A Stitch in Time

Creating a knowledge transfer framework for your ERP implementation can mean the difference between losing and leveraging your most valuable asset

By Linda Eiland Clark

Millions of dollars are spent every year on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations. But all too often the knowledge assets created during ERP projects are lost, ignored, or not leveraged to their fullest potential. These valuable assets include the relationships and rules embedded in the software, the project design criteria and decision history, testing and training scenarios and scripts, and "user experiences."

The most successful implementations avoid losing the knowledge created in the build and early deployment stages through careful, early planning of knowledge-management (KM) systems. Organizations can improve their institutional "learning curve" by establishing the processes and systems needed to capture, manage, access, and replenish knowledge at the start of the ERP process.

To succeed, the enterprise must manage knowledge, not just data or information. However, the human element of knowledge assets creates a unique challenge: Knowledgeable employees can decide to leave the organization, taking valuable, even irreplaceable, assets with them.

According to the Miami Herald (April 16, 1999), reporting survey results by Eckerd College's Human Resources Institute, only 19 percent of Fortune 500 firms have a formal KM program in place. Considering the central role of reengineering efforts vs. KM efforts in most large ERP implementations, this statistic may indicate that business leaders recognize a need for KM, but do not have a clear vision of how to put this concept to work in their organizations.

In this article, I'll explain the importance of KM during the different phases of a system implementation, its significance to a knowledge-based business, and the value of having a knowledge-transfer plan.

The Knowledge-Transfer Framework

One of the challenges of managing an ERP implementation is understanding that not all entities within the organization will instinctively see the value of knowledge capture and management. Farsighted executives, however, are beginning to appreciate this shift to a "knowledge-based" economy and are investing wisely in building both knowledge content and the technologies that facilitate sharing, management, and access to knowledge.

An ERP system contains a great deal of codified knowledge, both in the software structures provided by the vendor and in process knowledge and business rules developed by the enterprise. But a corresponding set of auxiliary knowledge is captured only in the form of project documents (formal and informal), training documents, data models, additional business rules and formulas, and in the brains of the project team. You cannot easily access or derive this valuable knowledge from the software or the operational system.

To gain the benefits inherent in this auxiliary knowledge, organizations must create and deploy a knowledge system. The starting point for this knowledge system is the development of a knowledge-transfer framework. A knowledge-transfer framework identifies which information you should retain, who will eventually use that information, and how you will capture that information at each stage of the ERP implementation. In addition, the knowledge-transfer framework provides a model of the knowledge environment over the life cycle of a system implementation and illustrates the relationships and dependencies of people, business processes and events, and knowledge domains. With this framework in place, you can anticipate and plan for the knowledge requirements of subsequent phases of the ERP project. You can also develop mechanisms for transferring or transforming the knowledge base from one phase to another.

ERP implementations are generally characterized by three life cycle stages: build, go-live, and living-with-the-system. These stages are different in their audiences, critical needs, and goals. They share the common objective, however, of improving the viability and value of the enterprise.

The Build Stage

During the build stage of the ERP implementation, the knowledge communities include the project team (IT and change-integration disciplines and client and implementation consultants), the business community (process owners and end-user representatives), the program or project managers, and executive decision-makers.

During the build stage you need to identify and communicate key issues among all the communities. Combining business and industry-related knowledge with the knowledge structures (processes, case tools, data architectures, and so forth) of the ERP system is an important goal at this stage as you begin the transfer of ERP-system knowledge to the business community. You also need to provide the project team with the knowledge foundation it needs to launch the project quickly and efficiently, including planning and estimating the effort. The project managers will require current, accurate information and support tools in order to accomplish this task. The human experts and system knowledge (such as the process models stored in the case tools), the project management and change request documentation and audit trails, and other information are what make up your ERP Center of Excellence (COE) - the build-stage "knowledge center."

In order to accomplish these goals, you need to provide the communities with three functional KM systems during this stage:

• An ERP modeling or case toolkit, which will capture the organization's business processes and rules in the context of the ERP software and provide models for the final system's configuration.
• A KM environment toolkit, which can provide project management, document management, collaboration and messaging, expertise and team-skills management, and a lessons-learned process repository.
• An information portal that provides integrated access to external data sources and integrates the information received in the context of the ERP implementation project instance - context, priority, and others.

