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Archive for the ‘Knowledge Management’ Category

Cyber security – a scenario of the 2030s

Tuesday, July 11th, 2017

‘Knowledge is power’ is an old maxim attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan scientist and philosopher and ‘father’ of the scientific method, writing in 1597. In today’s global interconnected world, knowledge – specifically digitally represented knowledge – truly powers our lives and our businesses. Within the last twenty years digital information has replaced many once-familiar physical assets, such as notes & coins (‘cash’), CDs, DVDs, photographs, books, the need to travel (other than for pleasure), the need to visit physical shops or offices – the list goes on.

Our digital world – the good and the bad

Our digital connectivity enables almost instant response to events through access to information transferred between computing devices and thus people and organisations. This increasingly frictionless information access powers our economy, linking businesses, suppliers and customers and people with their families, friends and social networks. However this powerful and easy exchange of information can be a double-edged sword – for information can move in any direction and sometimes when and where we don’t want it to. The increasing impact of information theft, hacking, infection and related disruption is becoming clearer with recent events showing that damage is not limited to the virtual, but can also impact physical infrastructure and thus degrade social, governmental and business processes and services.

Our values lag the new information paradigm

Our values and our business models have been slow to keep up with these changes. Illegal downloads of music and video and ‘copy and paste’ of copyrighted information from the internet is commonplace and not considered as ‘theft’ by all-too-many people – unlike the taking without paying of a physical good from a shop or a home. We still instinctively assess the value of an asset with its ease of replication. So we can relate the price of a physical product – like clothing, a mobile phone or a car – with its cost of creation or duplication. But many find this difficult to do with a digital product – since it can be copied in an instant effectively at ‘zero’ cost – surely that makes it ‘cheap’ or ‘free’? goes the justification. Our values and indeed our ways of living and working need to adapt to these relatively sudden changes in the paradigm of value.

So how do business models need to change?

It is increasingly clear that businesses will need to transform their strategies, processes and organisations to survive and prosper in this new information paradigm. To explore the potential impact of these changes, it is useful to construct and analyse plausible scenarios and use the learning to develop appropriate strategies. To construct a useful scenario, I have taken a relevant extract from my recent fiction book ‘A joy to serve the company’.
Let me set the scene: It’s the late 2030s and we’re in a car factory in the North of England run by a major Japanese automotive company. Alex Hunter is an experienced factory engineer called to a meeting with Yasuhisa Akiba, a senior leader in Corporate Excellence – known as ‘CEX’. Read the excerpt and reflect on its likelihood and what it might mean for today’s business models…….

Akiba had been standing, leaning against the wall, as he spoke to Alex Hunter who sat on the other side of the table in the large stark white-walled conference room on the top floor of the Eden Bridge administration building.

“Anyone with money can make cars, if they have the knowledge,” he’d said. “Differentiation of products and competitive advantage is founded solely on the intellectual assets owned by a company. Information is not only important; it is the key to our success. There is no way we can compete with the Chinese majors on the basis of costs – they will always have the economies of scale. PAG’s new megafactory at Dalian will have almost one hundred and fifty thousand employees and two hundred and fifty thousand robots when it is fully operational next spring. Even their European factories in Tatabanya, Prague and Koln are five times the size of Eden Bridge. We can’t compete with their scale! We must compete on the basis of innovation. And innovation is founded on our dynamic open culture and our leverage of our information assets. Far from information being a support to our business, as you claim Alex Hunter, it is the core of our business. It is for that reason that company information protection and offensive competitive analysis are so fundamental to our success.” He stared at her. She met his gaze.

“Do you understand?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Look at your left wrist.”

“What?”

“Tell me what you see.”

She frowned and looked down at the thin rounded metallic black rectangle strapped to her left wrist with a dark red band. “It’s just my iband,” she said with a shrug.

“’Just my iband’. You speak as if it is nothing special.”

“Well it isn’t really is it? Everyone has one these days.”

“You talk as if it is simply a common mobile communications device. Does everyone have a subcutaneous high bandwidth network implanted under their skin and linked to an implanted telecommunications module with an interface security unit?”

“Well no. Only other professionals have that sort of tech. Most people just have a basic comms module on their wrist.”

“That is right. You loosely call this device an ‘iband’, but that is simply lazy western slang for all body-mounted or implanted data processing and communication devices. Your iband is actually a company AMU7, the product of two decades of development of mobile communications and decision support technologies in the company laboratories. It was a massively expensive undertaking. Do you understand?”

