Martin Vasey of BG Technology believes knowledge management is a
resource that is often overlooked, reports Julia Vowler
Knowledge management is all very well and fashionable, but there is
an alarming bottom-line problem inherent in it - you never really
know what information your users will consider useful until they
ask you for it.
BG Technology, the research and technology arm of British Gas,
provides a case in point. By its nature BG Technology is an
extremely knowledge-intensive organisation, providing a range of
services and expertise in all areas of engineering consultancy.
It also needs to know about newts. This is not because a
megatonne of dead newts can be liquefacted into a microgram of
organic neo-fossil fuel, but because the great crested newt is an
endangered species - if you bung a gas pipeline too close to them
there's hell to pay for disturbing them. Work may have to stop and
large costs may be incurred.
This explains why one of the challenges deliberately presented
to BG Technology's knowledge management system at a demonstration
to engineers was to search for material on the great crested
newt.
Fortunately, its search mechanism, which can look through more
than 400,000 word meanings and 1.6 million word associations, found
its target in the first hit. It was an article from the internal BG
magazine, published on the company intranet, about an employee who
was a government-licensed newt-handler and officially allowed to
move and rehouse newts.
BG Technology uses knowledge management for all sorts of
important tasks for its 16,500 users, such as holding "pre-done"
client demonstrations so that a presenter doesn't have to spend his
weekend making up foils and ordering bullet-points.
Its central repository provides a single point of reference for
what is or has already been done across the organisation, saving
duplication of effort. Thus, when one business unit researched the
hand-held computer market, it was able to post its findings to the
knowledge bank so that no other unit would have to repeat the
work.
"We have learnt to treat knowledge as a resource," says Martin
Vasey, general manager of BG Technology's Applied Knowledge
Solutions. "The importance of knowledge is often overlooked, but it
can add value to a business and even drive it in new
directions."
And it's great for newt-spotters.