KM: Cases, Complexities, Competencies
Cases Studies - Sales Centric
Cadence Design Systems
- Background:
- electronic design firm for chips
- experiencing change, growth,
- moving from tools to consulting
- adding 40 sales people/year to global operations
- suffering from 1990's syndrome
- Knowledge Initiative:
- OnTrack: Internet-based sales support system (Intranet)
- aim is to have sales reps know more about customers' vision & problems
than customer knows! Harness the experience of he small sales team.
- On Track at Cadence
- customized from off-the-shelf "Sage Solutions"
- "fully functional automated publishing process"
- info entered into database & browsed using Netscape
- includes: corporate/regional info, sales process, prospecting and internal
sales groups
- Sales Process
- "knowledgeware" - presentations, instructions, success stories,
various types of agreements
- links to industry, marketing data, current news on accounts or prospects
- Newscast Today - WavePhore - personalized news service
- access to d/b's (Hoover's, Dow Jones...)
- Sales Group Menu
- interactive bulletin boards
- employees converse with experts;
- mail back links information indexed & organized to integrate
knowledgeware with bulletins
Their Learnings
- Intranet - very few graphics - "must be pleasing to the eye, but not
slow to the touch"
- quarterly feedback cycle
- rapid development cycle - maximum of six months
- overseen by regional knowledge managers with one global knowledge manager
- now implementing internal customized news to complement Newscast Today
- contact and opportunity management tool is next
- Knowledge Management must be part of the corporate culture to succeed, be
embedded in the incentives and the punishments.
Notice: You can get copies of the case studies
done by Dow Jones on Cooper's and Lybrand, Owens Corning, and Cadence Design by
contacting infopro@wsj.dowjones.com.
Complexities
Presentation by Rebecca Jones, November
13 1997
HTML prepared by G. Harris, December 19, 1997