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Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge 479

Knowledge Management and Collaboration at Tata
Consulting Services

CASE STUDY
T ata Consultancy Services (TCS) is an leaders, which were made available to all develop-
IT-services, business-solutions and out-
ment centers through the intranet.
Then Ultimatix, a web-based electronic knowl-
sourcing organization that offers a portfolio
of IT and IT-enabled services to clients all edge management (EKM) portal, which made the
over the globe in horizontal, vertical, and geographi- knowledge globally available, was developed. The
cal domains. A part of the Tata Group, India’s largest PAL library and KBases, which were hosted on the
industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 108,000 IT intranet, were merged with Ultimatix, which had
consultants in 47 countries. sub-portals for a quality management system, soft-
The concept of knowledge management (KM) ware productivity improvement, training materials,
was introduced in TCS in 1995 and a dedicated KM and tools information. There were EKM administra-
team called “Corporate Groupware” was formed tors for each practice and subject group with defined
in 1998. This group launched the KM-pilot in mid- responsibilities, such as editing the documents and
1999, which was implemented subsequently by a approving them for publication. Commenting on the
team comprising the steering committee, corporate success of CoP, Krishnan maintained that between
GroupWare implanters, branch champions, applica- January 2003 and June 2003, CoP members had
tion owners and the infrastructure group. exchanged around 10,000 document transactions
At that time, KM in TCS covered nearly every relating to the industry practices and 21,000 service
function, from quality assurance to HR management. practices via Ultimatix. The telecom CoP alone had
While its 50 offices in India were linked through 6,000 transactions, excluding the intranet-based com-
dedicated communication lines, overseas offices munity activities.
were connected through the Net and the Lotus Notes To encourage employee conversations, TCS took
Domino Servers. The employees could access the considerable care in the architecture of its develop-
knowledge repository that resided on the corporate ment centers, located across the country. Reflecting
and branch servers through the intranet, with a on the new design of one of its development centers
browser front-end or a Notes client. The knowledge in Sholinganallur, Chennai, CFO S. Mahalingam com-
repository, also called KBases contained a wide range mented that the center is made up of modules, each
of information about processes, line of business, line dedicated to one particular technology or a client or
of technology, and projects. an industry practice. These structures lead to garden
Though the formal KM efforts started in TCS in terraces, where employees gather during their break
the late 1990s, the informal, closely knit communi- for informal conversations and brainstorm the solu-
ties of practices (CoPs) had existed at TCS since the tions to many problems.
1980s, when it had around a thousand employees. TCS also launched a number of training programs
The earliest “group” was based on the migration of such as the Initial Learning Program, targeted at
technologies. Later, teams were formed for main- new employees, the Continuous Learning Program
frame, Unix, and databases. The groups, consisting for experienced employees, and the Leadership
of one or two experts in their respective fields, began Development Program for employees with more
formal documentation practices with the mem- than five years’ experience. The integrated compe-
bers writing down the best practices. Recollecting tency and learning management systems (iCALMS)
the group practices in the initial days, K. Ananth that was deployed globally across all TCS offices pro-
Krishnan, a technology consultant at that time, moted a culture of learning and growth in the organi-
recounted that in the mid-eighties, problems and zation. Equipped with data about competency defini-
solutions were documented and there were over tions, role definitions, and online/classroom learning
1,500 case studies for mainframe. Similarly, for qual- objectives it helped the consultants to enhance their
ity area, 40 case studies were reviewed as early as skills in a customized manner. To gain cross-industry
1993. experience, TCS regularly rotated people across vari-
The next step was to create Process Asset Libraries ous functions and within other Tata Group compa-
(PALs) which contained information related to nies. Employees were also encouraged to join outside
technology, processes, and case studies for project bodies like the IEEE, and go in for certifications.

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