Alex nodded.

“So tell me this: Why did we simply not buy it from Samsung or Huawei? Get them to develop it for us? It would have been a lot cheaper.”

“Er, I’m not sure.” She shrugged. “Maybe we should have. That sort of stuff is their core competency. Ours is making cars.”

Akiba appraised her for several seconds. “So you would have been comfortable with Huawei, a major Chinese-owned electronics company developing the technology that all our associates use to develop and share our most sensitive company information across our entire global operations. Or for Samsung, which is partly owned by Leno Investments, a major Chinese investment house, to have done the same?”
Alex Hunter felt her cheeks redden. She avoided his eyes. “Oh, I see.”

Akiba walked across to the window and stood in silence looking out. For a long time. It felt like minutes to Alex who began to feel even more unnerved. Then suddenly he turned back and faced her.

“As I explained. It is not good enough to be able to just make cars. Information is critical and it must be kept secure. The AMU7 is a key tool for empowering our associates with the knowledge assets within the company – linking them with other associates, with our AIs and with our knowledge management databases. And it does so in a way that protects our information assets from external intrusion. With built-in industry-leading firewall and anti-virus capabilities. With the ability to sense other intelligent devices and autonomously launch intrusion attacks to gather information. To link you automatically to the company for vmail, voice or data sharing. To work seamlessly with personal surgical enhancements such as optical or neural implants. With encrypted signatures on external devices such as your wrist unit, so that they will only work when connected to your subcutaneous network. Indeed if the AMU7 senses an attempted connection to another network or tampering of its external seals it will auto wipe its data and destroy its key bioengineered chips.” He snorted loudly. “Your so-called ‘iband’ is a key company asset. It easily triples the productivity of an associate in their work. It also turns each associate into an active information gathering asset. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Alex nodded.

“Let me give you an example of this. Last year the AMU7 of one of our Chinese marketing associates was able to extract a design data file on the transmission system of a new PAG coupe under development, from a PAG associate, whilst boarding a flight at Beijing airport. The latest AMU7 software AI sensed the PAG associate’s device within its monitoring range and was able to overcome its firewall and remain undetected whilst it found and extracted that file and a number of others that were of interest. Neither the PAG associate nor indeed our associate was aware of this action taking place. Our associate’s AMU7 encrypted and sent the files to our Competitive Analysis AI once it was within range of a company-approved network. The information contained within them proved to be extremely valuable as the PAG associate turned out to be a senior team leader on the new car project. It allowed us to adjust the design parameters in the development programme for our new competitive vehicle to enhance the vehicle’s performance.”

Alex frowned. “Wasn’t that illegal?”

Akiba appraised her. “Illegal? In what way?”

She swallowed. “Well, theft of information.”

“Was there theft?”

“You just said…”

“All that happened was two associates from competing automotive companies boarded the same flight. There’s nothing illegal in that, is there?”

“Well no. But that’s not the point. What about the data theft.”

“What data theft?”

Alex frowned again, with growing irritation. Akiba continued before she could speak. “No-one was aware that this data exchange had happened. Certainly no bystanders and not even the associates themselves. This was not a pre-meditated action by our associate. As I said, he was not even aware it had occurred. His only involvement was that he happened to be wearing the AMU7. So no crime occurred. It was simply the operating software on the AMU7 acting on the basis of its own capabilities. You might say that the software AI had committed a theft of data, but does the concept of ‘theft’ apply to a piece of software? I think not.”

“Surely the responsibility lies with those that designed the AMU7 software in the first place? They were the ones who programmed in this functionality.”

“But they did not programme it to take such an action. They merely gave the embedded AI certain capabilities and set its overall objectives as a company asset. The AI decided to take this action. It saw the benefits to the company in doing so.”

“But still, it stole information –“

“Did it really steal information? If you were standing at an airport and overheard someone talking about some aspect of their business that interested you and so you continued to listen and absorb what you heard, would you be stealing that information?”

“No of course not, that’s completely different.”

“Is it really? The AMU7 continually ‘listens’ for information across its bandwidth of sensors and if another device is not secured against it, then the AMU7 will capture whatever information interests it. You call it ‘eavesdropping’ in the English do you not? That is what we humans do. We listen to the conversations around us and absorb any information that we happen to find interesting. And that is simply what the AMU7 does.”

