Banking knowledge – Firms work to track down internal information and share it companywide

A staff of six in Sun Microsystems’ knowledge services unit has spent eight months crafting ways to bring employees’ ideas to light, ideas that otherwise might be forgotten over a casual lunch or a quick meeting on an unrelated topic.

The Sun team, based in Broomfield, launched an "innovation repository" on the company’s internal network, where employees can jot down a sudden burst of brilliance or a well-thought plan on a product idea or way to serve customers.

By Kelly Pate Dwyer
Denver Post Staff Writer

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~2212987,00.html

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Why not carry this concept to the city or state level?

"The (fill in the blank) with the Best Education Wins!"

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"Somebody may find something interesting on a Web page. Or, it’s serendipity," said Chuck Ferguson, Sun’s knowledge strategist. "The innovation repository is just a way of putting some framework around it … where you might see value from the idea."

All businesses need great ideas to succeed. Now, some are making a conspicuous effort to retain those ideas – even if they can’t retain workers – and spur the process of innovation.

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A small group of experts will meet Friday at the Brown Palace Hotel for the Rocky Mountain KM Cluster. Innovation is the meeting theme.

The Rocky Mountain KM Cluster was organized by Leonard Kish of the Hartford, Conn.-based Knowledge Continuity Center, which helps businesses track down and prioritize their internal information, or knowledge, then make it accessible companywide.

At its core, knowledge management involves tapping that knowledge bank and other sources of company information, such as client records, policies and procedures.

From there, companies, including Coors Brewing Co., can build models that map out their goals.

Workers can access a hierarchy of information – from the company mission to what tasks are expected of them and which co-workers might be able to answer their questions. Management can watch progress of certain projects.

Coors’ model is about 20 percent complete after 18 months of work, said Bob Bonacci, director of business integration. Already the supply chain has benefited – each beer delivery truck is as full as possible, saving fuel and other costs, Bonacci said. The model has saved Coors millions of dollars, yet Bonacci expects a return on investment is a few years off.

Coors’ experience reflects a global trend toward more innovation spending with uncertainty about when profits will be realized. Sixty-four percent of companies will spend more money on product or process innovation in 2004, according to a survey of senior managers by Boston Consulting Group. Yet 57 percent of those surveyed say they are unhappy with the return on innovation investments to date.

At Denver Health, Denver’s $400-million-a-year safety-net hospital, staff in various departments and geographic locations can access patients’ medical records. That saves money, and gives care providers more time with patients, chief executive Patty Gabow said.

"We get the patient to the right place at the right time for the right level of care," she said. "We don’t have somebody going to the ER that could go to the community health clinic."

The anticipated exodus of baby boomers – and their collective wisdom – from the workforce is one of the primary drivers of knowledge-management initiatives. But knowledge management also answers a dangerous problem of an overworked workforce, says business consultant Cedric Tyler, president of Denver-based Business Genetics.

"Folks are saying we cannot sustain this level of productivity and we must work smarter," said the London-born Tyler, whose clients include Coors, the state of Colorado, Pitney-Bowes and Warner Bros. "We ‘just do’ things here. I call it the Nike psyche. We fire, then aim and ready."

Knowledge management helps solve the issue of people constantly and industriously repeating the work of others, Tyler says.

He cites an example: A team in charge of making the company compliant with new federal accounting rules doesn’t know another team at the company is preparing documents for a merger. Both teams need information about the company’s financial controls.

In many cases, both of those teams will do a lot of the same research for their projects, Tyler says.

If they all look at one model, one team knows what the other is up to. Everyone saves time.

That’s where innovation comes in. Once employees understand the company’s goals, they can focus their creative energy in line with them, say Tyler, Kish and others. More and better ideas turn out better products.

That’s the theory anyway. To accomplish that, companies must continually update knowledge systems they put in place, Sun’s Ferguson says.

Information "becomes stale over time, especially in a technology and IT industry."

At Sun, the idea for an "innovation repository" is new itself, launched in April. Here, employees submit business ideas. Strong ones get researched and the best will come to light, Ferguson says.

One idea being studied – sending news alerts to customers, such as programmers and network administrators. Sun could tell them about a new network patch or product upgrade.

Innovation is practically the mandate at Denver Health.

The hospital system is integrated so that a host of clinics and programs – including the hospital, school-based clinics, community clinics, a nurse line and correctional care program – are under one administration. The clinics also share a computer system and financing streams, which is uncommon in public health care, Gabow said.

Recognized for its integrated delivery system, Denver Health received a grant in October from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a federal research agency, to put work-flow-processes knowledge into practice. Under the program, Denver Health has studied other companies, including FedEx and Dell, and other health care systems to see how to improve work flow to improve patient safety and save money.

To that end, Gabow is in the process of interviewing each employee group in the hospital system, from housekeeping and food service to physicians. She’s asking them what part of their job someone else could do more efficiently and visa versa, what interferes with getting work done and how Denver Health could be more efficient.

The questions sound simple, but Gabow says health care hasn’t always asked them. And health care encompasses so many functions, streamlining processes is a daunting task, she says.

"People don’t want to give up their autonomy. (They) think this can’t be solved, it’s too complicated," Gabow says. "You need a certain kind of employee that’s willing to do this."

Staff writer Kelly Pate Dwyer can be reached at 303-820-1209 or [email protected] .

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Denver Health
Online medical records imaging systems:

800 computer terminals spread across 30 locations, including the hospital and all community-health and school-based clinics

1.6 million patient records

1,315 employees have access to the system
Sun Microsystems Innovation repository:

Launched in April with small group

2-3 ideas have made it into research phase

1,500 employees may eventually have access
Sources: Denver Health, Sun Microsystems

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