In most current implementations, these components are generally separate systems, perhaps with bolt-on components that you can configure or customize to provide varying levels of desktop integration. However, the KM environment and the information portal function are currently merging and integrating, and soon the KM system's "awareness" of the knowledge elements within the case tool and configuration environment will be common.

A KM system with this level of awareness has the ability to access and integrate the "knowledge objects" that reside within the case tool repository - objects such as process models developed during the ERP system build stage - with other knowledge or information objects. The obvious advantages are that the knowledge becomes accessible through a single user interface and that users have access to all the objects that are logically related to one another. You cannot achieve these benefits when all the objects are stored and retrieved from separate systems.

KM system awareness also implies that the KM system will provide a retrieval method and permit access by various groups of users. The case tool repository is typically not accessible to any but a small group of system developers and builders; therefore, you cannot leverage it in the subsequent stages and environments where this process modeling and related knowledge can be very valuable in developing training materials and providing basic process documentation. Awareness by the KM system (the information portal) would allow for common indexing and search and retrieval of all ERP system information.

The Go-Live Stage

During the go-live stage of the ERP implementation, the knowledge communities are the same as during the build stage, but many of the individuals within these communities will be new to the process. This "boundary zone" is where an organization first risks losing much of the tacit knowledge that it created and accumulated during the project's build stage. As the analysts and designers - who are often third-party consultants with substantial expertise in the industry, ERP technology, and the unique environment of your enterprise - depart the project, knowledge will certainly be lost unless the organization deploys a formal, proactive KM plan.

The initial goals of the go-live stage are to ensure the transfer of knowledge to new team members and system users, and to continue to identify and communicate key issues to all the communities. In addition, project management still needs support tools and current, accurate information if they are to be effective and efficient. Developing and delivering training and maintaining training documentation are also important in order to support the ERP-system knowledge transfer to the business community that you began during the build stage. But during this stage, you will also need to provide complete and accurate documentation for testing, diagnostics, audit trails, and the resolution of potential problems, issues, and errors. In addition, you need to ensure that IT system knowledge (such as design criteria and models) reflects the "as installed" system configuration, including reference documents, and is accessible through subsequent stages to support the long-term integrity of the system.

During the go-live stage, the organization should anticipate the future requirements of the IT organization as well as those of the business community. To properly evaluate the impact of future upgrades, functions and modules, or the integration of new applications (such as data warehouses, analytic support systems, supply-chain management systems, sales force automation, human resource systems, call centers, and customer value management systems), this knowledge must be preserved in a usable and accessible form. This requires preserving the linking relationships among process models, data models, business rules, and user transactions. The following major functional KM components will aid in this task during the go-live stage:

• A user training and learning environment
• A controlled, updatable repository for testing and training documents as well as "lessons learned"
• A context-sensitive, end-user "help" knowledge-delivery system
• An accessible, updatable repository for IT knowledge components - software code, models, rules, and so forth - and the development of an Application Center of Excellence, or COE (more on this later)
• Analytic reporting tools and self-service systems for access and understanding of report-based knowledge from the ERP system.

Although many build-stage knowledge repositories are equipped to store models and business rules, they can be difficult to use in the go-live and living-with-the-system stages: Most repositories are designed to store - rather than easily retrieve - information, and they typically offer less-than-ideal interfaces and data view functions. Therefore, you should develop a plan to transfer these assets to a configuration-management system already in use within the organization or integrate the build-phase repository with the IT knowledge environment. The knowledge-framework model should identify and include this know-ledge and the documentation reflecting the ERP decision-making processes and impact of expected changes.

Organizations often underestimate the requirements for maintaining the new ERP application. Because ERP packages are meant to support continuous change in the organization, IT must plan for ongoing upgrades in response to end-user requirements and vendor refinements. During the go-live stage, the ERP COE should be replaced with an "application" COE. This COE serves to align new business applications with the overall IT strategy and develop core expertise in project management, methodology, business functions, application internals, and training and help-desk functions. (For more information about COEs, see the Meta Group paper listed under Resources.)

The Living-With-the-System Stage

During this final stage, which lasts the lifetime of the system, the knowledge communities will obviously include the ERP business users (those actually using the ERP application and executing transactions) and the IT staff responsible for the system's support, maintenance, upgrades, bolt-ons, and other integration activities. But the knowledge communities will also extend to include non-ERP knowledge workers who depend on the ERP system for analytic reports and information, or who, in some processes, must interact and exchange knowledge with ERP users. In addition, external parties in the enterprise value chain, including suppliers, partners, outsourcing agents, and even customers, will also be integral at this stage.