“It is a good argument, but whatever you say about its legality it doesn’t sound ethical.”

“Ethical? Now that’s a word I haven’t heard for a while.” A thin smile momentarily cut its way across Akiba’s face as stared at her, his eyes empty and cold. He was a man of middle-height, dressed in company-approved black. His appearance was nondescript. Until you saw his eyes. They were large and dark and they bored into her. She averted her gaze and begun to feel even more uncomfortable. She was sweating. The warm sun on her back, pouring through the large window in the conference room was only one reason.

Why was she here? What did he want? Was he trying to intimidate her? Was this some sort of test? She’d been summoned from the factory floor by an iband call half an hour before and told to report here. To meet a man who had flown in from Japan to meet her. With little introduction, Akiba had lectured her since then on the company and the competitors. Now he walked over to the table and sat down opposite her.

“Ethics are a luxury to be enjoyed once survival is certain. And in this global war of business, even the survival of a company as mighty as ours is not certain.” He nodded. “But Alex Hunter, I have talked enough. It is your turn now. Give me your assessment on the impact of the theft of a data file containing key information on the LC3 engine management system.”

She was taken aback by his sudden question but managed to think quickly and luckily this was an area she was familiar with. But of course Akiba would have known that.

“The LC3 management system is one of our latest control platforms for our mid-range models. And as engine management is one of our core competencies, the LC3 control architecture would be dynamite in the hands of a competitor. They could directly copy the design, with some trivial design re-engineering to mask the fact that it was a copy, and use it. In consequence, we’d suffer a significant loss of competitive advantage, as we’ve always been strong on engine performance and refinement. This would allow a competitor at one stroke to capture the results of a decade of research and development. It would cost us tens of billions of rimbies, er Renminbi, if we were to attempt to regain that lead through further R and D or a long term loss in market share if we did nothing.”

Akiba shrugged. “A satisfactory assessment. So given the serious impact of such information loss, how would you prevent it from happening?”

Alex pursed her lips. “Well, I can’t see any significant deficiencies in the way the company guards its information today; the information fortress approach with entry and exit screening of all personnel, no communications linkage with non-company systems, except for unclassified v-mail running on an isolated system; AI-based firewall and anti-virus protection around all key systems. Er, regular auditing of associate practices, massive key-based encryption protection systems on all our information systems, heavy security presence on all company sites, an endemic need-to-know culture….” She tailed off. “I’m sure there’s more, but then I’m not a security expert, that’s the job of CEX.”

“And what do you know of Corporate Excellence?”

She shrugged. “CEX is just there, in the background. I use its systems, its processes, as just another part of my company life. I pass through the body scanning machine every day, I complete my monthly information audit, I input anything I hear about competitors into the Competitive Analysis database and I keep my mouth shut about the company when I’m outside of work.”

“Well I’m going to talk to you about what happens ‘in the background’ as you call it, Alex Hunter. About some of the messy work – things that some might call unethical,” he gave a tight smile, “– that go on to ensure that people like you can simply do your job. I’m going to tell you about what lengths the company is prepared to go to, and indeed has gone to, many times in the past, to protect its knowledge and assets from outside, and inside, interference and to seize information and assets from our competitors. And in doing so I’m going to destroy a lot of beliefs you may have held about the company; in fact it will never look or be the same to you again after this meeting.”

She suddenly felt light-headed. “Just a moment, Akiba-san, before you start,” she cleared her dry throat. “I may not need to hear this at all. What obligation will hearing this information place on me?” She swallowed. “What I’m asking, is do I really need to know?”

“It’s really very simple Alex Hunter. You do need to know, because you’re going to work for us.”

——————————————————————————————————–

Excerpt taken from ‘A joy to serve the company’ by Alastair Ross.

Available in paperback and Kindle here.

Image sources: Alastair Ross and Pixabay.com. 

What does Brexit mean for UK business innovation?

Tuesday, July 12th, 2016

London in fog picture

Alastair Ross, Director, Codexx Associates Ltd
Professor Jeremy Howells, Kellogg College, University of Oxford

 

Peering through thick clouds

The initial impact of the Brexit referendum result has been the start of a period of volatility in the UK exchange rate, stock market and political governance. It has also created uncertainty for business as the eventual relationship with the EU and the nature of access to the single market is not known and will not be known for several years. Business does not like uncertainty for it makes it hard to predict future conditions and thus difficult to plan with any certainty.

