H & G H MANSUKHANI

INSTITUTE OF
MANAGEMENT

SUBJECT
KNOWLEDEGE MANAGEMENT

CLASS – SYMMS
ROLL NO. – 42

Submitted By
Vrushali Anil Rajpure

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 H & G H MANSUKHANI INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT YEAR 2019

Corel Corporation Draws Powerful Change from Simplification

About Coral Corporation:

Corel Corporation is a leading global packaged software company with over 100 million users. Based on
Ottawa, Canada, they provide full-featured, easy-to-use productivity, graphics, and digital imaging
software.

Challenge:

Corel faced a number of challenges as they approached the necessary replacement of their original legacy
enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Corel wanted to simplify how it managed finances, but with
numerous business lines and global vendors spanning countries throughout the globe, the ability to operate
in different currencies, comply with international tax laws, and produce accurate reporting was paramount.
Additionally, Corel needed a solution that would display up-to-the-minute inventory and prices for
resellers.

Strategy

While Corel had considered upgrading its current system, licensing costs would have equaled the cost of
a NetSuite implementation. Additionally, the legacy system would have required two to three years to roll
out, while NetSuite could be implemented in less than 8 months. Corel chose Trajectory for the NetSuite
implementation, given our reputation for supporting global companies operating in multiple currencies.
Our strategy was simple: Combine all instances into a single database that updates in real time, while
providing room to customize currency and market details.

Process:

PROCESS Trajectory combined 11 instances into a single database, and replaced all of the connections
with Corel’s legacy system via integration updates. We facilitated the execution of an extensive data
migration plan, and kept costs low by empowering Corel to do some of the work in-house.

Results:

Simplified platform provides ‘one version of the truth’ By empowering Corel’s in-house team to
participate in the migration, the implementation was conducted quickly and efficiently. Since NetSuite is
an easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain cloud-based ERP, Corel was able to reduce the size of its IT team,
repositioning key team members to manage the NetSuite platform instead. In simplifying the processes
that their legacy solution had complicated, Corel gained greater visibility into their data, improving their
forecasting.

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SUCCESS STORIES IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

About Titan Industries:

Titan Industries, Bangalore, India, is the fifth largest integrated watch manufacturer in the world. In
addition, through leveraging its manufacturing expertise, Titan has branched into components and
subassemblies, machine building and automation solutions, precision engineering for the aerospace and
automobile sectors, tooling solutions, electronic sub-assemblies and stylish prescription eyewear. Titan
Industries also developed India’s largest retail network through its exclusive ‘World of Titan', Helios and
Fastrack showrooms, after-sales-service centres’, jewellery stores, and eyeglass stores. This combination
of multi-brand stores, large format stores, precision engineering and fierce competition call for rapid
learning throughout the organization (Ramesh, 2010).

Titan Industries continually strives to learn from its past experience to create conditions for future success.
Titan continuously identifies factors that aided its success as well as factors that impeded its progress so
that its impressive track record is pointing the direction towards future stellar performance. Executive
management’s investment in the implementation of its corporate-wide Sales and Knowledge Management
portal is further evidence.

Challenges:

Early in 2006, Titan’s leaders identified two areas of enormous potential to learn from its experiences to
build a framework for continued success: Knowledge management and Sales

Prior to developing its KMS, most internal documents were stored and retrieved manually. There was no
standardized workflow for collaboration. Finding information and documents was difficult. Only by
institutionalizing its knowledge, could past successes be replicated. Thus, Titan implemented a KM portal
as a key component of its business strategy to continue delivering innovative products and services to its
customers.

Titan’s KM vision is to institutionalize knowledge sharing using portals, communities of practice, and its
internal Quest magazine. Titan’s KM initiative is a blend of information, collaboration and communication.
As part of the development process, Titan mapped knowledge assets and processes for each department.
Customer knowledge is also considered important, and thus is captured and used in the sales efforts in other
areas.
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Strategy for Knowledge Management:

Enteg Infotech (now Altimetrik) was selected to develop the system (Ramesh, 2010). Enteg used SAP
NetWeaver’s platform to provide flexibility, to ful-filled current requirements and lay the foundation for
future enhancements. The Net Weaver Portal component provided centralized access to all business-critical
SAP and non-SAP applications in one login and user interface. Enteg implemented both the KM and Sales
portal with SAP Enterprise Portal 7.0, a component of SAP NetWeaver. In addition, custom software was
developed to meet unfulfilled business requirements. All employees can share ideas, opinions and
knowledge independent of physical location or department base. Decisions are now made on the universal
availability of information. Titan expects this availability of information at the finger tips to further
accelerate its customer responsiveness to enable it to deliver innovative products and services to its
customers. The best feature, according to Titan, is that of managing localized best practices.

Strategy for Sales:

The Sales Portal provides management and the sales force with an online sales information tracking tool.
Now, Titan can direct appropriate sales activity to the right regions without detracting from other ones.
Plus, the manual efforts in tracking sales have been dramatically reduced. Marketing and sales have
improved dramatically.

Process:

In its KMS initiative, Titan made it clear that knowledge sharing was an expected part of everyone’s job.
No rewards or other incentives were created. The culture simply supported and expected it. Titan developed
a comprehensive range of metrics covering KM outcomes: deployment, use and effectiveness, though these
were not strictly quantifiable.

Communities of Practices (CoPs) at Titan cover activities that include among others retailing, customer
service, showroom, maintenance, quality and tool manufacturing. The quality CoP spans functional areas
and thus impacts a range of areas in interesting and unanticipated ways. KM CoPs are used by technicians
as well as receptionists, and are enhanced during regional and functional meetings.

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Results:

Titan clearly succeeded in meeting its KMS goal of synergizing knowledge initiatives across diverse
sectors. SAP India recognized this project and rewarded Titan with its SAP ACE 2007 award. The Titan
success factors are as follows.

1) A defined business need: For Titan to share knowledge within and across product sets, only a
knowledge management system could break down silos that hinder communication and sharing
expertise.
2) Involvement in the system by the managers and users. The communities of practice are the clearest
evidence of this. CoPs are the most important mechanism for communication across non-common
products. Common areas such as Quality are visible and show the benefits of the system to all users.
3) The Web interface set a common reference point for all users. Most were familiar with Web access,
so training was minimal.
4) The SAP tools used were sound and proven reliable before system development began.
5) The very visible Sales Portal had demonstrated success, thus further encouraging its use.
6) Knowledge sharing is an expected part of everyone’s job, and thus part of the culture. True, this
was instituted from above; there are many cases where the CEO arranges to get the KMS developed,
and then demands its use. The organizational culture then shifts.
7) There was strong support by the chief executive. He instituted the development of the system and

Conclusion:

We have described knowledge management and knowledge management systems and focused on relevant
success factors. We have provided two case studies that demonstrate how success in practice is described
or measured. Early in the development of knowledge management system. Success stories are vital to
demonstrate to organizations considering implementing a KMS system or seeking to implement a
knowledge sharing culture across the organization.