7 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

facilitating greater reuse and better virtual team work, Knowledge Management raises the
organization’s ability to deliver higher quality output at higher speed.
Knowledge Management is literally changing the way many organizations do business,
treat people, effect change, and look toward the future. We do live in a knowledge age,
where what you know and with whom you share it not only has value, but also is a
competitive advantage. Knowledge Management basically addresses issues related to
knowledge sharing/knowledge exchange/knowledge creation within an organization and
occasionally beyond organizational boundaries to suppliers, customers and retirees.
Knowledge Management as a distinct management concept, is more than a decade old
now, and has finally emerged as a serious candidate for an academic discipline of core
management competency.
3. Benefits of KM
Knowledge Management , when successfully implemented provides many tangible and
intangible benefits for the organization. A few tangible benefits are given below.
• Raising the quality of Service
The primary mechanism for raising the quality of services delivered to the customer
is the institutionalization of best practices residing in organizational pockets, a process
which needs the sharing and adoption of these practices across departmental interfaces.
• Reducing the cost
Achieving greater productivity requires higher level of reuse. The cost of redoing
something that has been done earlier and relearning something that has been learnt
earlier, anywhere in the organization, should be less. Successful implementation of
KM leads to reduction in the cost of product/service.
• Managing risk
The de-risking measures in diversifying into new technologies, domains, services and
geographical areas, require that the organization must learn new ways of doing things.
Managing changes in team compositions resulting from attrition and personal
movements require that as much knowledge as possible should be documented
• Meeting Growth Expectations
Maintaining a consistently high pace of growth needs the definition and dissemination
of scalable process that support the delivery of high quality customer solutions and an
ability to rapidly enable new recruits on technology, process and cultural issues.
• Managing Virtual Teams
Increasingly globalized operations and rising customer expectations have meant a
more complex execution model, often requiring teams that are spread across continents
to collaborate in delivering single customer solution. Such virtual team work requires
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