Infosys Technologies, Limited 305Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without writtenMeasurement Issues
By late 2003, Nandan, now the CEO and managing director, was content with the
progress of the KM initiative. It had involved a substantial effort, but initial results were
impressive:
- The knowledge taxonomy had developed into a robust four-level structure encom-
passing more than 1,700 nodes displaying over 18,000 knowledge assets covering
various industries, technologies, and project management topics. - On any typical workday, Infosys employees all over the world downloaded over
1,000 artifacts from KM portal totaling over 150,000 documents every quarter. - One in every four employees had contributed at least one knowledge artifact to the
central knowledge repository. - Thousands of employees regularly participated in knowledge exchanges on the
discussion forums.
“What begun as an effort to improve the knowledge flow situation, ended up giving
us a whole new perspective of things — the knowledge perspective,” Nandan mused.
The Future: Knowledge Management Maturity (KMM)
Model
By 2003, the KM steering committee was of the opinion that an implementation
framework would be essential to chart the future course of the KM program. During one
of the discussions between the committee and the KM Group, an interesting possibility
emerged — to develop a framework in line with the capability maturity model (CMM). The
resulting framework was named the Knowledge Management Maturity (KMM) model.
The KMM model categorized possible levels of developing the knowledge management
capability within a firm. The levels ranged from 1 representing the “default” state of a firm
bereft of any form of KM activity to level 5 representing a “sharing” state where robust
processes leverage organizational knowledge assets for measurable productivity ben-
efits (Kochikar, 2003). Exhibit 11 illustrates the five KMM levels. Infosys was designated
as moving toward the “Aware” stage of level 3.
CURRENT CHALLENGES FACING INFOSYS
An important accomplishment for Infosys’ KM program was the company’s
recognition as one of the Asia’s Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) for 2002
and 2003. In 2003, Infosys was also recognized as one of the Globally Most Admired
Knowledge Enterprises. (Other winners included Accenture, Amazon.com, BP, GE,
Toyota, and World Bank.)
With the initial success of the KM initiative, there also emerged new challenges.
As with KM initiatives at other companies, questions were being raised about the
program’s impact on the firm’s performance (Chen, Feng, & Liou, 2004). After 4 years into
the KM program, Nandan knew that at some point he would have to justify the economic
commitment to the program. As an initial assessment, the KM group started conducting
annual and semiannual polls. Employees consistently attributed 2% to 4% increase in