KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN TELECOM

INDUSTRY
Introduction
Having a rapid business expansion in the
telecommunication industry, organizations have
adopted systems in managing good knowledge so as to
maintain as the competitive enterprises in the global
market.
With best practice of KM research, we make focus on
the study of human resources and technology as the
major solutions to the KM issues.
Knowledge management is critical to all kinds of industry
which can help the organizations to consider how to
capture the knowledge resident in the organization.
Especially for the telecommunications industry in which its
operation rely on hundreds of or thousands of knowledge
workers all over the world, it is important for them to
communicate and share their knowledge.
 Therefore, telecom companies nowadays are willing to
make investments to capture as much knowledge as
possible from their customers and their most experienced
workers .
Many large telecommunications service provides start to
create a senior-level management position to ensure that
KM activities operate effectively
Role of Knowledge Management In the Telecommunication
Industry

. Generally telecommunication industry is directly

responsible for the growth of the service sector in the
community.
With state-of-the-art IT infrastructure and excellence
world network built, telecommunication industry
demonstrates its true worth to any society.
Serve as important business intelligence
Telecommunication industry is often described as the “Sunset
industry” for the reason that of rapid growth in product innovation
and technology development.
Information transfer circulates around the market speedily which
uphold most of the input for business activities and operational
processes.
In the competitive marketplace, business organizations have to keep
updated with the global trend and current status about
telecommunications in order to lead a significant position among
competitors.
In view of the business structure, telecommunications are featured
with hybrid science of collaborations among people, process and
technology
The shared knowledge system provides workers a
comprehensive way to capture knowledge from
individuals to the whole enterprises, so that valuable
information and skillful experiences within the
companies are retained.
Besides, intellectual capital from workers offers as
knowledge experts for business activities and future
development at different aspects
Keep along
Nowadays, mostas goodcountries
developed practice captured
pursue the global trend to
engage into information society.
It is a society centering the information life cycle as the main
economic activities and participating with activate promote of
information literacy.
With the processes of creation, use, distribution, maintenance
and disposal, information circulations around the cycle play a
significant role for economic growth and wealth making.
 Telecommunications tie with the global market and master the
inventive technologic advancement.
On the one hand, we make contribution in technology
innovation and create new information, and on the other hand,
we pile up information generated and make out knowledge
accumulation.
Information can be easily lost if we keep it without good
practice and relevant management procedures.
Organizations in the telecommunication community have
increasingly adapted into cultural changes upon working
behaviors and business performances.
At present, KM is the key factor leading to industrial success.
By bringing in professional experts and consultants, workers are
educated with KM practices so as to support productive
procedures and further achieve business goals.
After inputting KM as the major production scheme,
communications among workers improve and hence the
understanding between departments.
New discovery of production processes with KM concepts
makes progress for business achievements.
Such knowledge is reusable which flows around in the
knowledge management cycle for generating new knowledge.
Manage relationships with key customers
In the telecommunication market, people are the core aspect in knowledge
management application, from integrating numerous informative
transactions to generating innovative business knowledge.
 For an ordinary telecommunication company, typically sales people work at
the frontline in the business production and deal with customers providing
high-quality services and in return, getting numerous business transactions.
This kind of business production pattern depends heavily on the people
issue and that the skills bearing from the sales persons place influences on
the production progress and achievement.
By the means of knowledge management, information is handled and stored
with appropriate classifications so that it can easily be retrieved and
transferred regarding different needs urged from workers.
 In the past, workers had to search out the information in persons and such
cases really tool up a long time and even a high cost for business operations
Further, it hindered the processes of transacting customer
orders to be followed and managed.
 In order to improve the productivity level in entire
operation process, organizations get started with
knowledge development and intend to maintain good
relationships with their potential customers.
Large amount of customer information shows a majority
in business production resources.
With effective handling procedure and organization
support, knowledge-intensive process retains the
important customer information as well as the
consumption pattern as the indication for making
strategic business decisions and future development goals.
Build up as valuable organization assets
 The emergence of the knowledge management locates as the chief execution in
organization assets and knowledge repositories within the telecommunication
market.
 It is the main objective to capture the human capital into explicit knowledge
and to be understandable and long-lasting.
 Among the telecommunication organizations, it is true that dynamic changes
in workforce show a positive percentage compared with other industry.
 Workers in the telecommunication market get a high tendency to shift
employment from one company to another, which indicate the possibility of
human capital being carried away since staff resign and leave the companies.
 To maintain sufficient human resources and build up informative support for
business production, KM gives out contribution making up company’s own
knowledge base by turning implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge.
Accumulated KM strategies tend to be reusable and serve as the
organization assets.
KM implementation ties with organization objectives and
integrates with different communities of practices among
knowledge experts from various divisions in the companies.
Shared knowledge and business intelligence bring in the most
valuable resources for improved business performance and
competitive advantages against competitors in the market.
The practice of KM focuses on the management of specific
knowledge gained from different organizational experts, and also
addresses the development and cultivation of the channels
through which knowledge would flow along with.
 By understanding the regular functions of the KM cycle,
organizations can streamline business process for co-operating
with different related sectors of the market.
Example..
Large telecom companies such as British Telecom,
AT&T, and Deutsche Telekom have created chief
knowledge officer positions, it shows the fact that the
telecommunications industry believe that intellectual
assets have value.
Components that are important to an effective
KM system in telecommunications industry.

