A team of engineers at India's largest IT services provider firm. Tata Consultancy Services, was working on a project for an important client. While it was co-ordinating work from three geographical units - Europe, South America and India - it was finding it difficult to collaborate through telephone or other voice means as there were language and pronunciation hurdles.
It was then that a project manager suggested the use of a central instant messaging system. Not only could the team coordinate better but it could do so faster and with conviction.
This is simply an instance of how the knowledge management system at TCS has undergone a sea of change over the last 20 years. It now uses tools that are popular among Generation 'X' such as IM, blogging, and jam sessions.
TCS, for instance, uses a single system for IM worldwide. That's not all, it uses multiple universal access technology, private IP telephony (where an employee can dial a seven-digit number and speak to anyone anywhere in the world), and video conferencing.
"The latest technology was set up two years ago. We have been upgrading regularly. TCS' knowledge management initiative has always kept pace with the latest technology available at the time.
The current KM portal using the latest technology encourages sharing, and acts as a store-house of corporate knowledge," says Anant Krishnan, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, TCS. Many of the collaboration tools are yet to be integrated into the KM portal.
Currently at TCS, the KM portal - build using Microsoft's Sharepoint - uses 8-9 channels of communication to get the 100,000 plus employees involved. Other than these channels, the company also uses the 'Just Ask' system (embedded into the KM), collaboration tools, Blog platform and Idea Storm.
The Idea Storm is a once-a-year event wherein 2-3 topics are posed by the corporate team on which ideas are invited by everyone.
IM is clearly the most popular method with almost 1,000 online meets happening on the system everyday across the globe. Followed by Just Ask System, which could be a simple question and answer interaction to a detail discussion.
However, it is blogging that has caught on quite rapidly. Almost 40,000-50,000 TCS staff blog on the official intranet, including Krishnan.
"I use my blog as a means to gathering inputs on some problem I might face or on specific platform," he says.
For instance, within this is a system called TIP. It is an anytime open portal for product innovation and potential new ideas. "I get about 25,000 solutions a year on any given issue. Right from how TCS should innovate its buses to product innovation. Of this 15-20 are reasonable good product and services idea," adds Krishnan.
TCS has also initiated a feature called My Site. The system, embedded into the KM portal, allows each associate to have a personal page like facebook or orkut. Now, 8,000-10,000 employees are using this.
Krishnan opines that the immediate advantage of the KM portal is to get solutions to practical problems. "In the 80s KM were deployed with an ability to get tactical teams to work on programmes, today most interaction we see are on short run immediate practical solutions," says Krishnan.
Going ahead the IT behemoth will continue to invest in adopting social networking tools. It will add many more feature in its blogging systems, create Wiki's among other tools. Krishnan believes as the company becomes larger and as the usage in business will multiply because of the sheer access this allows.
