Knowledge management at Nagarro Software

Knowledge management (KM) has been gaining in visibility for several years. As Nagarro grew, we realized that we would have to do something on the KM front if we did not want to waste all the experience and knowledge we were acquiring in different parts of the organization over the years. It was no longer possible to carry all the knowledge of the company in your head!

On the marketing and sales side, we would initially create each proposal and presentation from scratch. It took a lot of time and a lot of mistakes would creep in. We then went in the opposite direction and created a single standard deck, but then it was not very customer- or industry- or technology-specific and so was not very effective by itself. We had to approach this in a more sophisticated way.

With a lot of effort by my colleagues and over some time, Nagarro developed a fairly sophisticated KM process for the sales and marketing material. Presented in a simplified way, this is how it works:

1. When we come across a sales opportunity, a request may go to the KM group asking for slides on, say, "Europe, manufacturing, chemical industry, SAP, automation, manufacturing execution systems".
   
   
2. The KM group will go to their Microsoft SharePoint repository and pick out all slides on these topics and send them to the sales or presales (technical sales) folks.
   
   This is the RETRIEVAL and DISTRIBUTION of knowledge.
   
   
3. Now, outside the KM group, the slides may be modified for this particular customer, new slides may be added and some may be subtracted.
   
   
4. When the presentation is finally delivered to the client, it is compulsory for a copy to be sent back to the KM group. The KM group takes the presentation and stores it as such in its repository in a systematic way.
   
   You may call this the STORAGE of knowledge.
   
   
5. But the most important thing the KM group does is to take the presentation, slide by slide, and identify which slides are new, and which slides have been modified from the original. Incidentally, with new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) technology, such identification can be automatic if the slide was edited while the user was connected with the MOSS.
   
   
6. The KM experts give new slides relevant tags (e.g. "factory planning") and store them for future requests after carefully editing out customer-specific details.
   
   
7. In parallel, the slides that have been modified are studied carefully to see if they are a) improvements on existing slides, or b) new flavors of existing slides (such as a "Europe" slide with a "Germany" flavor"). Improvements on existing slides are saved as newer versions after checking with senior personnel. New flavors of existing slides are also stored separately as such.
   
   Steps 5-7 comprise what may be loosely called the IDENTIFICATION and CLASSIFICATION of new knowledge.
   
   
8. Of course the work does not end there. The slides have to all be kept up to date. For example, if at any time in the future, anything changes on a slide (let us say Nagarro gets a new European quality certification and someone modifies the Europe slide), the different flavors of the same slide must also be updated.
   
   One may term this the MAINTENANCE of knowledge.

I am not an expert in this area, but this cycle of Identification, Classification, Storage, Maintenance, Retrieval and Distribution of knowledge has saved us a lot of time and has tremendously improved our sales efficiency. This is Knowledge Management at work!

A couple of our friends run overseas KM centers - Nitin Seth runs the McKinsey Knowledge Center and Nitin Aggarwal runs the ZA Associates Knowledge Center (he was formerly the head of the McKinsey Knowledge Center too). Alok Aggarwal co-founded Evalueserve which is a pioneer in this general area. Do click on these links and see what these folks are up to.

You may also want to check out the technology aspects of KM using Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) or look at the Wikipedia entries on the subject.

My best sales lesson

I was once in a room with Tarik Taman, VP EMEA of Oracle Retail and a bit of a sales legend. I asked Tarik, "How do you pull off these multi-million dollar deals?"

Tarik replied, "When I leave the customer, the customer must believe that I BELIEVE THAT I AM THE BEST OPTION FOR HIM OR HER."

Note, not "good enough" but "the best". And note the emphasis on what the sales person believes.

Tarik explained, "The customer may or may not believe that I am the best option, but he or she must be sure that I at least believe so."

Then Tarik said, "Further, the customer must REMEMBER THE TWO OR THREE REASONS WHY I BELIEVE that I am the best option for him or her."

Wonderfully put! I memorized Tarik's lines and have used them profitably ever since. They are worth memorizing, because much of professional life involves the rhetoric of sales.


A footnote for the graduating class:

Even in a job interview, you cannot simply portray that you are good enough for the job. There must be thousands who are good enough! IMHO, you have to believe and convey - with all appropriate humility and tact - that you are the best for that particular role. And you have to arrive at the two or three reasons why you are the best for it. It could be your background, it could be your skills, it could be your interest, it could be your sincerity, it could be your desire to work for less money, it could be your openness to learning, it could be your knowledge of the city, it could be your skills with a language, it could be your personality - whatever.

The Times Ascent article on career planning

I had mentioned being asked a few questions regarding career planning by a journalist. Here is the resulting article in the Times Ascent.

Estimating the Diwali spend on pyrotechnics

I am no expert on firecrackers and firewords, but this Diwali I was awed by the sheer amount of explosives and light on beautiful display at Dehradun. I thought I would estimate the total spend.

I was at the outskirts of the city. I could hear a steady bursting of crackers. It was a continuous sound in the background. I estimated about 20 crackers were going off every second within my audible range. For perhaps 3 hours (including the previous day's crackers etc.)

How much did each "pop" cost? I had no idea. But I estimated it at Rs. 10.

So Rs. 200 per second. 3600 seconds an hour or Rs. 720,000. Three hours = Rs. 21 lakhs.

I guessed my audible range was 1 km. The city is 5 km in radius, say. 75 sq km, of which I was hearing 3 sq km. I had to multiply by 25.

25 times 21 lakhs = Rs. 5 crores.

Is this the right number? I don't know. But I checked on the net a few minutes ago and it seems that Lucknow spends Rs. 30 crores on firecrackers each Diwali. So Rs. 5 crores may be reasonable.

I tell you, I love this number-checking.

The importance of sticky strategies

An airline industry veteran was talking about Lufthansa's success even as other European airlines have fallen behind. I asked him, "What do you think that Lufthansa did different that enabled it to succeed?" His answer went something like this: "I think Lufthansa has had a clear vision of what it wanted to be, and has stayed true to this vision regardless of management changes. This probably best explains its success." Today the combined reputation of Lufthansa as an airline and Frankfurt airport as a hub eclipses that of British Airways plus Heathrow or Air France plus Charles de Gaulle for many travelers.

Strategy is long-term by definition. Yet very often "strategies" get dropped by the wayside at the slightest and new strategies adopted with much fanfare. Only to be dropped themselves. Poorly run companies do this all the time. Remember Air India and Indian Airlines? Remember the Maharaja logo? The IA logo? Remember Vayudoot? Remember the re-branding as "Indian" and the re-painting of the aircraft? And now the merged entity is called Air India once again. Just what is going on?




Some change is good and no strategy should be set in stone. But if you yourself don't know what you stand for, how can you expect the customers to know it and believe in it? You should try to stick to your strategies.

Now, when I began to write this post I was talking about strategies in general and not creative strategy in particular. I just happened to use the entire Indian Airlines + Air India logo fiasco to make a point. But then, on a hunch, I went to Google and searched for the history of Lufthansa's famous logo. I found it here and this is what I found!