1. Governance: Developing and Operating a Model for a Global Company
Tom Barfield, Global Knowledge Management Lead
November 16, 2005
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2. Accenture Overview
Accenture differentiates itself as a global leader with unmatched capabilities, experience and relationships. We help clients architect and deliver solutions that create value.
Over $15 Billion in Revenue
Over 117,000 Professionals in 46 Countries
91 of the Fortune Global 100
Half of the Fortune Global 500
350 startups and spin-offs
Consulting
More than 90% of the world’s top companies benefit from our insights and solutions.
Technology
Our experienced professionals bring the latest technology to deliver solutions, no matter how complex or risky.
Outsourcing
Using data networks and a suite of powerful online applications, we can help clients focus on their core business.
Over $500M in R&D expenditures
Over $500M in Training expenditures
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

3. Accenture Emphasis on KM
Winner of Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise award for eight years - placed second overall in 2005
Best practice site visit company for American Productivity & Quality Center’s study of the integration of organizational learning and knowledge
Harvard Business School case study on Accenture KM.
Named one of top 24 Companies for Enterprise Learning by American Society for Training & Development
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

4. Accenture Organization Structure
Comm. &
High Tech
Financial
Services
Government
Products
Resources
Business Consulting Capability Group—Service Lines and Solution Units
Technology & Outsourcing Capability Group—Service Lines and Solution Units
Affiliated Companies
Key point of showing this is that organizationally, we have breadth and depth and are highly matrixed
Level of complexity that he had in his deck is not dissimilar to ours
Global Strategic Delivery Approach
Alliances
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5. Knowledge sharing at Accenture enables us to make our clients high performing businesses
"The execution of our entire business strategy to be a market maker, architect and builder of the new economy is dependent on how we create, share and protect knowledge. Knowledge sharing is the essence of how we bring innovations to change the way the world works and lives."
-- Joe Forehand, Accenture Chairman
KM Mission
Drive value from knowledge to enhance revenue, reduce cost and foster innovation
Within Accenture, knowledge is at the center of our business  move to next slide
KM Vision
To create a world class knowledge sharing culture and environment which contributes to Accenture’s success
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

6. Accenture’s Knowledge Management Evolution
Business Drivers
Enabling
Infrastructure
Knowledge
Sharing
Knowledge
Enabling
Knowledge
Worker
“Build it, and they
will come”
“Knowledge is a
by-product”
“Knowledge is
actively managed”
“Knowledge-enabled
Enterprise”
Global
communications
People guided and
enabled by personalized knowledge, tools & learning
Result
Organizational
memory
Relevant quality
content, when and
where needed
Lotus Notes
Build “KX” Global Rollout
KX Takeup
The Accenture Portal; Capability Development
Centralization;
Integration
Infrastructure
SCAs
DB development (Libraries, Discussions, Methods)
Growth of content
Growth of KM supporting orgs.
Web-enablement begins
Site aggregation
Expert Locator
KM org merges with Learning, Methods, Tools
Operational Effectiveness
Lotus Notes to Microsoft
Evolved KM strategies and infrastructure
Did not happen overnight …
1992
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7. Accenture’s evolution has required key aspects of our Knowledge Management approach to change
Area
Yesterday
Today
Tomorrow
User experience
Multiple applications with an organization-centric index
Single application with a topic-centric index
Knowledge integrated into key processes
Technology infrastructure & support
Each organization operates their own knowledge applications, development and operations teams
Implementation of centralized infrastructure and shared services for development and content management.
Continued implementation of shared services and integration of knowledge learning and collaboration enabling technologies.
Governance
Small central component
Strategy and infrastructure decisions driven by local teams
Centralized infrastructure and strategy driven by a representative governance model representing senior Accenture leadership and leadership from across KM groups
Extended governance designed to ensure that learning, knowledge and HR organizational intellectual assets are shared and adopted.
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

