Presenter: Yves Noble, Head of KM at Capgemini (CG)

CG uses Open Source & Web 2.0 to share knowledge worldwide - global KM Platform

recognising people as the real knowledge assets, not documents

Adopting community-based networks

Taking a challenging approach to breaking down established barriers

Capgemini ?

86,000 people around the world … “knowledge” is what they do, everyday

 

Problems with old KM Solution ?

Plenty of good content, well-organized, well-structured - but people did not use it

20% year-over-year decline in use

Average age oif document in the system 3.5 years

7 years to refresh knowledge content (wow, papyrus grows faster than that)

Complex and confusing for non-experts

Many disconnects between tools, processes and the organisation

Costly infrastructure

 

How CG Started the Changeover

150+ interviews throughout the organisation

Massive adoption of community-based solutions occurring in the outside worldd (Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc. as examples)

THE CHALLENGE: Getting management to commit to a simple idea: Copy what works on the Internet

Took two years … 

 

CG’s KM Strategy

Public collaboration, everyone can contribute

Experts lead to content, content leads to experts

KM integrated into everyone’s job

Knowledge sharing

 

Technology Options

Lotus Notes Domino, or Sharepoint 2007, or Open Source ?

Functional req’ts, Development effort, product extensibility, available expertise

Vendor risk,

Internal skills,

Deployment risks

Learning Curve

Product usability

 

At first, Sharepoint was looking good

Then .. price negotiations began

decided on open Source:

 

Drupal (Main “site”, CMS)

phpBB (Bulletin board, forums)

MediaWiki (wiki capabilities)

Google (Enterprise) Search and Analytics

 

Overall Approach

2007 H2 - six months of development

3 major releases

2008 H1

End-user survey

Stabilisation

Migration of content

Four minor releases

2008 H2

Start of global deployment

Outsourcing (support) to India

Total number of “bugs” - 15; Total number of important “bugs” - 0

 

KM 2.0 Features

Tag clouds, expertise finder, forums, moderation, blogs, wikis, tags, rss feeds, communities, content management, personal space, user ratings, multiple languages, etc.

 

Communities are at the center of CG’s KM 2.0

Yves puts up a graphic re: Supporting Infastructure that I cannot read and cannot replicate whilst live-blogging.

 

KM 2.0 - Links with other corporate tools

Corporate communications portal

Customisable individual portals

Regional intranets

Instant messaging and screen sharing

Project collaboration applications / equipment

 

Speed and scope of adoption (official deployment has not yet started)

27,00 registered users 

900 communities

500 forums

500 wikis

250 blogs

.. and have not spent even $1.00 in “communications” thus far

No training

No user manual

“Here’s the URL”

“Oh, that’s great … and it works”

 

Lessons learned - Benefits

users are delighted to get rid of institutional control

Users are very creative in using wiki in unexpected ways

Private communities going public to get more visibility

Community moderators are taking it very seriously

Auto administration is not a dream

RSS feeds can be extremely powerful when used properly 

Progressive move from e-mail to IM and collaboration

Easy to deploy as long as the infrastructure can absorb the load

Simple, intuitive, fast, cheap ….

 

Lessons Learned

Transparency still a concern for top management

New role for the knowledgemanager

Measuring the actual impact

The generation factor

Push back from IT (lack of vendor support) 

Fully WYSIWYG tools

RSS savvy users are not so common

switching from document folders to tags and folksonomies

Getting connected with the outside world and involving clients

 

The Way Ahead

Everyone has a good idea on how it could be improved

The more syndrome (more demanding, more insistent, more impatient)

High expectations 

Managing change requests through on-line voting

Selling it to clients

 

People Are Eager To:

Connect with peers

Belong to a network

Share knowledge

Acquire on-line reputation

Collaborate co-workers