What does this mean for a UK-based business in the medium to longer term and specifically where and how it should refocus its innovation efforts? The short answer is no-one knows for certain. The more useful answer is it depends on a number of factors, specifically on how they develop over time and the conditions which they eventually stabilise at. Considering a number of potential scenarios based around the development of these key factors is a useful way to consider and develop business plans.

So what are those factors and how should an organisation’s innovation agenda be modified based on their development? In this short paper we are considering innovation at the individual business level and in its broadest sense – the improvement in customer value and internal efficiency resulting from the systematic capture, development and implementation of new ideas. The results could be new or modified products and services, new ways of working, new market positioning or indeed a new business model.

 

 Uncertain conditions favour agility

The current situation takes us back to the situation of late 2008 and early 2009 after the financial crash. Codexx worked with a large progressive engineering company which had been hit hard by the resulting recession and recognised the need to fundamentally change their cost structure to better align to market conditions. Thus the company sought to exchange fixed costs for variable costs, in their workforce and through the use of suppliers. Essentially they were seeking to improve their agility – their ability to respond quickly to a market or customers – to grow capacity in required areas when there was an increase in demand and to be able to trim it easily – and without touching their core employees or facilities – when demand dropped off.

The Brexit situation has some similarities in that both situations resulted in uncertainty. However the impact of Brexit will be particularly felt by UK-based companies due to the major changes that lie ahead in key areas such as:

  • The UK pound exchange rate
  • UK stock market level
  • The nature and degree of access to the single EU market
  • People movement between the UK and EU

Since these are the key drivers to the future form and nature of the UK business model and competitiveness – and their end points will not be known for between 2-5 years, what can businesses do now? Businesses need to establish the capability to respond quickly to whatever economic and market scenarios eventually become reality – and in the meantime continue to operate effectively.

 

A new innovation agenda

Innovation is effectively about building tomorrow’s business – through the development of new products and services, new ways of working and new business models. An organisation has a constant challenge in focusing time, energy and resources on innovation – as the daily business needs this attention now and management priorities and rewards favour this. With Brexit, management has to dedicate increased focus on innovation as it is highly unlikely that the business environment for UK firms in 5 years’ time will be the same as today.

In many ways Brexit is an opportunity for businesses – as it provides a clear ‘burning platform’ for change and innovation. ‘The world is changing’ – well at least the market and supply-side conditions certainly will – and this provides a clear spur for innovation. So what sort of items need to be considered for the innovation agenda for UK-based businesses?

  • In the short term, trim waste to free up resources and reduce costs to offset increases in costs of imported parts and services due to the fall in the UK pound. This calls for a refocus on Lean thinking and process innovation. In the medium term, there may be opportunities for switching to UK suppliers.
  • Seize short term market opportunities in the single market that currently prevail with a cheaper pound making exports cheaper. This calls for a specific focus over the next 2+ years whilst the current single market access remains. There is a strong relationship between innovativeness and export performance and growth so there are opportunities here in the longer term for businesses that are seeking to sell innovative products and services.
  • Improve the codification of expert knowledge so that services and processes can be effectively delivered with less-skilled personnel. This is to recognise, in the short to medium term, that some of the skilled personnel available from EU countries outside the UK may not be available after the UK formally exits the EU. In the longer term, with, for example, an Australian based points immigration system, it may call for wider global search and recruitment practices. Even if the skills loss scenario is not realised, such codification will improve business efficiency and better leverage higher skilled personnel for higher value work.
  • Investigate the potential for new international markets that you have no presence in, looking at how you can reduce your costs and risks of entry by using partnership. This is in preparation for taking opportunities with the UK having the ability to negotiate new international trade deals but also potentially to offset any reduced access to the EU single market.
  • Prepare for a potential  restricted single market where the UK is faced with tariff barriers and thus products and services will be more expensive to EU buyers. This means an increased focus on value – developing new innovative offerings which can command a higher price – and preparing for increased price pressure by reducing non value-adding costs. In certain instances, certain products and materials, such as food products, may become cheaper in the medium term outside the EU. In the longer term accepting trading terms to, the European Economic Area (EEA), would mean continued access and compliance to EU trade rules. Outside the EEA, would mean trading on WTO general tariff rules and what access could be gained to individual countries or trading blocs, such as the Trans Pacific Partnership.
  • Don’t lose sight of the home market, where post EU exit there will likely be price advantages for UK-based businesses and also a likely period of goodwill to ‘home’ producers with a focus on ‘Buy British’, particularly if there is restricted access to the EU single market.
  • Review your requirements and sources of research funding. In the medium term if the UK remains in the wider EEA it can access current EU Horizon 2020 funds and other research and innovation funding. However, this will depend on the UK agreeing to continue to allow free immigration access to EU passport holders.  If this is not accepted by the UK government, then much will depend on how the UK shapes its own UK innovation policy and at what funding levels. Alternative sources of research funding may well be needed.

