Leveraging resources
knowledge management
who to contact
The practice of knowledge management (KM) is hardly new. Businesses have
always leveraged their institutional expertise; just as craftspeople have passed
techniques to their apprentices, banking professionals have developed personal
relationships, relied upon each others' skills, and coordinated their work over
long distance, going back as far as the days of the Medici and Knights Templar.
Using information
i
Tapping expertise
New systems
Active involvement
6 What'sNewS
Issue 6' June 1999
The globally networked
economy is distinguish-
ed by its lightspeed pace
and blistering competitive-
ness; organizations have to
mobilize global resources
with unprecedented speed
and precision to survive.
Nowhere is this more true
than in an intensely know-
ledge-based sector like our
own. To meet the diverse
and changing needs of a
global customer base, we
must find a new way of
managing knowledge in
order to more efficiently
leverage our resources and meet a growing
challenge: namely, to rapidly (and safely)
evolve financial solutions in proliferating
per-mutations of increasing complexity.
Possibly for the first time, we've been
obliged to really think about what we
mean by knowledge - and to develop clear
and effective new models for its manage
ment. Survival, says global research
manager Hung Tran, depends on 'reengi-
neering, retooling, and reorganizing our
workload, making the best of sophisti
cated IT tools, and consistently serving our
customers better and more quickly than
any existing or potential competitor can.'
There has been substantial progress in our
KM effort to date, not only in systems
implementation but also in a more
fundamental understanding of what
Patrick Guyver, tel. -t-31 3021635 36
Michel van Schalk, tel. +31 30 216 61 75
Shawn Leiand, tel. +31 30 216 6818
Saskia van Batturn, tel. +31 30 216 64 41
Rafi Wazir,tel.+31 302161504
Fred van Hedel, tel. +31 30 21613 70
Marian van Veenendaal, tel. +31 30 216 29 76
Hung Tran, tel. +44171 809 36 06
Brigitte Krijbolder, tel. +44171 809 36 06
Michel Hofman, tel. +31 30 216 64 04
Jos Spetter, tel.+31 302164256
Michel Hofman and Jos Spetter coordinating KM solutions
distinguishes raw data from knowledge on
which one can profitably act. Take a series
of numbers like 11:40, 12:20. This data
becomes information when it is clear that
it represents the departure and arrival
times of a local train. Once experience
teaches us that this train, running late,
loses precedence to the express, we have
knowledge upon which to base an
informed judgment about the best way to
get from one point to the next. Consider
individual versus institutional knowledge.
Each of us uses our own knowledge to
make judgments and decisions, but the
pool of knowledge formed by people in a
group can only reach its potential as an
asset if it is managed well. That's what
KM is all about: methodically organizing,
distributing, and applying our knowledge
uniquely to each customer and situation,
thus providing value in line with our
strategie objectives.
'This is not essentially about IT systems,'
insists Michel Hofman, KM project
manager in global IT. 'It's about ensuring
that each Rabobanker who walks into a
meeting with a cliënt knows exactly who
they're dealing with, what business Rl has
done with them in the past (or is in the
process of negotiating today), plus
detailed information on their current
tactical and strategie posture. In a fast-
moving market where business oppor-
tunities come and go, survival depends on
being able to tap into the most up-to-date
expertise available within the entire
network. This is the true goal of KM.'
Recent months have seen the
evolution of several new KM
systems in our network. As an
organization, we are witnessing
the arrival of a new breed of
professional - the knowledge
manager - whose task is to help
maintain these systems and referee
the information they contain.
Evolving systems include health
care's RaboCare network
(described in the last issue of
What's NewS), trade finance's new
system for leveraging the global
knowledge within its far-flung
business community (which will
be described in a forthcoming
issue), and the knowledge exchange system
developed by food and agri research
(FAR). One of the most important
initiatives has been the roll-out of
'InSight', profiled on the next page.
'All of these systems are designed to avoid
overload, to create a kind of cockpit j
tailored around specific business processes,™
and to give our professionals immediate
access to the exact information they need
to perform a specific mission. But net-
works require the active involvement of
everyone who benefits from them,'
Hofman says. 'The brokerage role of the
knowledge manager will be crucial: he or
she will stand at the information cross-
roads, help check the integrity of the
content, and make sure that it finds its
way to the right people in good time.
However many financial resources we
devote to KM systems, finally, everything
will depend on whether we have clearly-
defined responsibilities within these
electronic environments, and whether we
incubate a culture in which knowledge is
actively shared. We need to realize that we
all belong to a community one that
happens to be networked by electronic
means - and that our knowledge sharing
behaviour in this context will be decisive
to our personal and institutional success.'
