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Measuring Knowledge Management – Metricizing
Intangibles
Syndicate Room, NITIE20th Feb’09
Alakh AsthanaTwitter: [email protected]
For things to get better, we have to get better
For things to change, we have to change
Manage change or change will manage you
Metricizing KM
Greater Visibility over the years
Corporate reality – Tangible or Intangible
Believe It or not
Time Warner has only 6.49% of its value attributable to tangibles
For Oracle Corporation, tangibles account for only 4% of its value
General Electric (worth over US$450 billion), tangibles account for less than 11% of its value
Source: http://www.standardsinstitute.org/background/background.html
Measure the Treasure
Is there a clear ‘Measure’ on Knowledge or K-Sharing?
Create indicators, metrics, level etc.
Have multiple objectives – comparison between units, employees and senior management (WIFFIM)
Map objectives of the metrics closer to the business goals
Check Historical data
Preliminary Tools – A Q&A checklist
Preliminary Tools – Impact:Popularity
Critical to Business
Popularity / Penetration
High Cs & High Ps
Less Cs & Less Ps
Ask an Expert
Messenger Service
Documentation
Explicit Document repository
Content maintenance
BPI / Idea Sharing
CoPs
Informal Blogs and Forums
High Cs & Less Ps
Less Cs & High Ps
Answer the question why your website exists, then identify the 2 or 3 metrics that are critical to goal conversion
– Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytics Evangelist
What to measure?
Activity Metrics• Knowledge asset capture over time (Jan’08 to Mar’08)
• Resource utilization of the KM team members
• Number of users / Portal visits
• Asset usage across locations
• Searches / Downloads
• Submissions / discussions / publications
• Collaborative sessionQuality Interaction Sharing Collaboration
Real Metrics!
• Time Saved
• Productivity improvements
• Quality improvements
• Reduced risk
• Brand value
• Higher employee satisfaction
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Intellectual property usage / awareness
Combination of ‘Activity’ and ‘Real’
• Number of times a document is read – Utility of KM Repository
• Successful queries – Failed queries
• Content accessibility – Time saved
• Correlations metrics – Content supply and demand
• Documentation quality – User experience
Input Metrics
• Reviewer rating
• User rating
• Qualitative feedback
• Popularity
• Frequency / recency of download
Technology
• Databases • OLAP
• Business intelligence • Dashboards (monthly, quarterly) • User authentication techniques
• Survey tools
What can’t be measured• Direct measures or positive correlations
E.g. Effect of primary education on national GDP
Since 1950s, both the atmospheric CO2 and crime levels have increased sharply. Hence, atmospheric CO2 causes crime
• True value or impact of KM
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”Albert Einstein
To Summarize / Tips
• Don’t claim all the credit
• Start measuring early in the life of the program and continue to measure often
• Match the measure to the audience
• Measures are best "designed-in" to KM projects, not added later
• Keep it simple. Focus on a few critical measures - Don't create measurement schemes that are more trouble than they are worth—
too time-consuming, too expensive, too hard to understand• Derive actionable metrics (don’t touch what you cant change!) • Don't raise unrealistic expectations about ROI - ROI is still primarily captured indirectly
Measurement Tips• The best output measures are those already used by the
organization and widely understood by managers and individual contributors
- Avoid developing complicated ones
• Stories are powerful indicators of success and promotional tools– Not a replacement for "hard dollar" measures, but useful to demonstrate
progress to managers and to drive knowledge-sharing behavior throughout the organization
Jumpstart is a NSE listed KPO with stellar growth since 5 years, from an employee strength of 7 in the first financial year – to 820 in the fourth, serving clients in three verticals – QMS, eCommerce and Standardization
Being a KPO, they are highly K-dependent; a KM team was established to capture existing knowledge. Process transitions being the backbone of every function, documentation framework was established
Problem: Documentation was highly critical to the business, however an overhead for the operations team
Quality of the documents was mediocre and was regularly battered by BD teams and PDC (Proximity Development Centers)
A documentation specialist was hired by the KM team. Ops team were delighted
Are more specialists needed? (hiring a specialist is expensive)
How do we identify which vertical is spending more? Where does the 80 / 20 lie?
What is the current quality of the documents? Who is better and why?
How do we stem the fire fighting? Is there scope for automation?
Case Study # 1
The Solution
An online tracker was launched to manage the workflow, with uploads
‘FIFO’ was implemented
Three status were maintained – WIP, Release and Declined along with time
Declined stated a reason by the Specialist
The ‘comments & feedback’ tab gave reasons for decline
Release was open to review by BD and PDC teams
BD and PDC had authority to decline as well
Tangible Results
1) A calculation of WIP gave an idea about resource utilization
2) More No. of rejects – BAD (and vice versa)
3) Few verticals like Standardization had more documents
4) A FTE was later hired for standardization (a win for the KM team)
5) Constant track and monitoring
Failure to spend the time on this "non value-added effort" can cost an executive dearly later on when
they're unable to make a strong business case.
- Robert Kaplan
Thank you!
Connect to me on:http://in.linkedin.com/in/alakhasthana Twitter: [email protected]