1. IT supports needs to be adequate in both scale and

communications response time.
2. Database should include user-friendly search
capabilities.
3. Tools in the search engine need to pinpoint the proper
information when requested.
4. Processes need to support the facilitation of
information retrieval and must be in place to assist in
the creation of new information.
5. System performance metrics should be maintained in
order to help to determine the criteria for new data to
enter the system.
6. Type of data to be available must pass tests defined in
the design phase, it should be limited to information
that will increase the performance of employees or
improve the customer’s experience.
7. Effective incentives and supportive core values should
be encouraged to the most expert employees to share
their knowledge.
Advantages
People also always argue that the benefits of
knowledge management systems appear to be too
theoretical to measure
Quantification of benefits is most obvious in customer
service sectors such as sales and customer support
department
Telecommunications service providers have used KM
systems to increase their sales productivity.
Sales representatives tend to specialize in those
services that they have sold successfully in the past.
 KM systems can assist to increase sales by providing
information about services with which the sales
representative is less familiar with.
CASE STUDY- P&W
INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPANY
It is the largest and most comprehensive provider of
communications services in Hong Kong.
One of the Asia’s leading performers in Information and
Communications Technologies (ICT).
P&W is often awarded with innovative technology and
excellence business practice.
The company has employed KM practice which
stimulates production progress and offers business
intelligence to sales persons in order to provide high-
quality services for potential customers.
PURPOSE OF IMPLEMENTATION
Competition introduced by Hong Kong government in
telecommunication industry in 1995.
Mr. Chan worked as a manger for pre-sales and bid
management in P&W at that time, to lead around 70
staff in his unit.
He was responsible for the bidding for landmark
projects.
It is aknowledge intensive process, on which they spend
significant resources.
To avoid wasting time and human resources, they need
to know how much possibility they have for those
highly recommended tenders.
When they won the bid, manager would praise the team
members and use the constant strategy for the coming
bid projects.
If the team failed the bid, they would discuss and find
reasons or elements that they had not prepared enough
for.
This ordinary after-review could not reflect the real
situation, since staff may feel fear of the responsibility of
losing the bid.
KM concept was introduced to improve bidding
performance.
KM PILOT PROJECT
A systematic survey was conducted to study how well the
employees have done with respect to supporting KM in
terms of collecting, storing, classifying, distributing,
harvesting and reusing the knowledge.
Within the bid team, the consultant rated only 30s off a
500 score, which was far too below the required standards.
After KM methods were implemented, the team improved
on the bidding performance and the surveys conducted
indicated the improvement.
3 months- 50; 6 months- 100; 9 months- 200.
KM on to the entire organisation…
The success of pilot project convinced senior level
management to implement a comprehensive KM practice
within the entire P & W.
This top-bottom awareness of KM prompted the project
easily in the whole organization.
After two years KM practice, P & W became the only
company in Hong Kong to win The Top Ten Knowledge
Management Award in Asia.
KM TOOLS AND APPLICATIONS
P&W use a wide range of tools in knowledge acquisition,
codification and dissemination.
Technology is used in order to meet the needs of
communication, collaboration, learning and navigation.
Ultimately, P & W use Portal as a means of KM platform which
enables the staff to access Project Library, Discussion forum, E-
learning, Subscription Alert, Taxonomy, Yellow Page and other
functions.
Discussion Forum is used for post questions and responses.
E-learning is used for teaching sessions under different
disciplines.
Subscription Alert is a kind of personalized assistance to deploy
the information to staff account after setting preference.
Group Calendar allows the staff to schedule their meetings, and
detect if meeting times conflict occurred
THANK YOU…