Infosys Technologies, Limited 301Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without writtenKnowledge Taxonomy
The KM Group anticipated the KM system to handle several terabytes of data. The
Group also realized that the analytical nature of company’s employees required a robust
knowledge taxonomy supported by a sophisticated content retrieval mechanism to
improve their search capability.
The taxonomy developed by the content management team covered 1,100 knowl-
edge areas (called knowledge nodes), rearranged in a four-level hierarchy to simplify
navigational needs. At the first level, the nodes were organized in terms of broad areas
of relevance: technology, methodology, domain, project management, and culture. Each
of these level 1 nodes branched out into more granular nodes to populate the subsequent
levels. For example, the node Wireless Application Protocol could be traced under
Technology → Mobile Technologies → Protocols (Kochikar & Suresh, 2004).
In-House KM Applications
The KM Group next evaluated some standardized KM software packages to decide
the KM applications issue. Packages were assessed in term of their scalability, robust-
ness, ease of use, and ability to accommodate the organizational knowledge taxonomy.
After some deliberation, the KM Group found most of the packages unfit for Infosys’s
needs, and decided to develop its own set of KM applications.
Before developing new applications, it was important to consolidate the existing
stand-alone applications under a single umbrella. These included the body of knowledge
(BoK), technical bulletin forum, the process assets database, the project leader toolkit,
and the marketing assets repository. A front-end KM portal was designed and all the
stand-alone applications were added on the back end. Some other applications with
substantial usage across Infosys were left untouched. As Nandan explained, “We didn’t
want to disturb the existing knowledge flow infrastructure too much. Secondly, assimilating
these applications would have projected an impression that we were forcing people into the
KM program, which was not the best policy to convince talented knowledge workers.”
On the tacit knowledge front, an application called the People Knowledge Map
(PKM) was added to the KM portal to facilitate tacit knowledge sharing. The PKM kept
a record of the skill sets and expertise of people across the organization. The expertise
component included a voluntary registration by the experts with this application. Apart
from the PKM, a Web-based virtual classroom was also attached to the portal. It allowed
access to various courses developed by the E&R department, the MDC, and the
Leadership Institute, and incorporated a forum to initiate course-related discussions.
The Program Takes Off
The KM program was launched with fanfare. Seminars and presentations were held
at all global locations. Technical quizzes with monetary prizes were conducted, and stock
market trends and live cricket scores were constantly flashed on the KM portal to attract
first-timers.
Knowledge Currency Units (KCU)
To evangelize the program, a novel incentive scheme was introduced. Reviewers
as well as users were asked to award quality points, called knowledge currency units