How Xerox Got Its Engineers To Use A Knowledge Management System

Xerox found a way to cut costs and share institutional knowledge with a knowledge management
system that gives engineers credit for their contributions. Find out how Xerox moved KM from theory to
reality.
In todays business climate, capturing staff knowledge and managing that data is more critical than ever
as IT leaders grapple with downsizing, hiring freezes, and manpower fluctuations. All these changes
allow expertise to take flight as staffers leave for more stable ground or get pink-slipped. The trick to
stemming such a knowledge drain is instilling a knowledge management (KM) system before the drain
drip becomes a gushing data loss.
Thats what Xerox Corp. did when it realized invaluable on-site solutions created by engineers in its
24,000-member customer service unit couldnt be efficiently shared among the engineers and the
support staff.
The document solution company based in Stamford, CT, which reported $19 billion in revenue last year,
was investigating ways to improve customer service and discovered that service engineers sometimes
faced equipment problems that could not be solved through the usual support channels.
"The answers to these scenarios werent found in the training books or documentation or even vendor
updates. But our engineers are extremely creative and their job is to solve these problems, so they work
through it, explained Dan Holtshouse, Xeroxs director of corporate strategies. And while theyre
willing to share their newly created solutions, the audience was limited to the half-dozen people in their
home office."
That knowledge stopgap prompted Xerox to investigate the most logical way for engineers to share with
the entire service community.
Eureka! A KM system that employees use
Following an in-depth study of workday behavior, Xerox designed Eureka, a KM application that
leverages Xeroxs Web-based DocuShare tool using an Oracle database. By logging in to Eureka,
engineers can now easily document newly created solutions using various templates via their office
laptops.
However, just because engineers now had a way to input and store new knowledge, it didnt mean
staffers were jumping up and down to participate, Holtshouse said.
"The big challenge [in KM] was the work practice and the motivation elements. We designed the
application around the SE [service engineer] community, incorporating a browser interface since we
knew engineers browsed the Web quite a bit. But we still couldnt figure out how to get engineers to
take the time to input the data," he recalled.

The response by Xerox engineers isnt unique. According to an April 2000 report by the University of
Southern California's Center for Organizational Effectiveness and the executive-search firm Korn/Ferry
International, 64 percent of knowledge workers say they are vastly underusing organizational
knowledge and the electronic tools created to help them share it.
One reason the Xerox staff was reluctant to use the KM system was that participation would be an
added duty to an already tightly controlled workdayessentially, staff would need to share" in the
little downtime available to them. Xerox tried a number of incentives to book employee interest and
learned that professional credit was the key. With a quick app revamp, Eureka provided engineers an
ability to "author their solutions.
"Once we enabled them to attach their name, it became a professional peer process. Theyre proud of
their solutions and are recognized for it," Holtshouse explained.
Xerox saw a 10 percent reduction in labor and cost improvement just within the initial Eureka rollout in
France. That return on investment jumped tremendously as the company opened the application to its
Canadian, European, and South American engineers. Today, Eureka is a global effort supporting six
different languages with high staff participation. Xerox has 92,500 employees worldwide, with 50,000 in
the United States.
"Weve accumulated over 50,000 solutions in just a few years, with 70 to 80 percent participation of
engineers inputting an average of once a week," Holtshouse said.
With Eureka, an on-site solution is captured and available for use by everyone, thus avoiding another
engineer, in a different location, from having to reinvent the same solution. Xerox estimates that Eureka
has prevented at least 300,000 redundant solutions.
In addition to making their employees more efficient, the system is clearly saving Xerox money. Take the
equipment problem a Brazilian engineer still couldnt solve, despite using Eureka, equipment manuals,
and the available help. It seemed the only option was to replace the customers color copy machinea
$40,000 cost. But before the engineer submitted the equipment order, he decided to check Eureka one
more time. A Canadian colleague had entered the solution to his problem into Eureka a few hours
earlier, so the potential $40,000 copier replacement became a 90-cent part replacement.
While Xeroxs KM effort wasnt prompted by the economic slowdown that is now hitting many
corporate IT shops, Holtshouse said knowledge capture is vital no matter what the business climate.
"When the economy was booming, there was all kinds of competition for skilled workers, and they were
jumping the fence and that knowledge was leaving. Now with downsizing, you have the same problem
[knowledge loss] but for different reasons. While you may be laying off *workers+, it doesnt mean you
dont need what they knowyou just cant afford them. You still need a way to capture the expertise
and retain it," he explains.

Designing a system to match the culture - Xerox has been recognized for its "world-class efforts in
managing knowledge" by Teleos, an independent knowledge management research organization, and
The KNOW Network, a Web-based community that shares best practices for knowledge management.
Xerox has ranked among the top 10 Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) since the award was
created in 1998. In addition, the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) selected Xeroxs
corporate engineering center as one of five benchmark organizations for "building and sustaining
communities of practice" last December.
"Communities of practice are fast becoming the most effective way to connect people who need
knowledge with those who have it. They cultivate new and innovative ideas to guide important business
decisions," said Carla O'Dell, APQC president.
Holtshouse believes successful KM is tied to understanding a communitys work culture and that one
solution doesnt fit every communitys needs. Technology takes second place as a tool to enhance a KM
process, he added.
Experts say implementing KM first as a small, short-term pilot projectsuch as Xerox did in France
fosters collaboration across disciplines, exposes organizational weaknesses, and gives management
immediate and measurable results before long-term plans are made.
"Each community works differently and has different motivations. Weve been taking a community at a
time and building knowledge sharing solutions for each. Management is a blend of technology and
process change through culture change," Holtshouse said.

Source: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-xerox-got-its-engineers-to-use-a-knowledgemanagement-system/