

costs

• The average cost of maintenance at the end of 2000 was 7.8

million and in comparison the revenues earned due to it was

staggering 11.25 million euros plus additional profit

• In a Cost vs Payoff analysis, It can be easily observed that the

Pay Off of having Share Net is extensive knowledge sharing

and increasing the competency of the company globally vs the

cost of maintaining servers for this purpose and remuneration

of share net managers

• Payoff exceeds cost and hence it is advisable to continue with

Share Net

Alternatives and Recommendations

The various alternatives that could be applied to cut down costs are as follows:

• ShareNet users could be given free usage for knowledge sharing and for

other uses of Share Net they could be charged a reasonable fee which

would be deducted from the division funds

• Users giving quality answers to urgent requests could be rewarded with

bonus shares

• The shares system which would include rewarding an employee with

shares if he could convince another employee to subscribe

• Shares could be used during performance appraisal of the employee instead

of redeeming it in exchange of gifts

Continued..• The ShareNet team will have to justify to the management regarding

increases beyond reasonable usage of Share Net

• The users who are inactive for a period of more than 6 months will

loose the earned shares

• During months of low usage the number of shares allotted to each

user for feedback, sharing of knowledge and processes, providing

feedback and answering urgent requests must be doubled to ensure

active participation

• Using Data Analytics tools to compile the Big Data in more user

friendly manner and effective manner, thereby creating a virtual

repository for future use