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This is the era of knowledge workers, says TCS official

BS Markets Bureau

"This millennium belongs to knowledge workers. In today's complex socio-economic environment the corporates have to think of their stake holders and the biggest stake holder is society. The corporates, therefore, cannot function in isolation and they cannot afford to lose sight of their final stake holder -- the society. The business can only be as efficient as the society of which it is a part," cautioned F C Kohli, executive vice-chairman, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

Kohli was delivering the keynote address at a two-day seminar on 'leveraging knowledge management (KM) for corporate excellence', organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII - western region) in Bombay.

The conference is aimed at deliberating tools and technologies of KM, implementing strategies and evolve an action agenda for the corporates on implementation of KM in their organisations.

While presenting the systems approach in KM, Vincent P Barabba, general manager (corporate strategy and KM), General Motors, observed that efficient systems are those which are developed on the basis of past experiences and mistakes, which help a great deal in dissemination of knowledge and its application.

"The value of knowledge is in its use and application... not its management," Barabba said.

"A system in any organisation is a whole that cannot be divided into independent parts. Knowledge management (KM) is not about analysis or synthesis. Rather, it's about analysis and synthesis," he added.

The other key speakers on the first day of the seminar included Reid Smith, vice-president (KM), Schlumberger Ltd; K V Nori, chief information officer, TCS, Ruth Connolly, president and MD, SAP India; Satish Duryodhan, product director & vice-president, Aptech Ltd; Sandeep Shekhar, business development manager, KM Tools, SAP India and; D B Phatak, head, Kanwal Rekhi School of IT, IIT, Bombay.

Drawing from the experience of his own organisation -- Schlumberger Ltd, and sharing the best practices in KM, Smith of Schlumberger stated that the two main requisites for improving an organistion's capability are connecting people to information and connecting people to people through an efficient communication system.

He said: "These two tools would lead benefits to the organisation by way of cost saving, reduction in response time, an easing of the employees' workload etc which in turn would improve productivity and impact the financials of the organisation."

Apparently, at Schlumberger, these tools helped in cost savings of over $30 million annually while at the same time cutting down the response time by 95 per cent.

However, CII's (western region) chairman, Pradeep Mallick was of the view that technology and knowledge will be the winning combination which would provide a cutting edge to the corporates in this dynamic environment.

Commenting on the degree of application of KM in the Indian corporate world, Dr Barabba said: "Knowledge management is a relatively new concept and is still gaining grounds in India as an inherent practice.

The one most important thing for corporates to keep in mind, while practising KM, is that it should always remain seamless. It should never be made out into a big thing, else it would lose relevance."

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