A silver lining?

Overall the next few years will be turbulent and challenging for UK-based businesses. However, there may well be a silver lining in this cloud – where the tough conditions drive businesses to increase their focus and level of innovation – to effectively improve their competitive health and thus better prepare them for market success – whatever challenges the future business environment will hold.

Business as unusual – innovating professional services – 7

Monday, December 21st, 2015

Professional Service innovation blackboard

by Alastair Ross, Director, Codexx Associates Ltd

Part 7. Key challenges and sustaining innovation

Introduction

This is the last in a series of seven articles on professional service innovation. The objective of the series is to provide a basic introduction to innovation management for managers, partners and change agents working in professional service firms. This final article reviews the key challenges that professional service firms will face in establishing, accelerating and sustaining an innovation programme and some of the approaches that can be used to address them. To read the first article in the series go here.

Key innovation challenges

In establishing and operating a programme for innovation within a professional services firm, many challenges will be faced, for example:

“Carving out real time for innovation instead of chargeable work is a major challenge…we don’t do enough of it.” Partner, Management Consultancy

Motivation challenge for employees is that chargeable hours win.” Partner, Accountancy

“Innovation does not come naturally to most risk-averse lawyers.” Partner, Law Firm 

“People don’t want to take risky ideas to the boss.” Partner, Management Consultancy

“We’ve been in our functional silos too long and they’re too deep.” Manager, Business Services

“There is lip service to innovation at senior levels due to the difficulty of making the required cultural change.” Partner, Law Firm

These quotes are from clients and a Codexx study in 2012-13 investigating the key challenges encountered by professional service firms in innovation. The study examined 15 predominantly large professional service firms in law, consulting & business services, accounting and insurance. The participating firms were asked to identify their top 5 innovation challenges. The results are shown in Figure 1. A copy of the study report can be found here.

Innovation challenges figure

Fig 1: Innovation challenges in professional service firms (Source: Codexx)

Two of the top three challenges are culture-related issues, each identified by 9 or more of the respondents. The highest challenge was ‘the motivation for employees to innovate’. Firms see that in most cases there is not enough encouragement for employees to innovate. The second highest challenge identified was ‘no/poor innovation process’ – the lack of an effective structured approach for gathering, exploring, selecting and implementing ideas. The third highest challenges was ‘a hostile culture to innovation’ which has some similarity to the highest challenge, the difference being that the first challenge covers a lack of incentive for employees to innovate which covers things like management encouragement and support and reward. This third-ranked challenge identifies an active discouragement for employees and managers to spend time on innovation.

The ‘Other’ category covers a number of other challenges that were identified by respondents. Some of these do overlap with the existing categories, but others capture additional challenges such as the difficulty of managing multiple stakeholders and the issue of functional and departmental silos which can limit the sharing and development of new ideas across the firm.

Innovation system diagram

Figure 2: The innovation system (Source: Codexx)

Addressing key challenges

Establishing and operating an innovation system, covering the 7 practice areas, as outlined in Part 3 of this series and shown in Figure 2, is the most robust approach for dealing with the common challenges faced:

  • Employees will be motivated to participate in innovation activities if there is supportive leadership within the firm and a performance management system that measures and rewards innovation participation. Champions need to be found, to lead projects and help execute required changes.
  • An ideas management process will address the frustrations and inefficiencies that occur when ideas cannot easily be explored, evaluated and selected for implementation in an effective way.
  • A hostile culture for innovation occurs when partners and employees are exclusively focused on today’s business and are effectively penalised when working on innovation (i.e. tomorrow’s business). This can only be addressed by moving the culture to innovation-positive through communication, espoused values in the firm and recognition and reward systems that support it.
  • Innovation needs to be resourced – in a professional service firm this particularly means partner and employee time made available for innovation, some common tools and methods (process mapping, analysis and Lean-enabled improvement for example).
  • Firms need to engage clients in their innovation activities, to gain insight and identify opportunities for enhancing value and to look externally for new ideas and resources.
  • Learning needs to be enhanced in firms, especially to support process-based innovation, with the use of process management and measurement and continuous improvement. Additionally a culture of capturing, sharing and reusing improvements is needed to get innovation beyond the silos of teams and departments and applied across the firm.