8. Governance challenges faced by Accenture’s KM organization
Vision
Each KM team independently sets vision and direction for their KM programs
Leadership
KM teams report to different organizations – leaders with differing priorities
Every team wants direct involvement in every decision
KM leadership needs to sign off on all decisions – getting into the details
Ownership
Silo’ed - each team felt loyalty to their specific internal unit and immediate leadership, not to the entire community.
Individual teams assessed by their own sponsors vs. global vision
Relationships
Past relationship with large Global KM team was strained.
New smaller Global KM team had few relationships among the KM teams
Few relationships between the KM teams or players on the teams
Strained relationship between CIO (development) and KM teams
Compliance
Policies and standards exist only at the individual team level
There are not global audit mechanisms and explicit consequences for non-compliance
Budgeting
Each team has an individual budget governing their team and applications
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

9. Operational challenges to overcome
Application Development
Little trust in the development team
Development team off shore, far from immediate leadership proximity
Little to no experience in new technology
Processes
Each KM team had their own content management processes and standards – and these were inconsistently applied
Design & Navigation
30 applications owned by as many teams, each one with its own unique content architecture and navigation structures
Taxonomy
There was no common content taxonomy.
Each team structures and indexes its content categories autonomously
Logistic
Everyone works in separate locations around the world – most out of their homes. All meetings were virtual.
Diverse global group – for several English is their second language causing communication challenges
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10. Key success factors Start with a vision Create the governance team
Develop roles/responsibilities and guiding principles
Define a decision making process
Operate and evolve the model
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11. 1. Start with a vision Define the business problems
Ensure you have senior leadership sponsorship
Establish the vision
“Build a one stop shop KM capability”
Lessons Learned:
May not get unanimous agreement on the business problems
Some groups will say – “those aren’t problems for my team”
Let it go – be careful about which battles to fight
If possible have a driving factor – “If you don’t move off of Lotus Notes your application will be deleted”
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12. 2. Create the governance team
Define the roles and responsibilities
Secure senior leadership support for the model
Choose the right members
Lessons Learned:
Keep senior leaders out of the details
One group can not handle the details of an entire KM system – create smaller sub-groups to handle the details (Examples: Search, topic pages, content management processes)
Ideal sizes
Working group ~ 5 people
Advisory board ~ 10 people
Every team does not have to be on every working group
Keep the high level Advisory Board small by having members represent more than one group
If possible, have an in person meeting to start and focus on networking them together
Capability Development Steering Team
KM Advisory Board
Working Groups
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13. 3. Develop roles/responsibilities and guiding principles
Members of each group need to understand the responsibility of the group and of themselves
Develop guiding principles to drive decisions – Examples:
End user capabilities take higher priority over content owner
We will not extend the software to the extent that it risks future vendor upgrades
Assign an Advisory Board member to play a leadership role on each working group
Lessons Learned:
Make it the responsibility of the Advisory Board member to ensure their leadership agrees with decisions
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

14. 4. Define a decision making process
Develop a work plan for key decisions to be made – this is a living document
Send materials to Advisory Board before meeting for their review – prefer at least 3 days
Spend meeting time discussing the materials vs. presenting
When a decision is going to be made give Advisory Board members one week to consider and validate support
Tally the vote at the following meeting
Lessons Learned:
Minimize presentations – a Word document usually suffices
Focus meeting time on discussion rather than on reviewing
Clearly state the expected outcome of each topic (info, discuss, decide)
Leverage collaboration technologies
Centralized document repository (minimize attachments)
Leverage online survey capability for casting votes
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

15. 5. Operate and evolve the model
Simplify communications – example:
Publish agenda and meeting materials in a central location
Take meeting notes directly in the agenda during the meeting
Save the notes in a central repository where members can access and use with their teams
Lessons Learned:
Identify a quick win for the governance board – we chose search as the first part of the infrastructure to centralize – this demonstrated that working together produced better results then working independently
Acknowledge when decisions are outside of our control. When this happens give your board members a way out when discussing with their leadership – so they don’t take the blame
On controversial topics – make sure someone has your back – run the idea by a couple members ahead of time
Dissenters – ask the group opinion. If the opinion is valid the group will rally for it. If not the group will rally against
Learn when to take a discussion offline – don’t allow one person’s problem derail the group
Don’t be afraid to change any element of the governance model or the whole thing. If it isn’t working change it
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