A sound KM system provides many long-term benefits, particularly in organizations that employ external networks, e-business systems, contingent workforces, and extranet knowledge-value chains. In order to create a dynamic and positive long-term learning environment, knowledge needs to be usable and accessible across the value chain for both ERP and non-ERP communities. In addition, improving and sustaining the efficiency of the ERP system by decreasing support and maintenance costs and providing integration with non-ERP sources should be an ongoing goal.

During the living-with-the-system stage, you must integrate ERP-derived knowledge within the enterprise as a whole. The key elements of this KM environment include:

• Learning systems (online, synchronous, and asynchronous) customized to meet the skill and knowledge requirements of each community
• A realtime communications and collaboration environment that includes shared documents, media, and discussion spaces with appropriate security and access controls
• A single point of access (portal) to a wide range of relevant knowledge bases (external and internal), without regard to data format or sources that include documents, databases, management reports, and performance metrics
• The ability to notify knowledge-based workers when information of interest to them is added to the system
• Integrated, desktop access to specialized analytical tools and knowledge-based applications
• Application Centers or Networks of Excellence where the IT organization can store or manage portfolio applications and KM planning tools.

Why Is Knowledge Lost at ERP Boundary Zones?

Boundary zones are the points in time or place where the ERP implementation passes from one stage to another. In addition to the initiation of the go-live phase, other boundary zone events may include the implementation of new or revised modules and other major IT or business events such as the deployment of a data warehouse, e-business program, or shared service center.

It is imperative that you plan for KM at the inception of an ERP project. Those facts, analysis, and linkages that were never captured or retained, and which now exist only in the brains of the team members, must be considered. Ignoring this issue in the early project stages will cause repercussions later, as team members (whether outside consultants or internal business staff) leave the project and perhaps leave the enterprise.

Knowledge is rarely truly lost, but if not captured at or near the time it is first created and used it can be inaccessible and functionally unusable for a variety of reasons. People forget. Details become obscure. And with time it is increasingly difficult to identify why and by whom a particular decision was made.

Ensuring that valuable enterprise knowledge is identified, captured, and stored in a useful form is a complex challenge. Fortunately, the technology landscape is rapidly changing and offers increasing integration across systems and knowledge bases, self-service for knowledge workers, and opportunities to embed increasing amounts of knowledge in the systems themselves. (See sidebar, "A Lifetime of Knowledge.") For example, the knowledge embedded in tax preparation software leads you through the process, uses the correct formulas and "table look-ups," and greatly enhances both the speed of preparation and the accuracy of the finished tax return.

These KM mechanisms can ensure that important background information is identified and captured. In addition to these technologies, once you have identified the types of knowledge that warrant capture, you can initiate a "team debriefing" process. In this exercise, the training and integration staffs use their expertise to "interview" the relevant team members and then synthesize and document the results. After a review and consensus process, they can post the captured and distilled knowledge in the knowledge base and link it to other relevant information, system modules, and related knowledge objects. You can also embed "capture" technology at strategic points of the system development and deployment processes.

The KM discipline is predicated on the concept that today, in an information-driven economy, knowledge itself is as important as "hard" assets. Changes in our global economy workforce models provide the impetus to "manage knowledge." Once organizations recognize knowledge as a critical factor in their success, they can apply the planning, analysis, and process techniques needed to manage this valuable enterprise resource.

Linda Eiland Clark (linda.clark@us.pwcglobal.com) is the global leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers' EIP initiative. She has 25 years of IT experience with emphasis on knowledge-centric systems, such as publishing, engineering, research and development, and IT project support and information retrieval applications.

RESOURCES Burns, T. & G. Stalke. The Management of Innovation. Oxford University Press, 1961. Implementing the Application Center of Excellence. Meta Group Inc. report, March 29, 1999. Stone, L. Knowledge Transfer: How to Ensure It Occurs. Gartner Group report, October 30, 1998. Tapscott, D. "Minds Over Matter." Business 2.0, January 1999. Tushman, M.L., and D.A. Nadler. "Information Processing as an Integrating Concept in Organizational Design." Academy of Management Review 3, (1977): 613-624.

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