Sustaining innovation

Leading a programme to establish sustainable innovation within a professional services firm requires a long term outlook and effective change management. In making change within a partnership it is key to get the support of the majority of partners (unlike a corporate where a board-driven ‘It’s my way or the highway’ approach can be effective). Partners need to recognise that the benefits of the change will outweigh the pain and cost of the journey required. This individual assessment of the pros and cons of change are captured in the ‘change equation’ developed by Beckhard and Harris. This is a simple equation but is powerful in recognising that the viewpoint of change must be both at the personal as well as the organisational level. That is, answering the question from the viewpoint of those key individuals who hold power within the organisation, rather than simply from the viewpoint of the organisation as a whole. This is because it is the perspective of the key decision-makers in an organisation that is critical. The ‘change equation’ states that for successful change:

 

DVP > C

where

D= Dissatisfaction with the status quo

V = Vision of desired future state

P=  Practical Plan to realise the future vision

C = total perceived Cost of change (covering energy, emotional, financial)

(Source: Richard Beckhard and Rubin Harris).

So for someone to be supportive of a proposed change the combination of their dissatisfaction with today’s situation, the attractiveness of the future vision and the proposed plan to realise it must be more compelling than their perception of the cost of making the change. Change leaders need to be able to effectively ‘sell’ the proposed innovation programme at the outset and then continue to sell it during the years it takes to fully establish it within the organisation. This is why measurement and communication of benefits, visible recognition and reward of those effectively leading and participating in innovation activities and establishing innovation behaviours as key to progression in the firm are all key to successfully sustaining the innovation programme.

Summary of the series

The objective of this series was to introduce the key elements of an effective approach for driving and managing innovation in a professional services firm. This is based on my experience of working in Codexx on innovation and re-engineering with major professional service firms over the last decade.

In this series I defined a framework for considering and identifying innovation opportunities, using the ‘innovation dimensions’ model and then gave examples of the four key innovation categories. I then outlined a system to support innovation within a firm, based on 7 key practice areas. In the final two articles I discussed approaches for starting and accelerating innovation within a firm and identified the typical challenges that will be encountered in this journey and key approaches for addressing them.

I won’t pretend that this series will make its readers experts in innovation – that was never the intention! Instead, I hope that readers will have a better appreciation of the opportunities and challenges for applying innovation in professional service firms and to recognise that there are proven approaches to effectively manage innovation so that it can ultimately deliver improved competitiveness for their firms. And from my experience, there is major opportunity for professional service firms to utilise innovation to drive significant improvements in the value provided to clients and the efficiency in which it is delivered.

References and further reading

This article and the others in the series are based on the approaches, references and case studies detailed in my book ‘Innovating professional services – transforming value and efficiency’ published by Gower in May 2015. This is based on the author’s ten years of experience working with professional service firms on innovation projects. It provides in-depth coverage and case studies of the topics featured in this series. For more information go to: https://www.codexx.com/2015/innovating-professional-services-new-book/

Cover-Image

Driving process innovation – the role of Knowledge Management

Tuesday, August 25th, 2015

13Process innovation – be it in internal support processes or client-facing services is a key opportunity area for professional services firms such as lawyers, accountants and management consultants to transform their efficiency and the value they provide clients. This is typically a challenge for these firms as process thinking and process management are not present to the same degree that they are in industrial businesses.

A key foundation for effective process management is in establishing a framework for process management, process performance monitoring and improvement. The Knowledge Management (KM) function within a professional services firm can have a key role in enabling this to happen. Alastair Ross, Director of Codexx, has recently had a series of two articles on this important topic published by the KM Institute on their website. The links to the articles are below:

Part 1 – Driving process innovation

Part 2 – the role of Knowledge Management

Energizing Change

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