16. Benefits of good governance
Collaboration between KM teams is better than ever – we have learned to trust each other
Easier to evolve and re-shape our KM capability to meet the ever changing business needs and strategies
Our investments are more focused on the most immediate strategic needs
Make the most efficient use of people, money and resources
Enhance our users' satisfaction by offering them consistent design, development and delivery of our services
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

17. What is Accenture’s KM team working on now?
Initiative
Expected Outcomes
Perform audience analysis and segmentation
Better understand who our most important audiences are and tailor our KM capabilities and services to their needs.
Improve our ability to connect people to people
Simplify the process for Accenture to know who knows what and who knows whom
Develop consistent metrics and performance support indicators
Improve strategic focus of our managed knowledge, eliminate inefficiencies, allow nimble adaptability of our strategy and services to a rapidly changing environment.
Validate that we have all the governance pieces in place
Ensure that we are making decisions as efficiently as possible (example: taxonomy decisions)
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

18. The main entry point to the Knowledge Exchange is via the Accenture Portal - portal.accenture.com What is the Accenture Portal?
The Accenture Portal is the channel to deliver tools, services, information and knowledge to all Accenture people.
The Accenture Portal:
Enables quick access to information from across the organization
Helps user perform tasks efficiently.
Brings together relevant information in one central location.
Scenario:
Have everyone navigate to the Accenture Portal on their PCs. Recommend saving the site as a Favorite.
Move to next slide.
Faculty Please note:
If New Joiners are at a Solution Center, when they try to redirect to a non-secure site, they get a message that reads 'The page cannot be displayed.‘ Why is this happening and what can they do?
ANSWER: As a result of the Code Red Worm II, the Solution Centers cannot access non-secure sites (URLs with as opposed to CIO is working on resolving this problem. In order to access those sites, please use the Extranet Access until this problem is resolved.
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

19. Knowledge Exchange main page - kx.accenture.com
The main entry point to knowledge and people via search and browse
Contact others via
Communities of Practice
Discussions
Find an expert
Maintain KX/Expert profile
Contribute content to the system
Note to Presenters: This is where the new joiners will spend the majority of their time. Recommend they explore the pages and links based on their interests. Presenters will act as coaches, walking around the room, answering questions, providing insight. Suggested scenarios are available below if you would like to use them.
Talking Points:
Accenture’s Knowledge Exchange resides on a Microsoft Environment, providing users with a number of benefits:
a single point of entry;
content organized by topic in addition to organization;
significantly improved search facilities;
a consistent look, feel and approach;
improved visibility and accessibility
This is the main page of the Knowledge Exchange. Let’s have a look at what’s available from this page.
Point out the Contribute link in upper right-hand section of page.
You can use the links provided on the left of the page to browse the categories of topic pages and link to various tools such as Methodology, Learning and Research.
Note the link to the Knowledge Exchange Help Page in the upper right-hand section of the page – a great resource for questions you may have about using the Knowledge Exchange.
Suggested Scenario:
Have participants click on the Organizations link. From there, have them click on the link for their Operating Group or Business Workgroup so they can begin to get a feel for how the Knowledge Exchange is structured.
Move to following slides for additional scenarios.
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

20. Search
The search looks at all documents stored in Accenture Portal and the Knowledge Exchange
Recommends key topic pages
Search results organized by tabs to search across other content areas
Robust advanced search
--Search Scenario:
You are on your first client engagement. The Engagement Manager has asked you to find all client experience on RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) work at Products clients within the past two years. Do a search and compare your results with teammates.
As you search the system, you can choose to add items with attachments to your download cart. This will save a link to the item in your download cart. When you are ready to download the files, simply go to your download cart and complete the process. (The download cart functionality is only available for those items stored in the system that have attachments associated with them.)
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

21. Browse – Content is primarily organized by Topic
Business & Industries examples
Automotive
Banking
Business Processes & Services examples
Marketing
Supply Chain
Technologies examples (displayed)
Architectures
Security
Database
Products examples
SAP
Peoplesoft
Oracle
Copyright © 2005 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

22. A topic page provides a window to all the best capabilities related to a topic
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