Assessing the Readiness of Professional Services Company 39Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without writtencreating, sharing, and using knowledge, they do have constraints. Most are extremely
busy; their productivity is measured in terms of billable hours. So they have little slack
time to contribute to or use knowledge repositories.
Trying to implement a knowledge management system of any scale without
technology is extremely difficult, but the technology itself does not make the knowledge
management system work; it can facilitate and enable connections and communications
but it will not make them happen. Most knowledge management experts will acknowledge
that technology contributes about 15% of the solution for knowledge-enabled enter-
prise. However, this is a very important 15%, a point easily demonstrated by trying to
implement a knowledge management program without IT. The right technology to create
infrastructure and provide facilitating access to people with information is critical for
success. It is not in itself sufficient, however (Gamble & Blackwell, 2001).
An intranet can empower sharing efforts by integrating databases and information
sources to provide a kind of one-stop for information. The intranet will lower communi-
cation costs related to the printing, mailing, and processing of documents. It can improve
productivity by making information more widely and quickly accessible. It can facilitate
higher team productivity by creating a collaborative working environment, allow for rapid
implementation of solutions as a result of open protocol standards, and with the right
kind of support, make transparent the use of knowledge base in terms of business
objectives. In order to achieve any of these benefits, it is very important to ensure that
a strategy for managing content has been implemented (Stenmark, 2002).
CASE DESCRIPTION
The PS division of “CITE” started providing services to the company’s local
customer base in 1997. At that time, PS division staff members included nine consultants
focusing mainly on the Internet solutions, high-availability solutions, and data manage-
ment (storage/backup) solutions areas. From 1997 to early 2000, the average number of
projects implemented by the PS division, per year, was between 60 to 70 projects, with
an average of seven projects per consultant per year. These projects were always
delivered on time and with high quality according to the Acceptance Reports signed by
the customers.
By midyear 2000, and after the exponential growth in the IT market in Egypt, the
company started facing a high turnover rate; seven consultants left the company
because they were offered more senior positions in other companies or because they
have decided to start their own private business. While the departed employees have been
replaced and the total number of employees has even increased, the revenues have been
flat, the number of successfully delivered projects has been flat, the number of incomplete
projects has been increasing, and the customer satisfaction level has been decreasing.
According to the preliminary data gathered and through informal interviews, the
problem was not only the high turnover rate but the real problem was the consequences
behind this turnover rate, and its increasing value with elapsed time. The main
identifiable problem was the loss of knowledge, where knowledge dissipation did affect
the revenues of the company and its image in the local market. Those losses in knowledge
caused by high turnover rate have put “CITE” into a risky situation compared to its local
competitors.