Step 1: define the scope of your exercise

In other words, how much of your business do you want this knowledge management framework to cover? Given that the working styles of sales, marketing and bidding are so different and that their knowledge needs are so diverse, we would generally recommend that each of these disciplines has their own knowledge management framework. At a stretch, bidding and marketing could be combined, but sales will probably always need their own knowledge management framework. You may also need an additional knowledge management framework to cover the entire internal supply chain from product development to customer support, which will also cover elements of bidding, marketing and sales.

Step 2: identify the key areas of knowledge that people need

We could call these ‘key knowledge areas’. These are the things that staff need to know in order to make correct decisions in their work. We have discussed some of these key knowledge areas in Chapter 2, ranging from knowledge of how to sell or how to construct an effective bid, through to knowledge of the client and knowledge of the product. Product and customer knowledge has traditionally been covered in various CRM and product databases and it is very often the ‘how to’ knowledge that needs more attention.

Step 3: for each knowledge area, define the source and user of the knowledge

The source of the knowledge is where the knowledge will originally come from. Almost always, this source is a person with experience or knowledge. So product knowledge initially comes from the product development team, customer knowledge comes from the people who interact with the customers, practice-related know-how comes from experienced practitioners. The user of the knowledge is the person who will apply that knowledge to make decisions or the person who will supply that knowledge to the customer. It is the marketing team, the bidding team, the customer- facing sales representative, who need to make knowledgeable decisions and informed recommendations. The purpose of the knowledge management framework is to provide an effective flow of knowledge from the source to the user, so that the user gets the information they need, in the format they need it, when they need to make the decision.

Step 4: define whether this knowledge can be transferred as tacit, explicit or both

Sometimes the knowledge can be transferred by conversation and through dialogue (for example, in an online discussion forum, through discussion as part of a team, through individual coaching and mentoring or through processes such as peer assist and knowledge exchange). This is possible when the source and the user are working in the same time zone or are otherwise available to each other, and when this type of knowledge transfer is relatively rare so that the conversational transfers do not become an unmanageable workload. Sometimes, however, it makes more sense to write the knowledge down, either because there are hundreds or thousands of users or because the knowledge needs to be transferred forward in time to future users who are not around at the moment to hold the dialogue. In this case, there needs to be some sort of capture of knowledge in a process document and knowledge asset, a portal or a wiki.

Step 5: if knowledge transfer is tacit, define the communication mechanism

Decide whether you need to set up a community of practice, a community of purpose or a community of interest. Work with the community to define the toolset that this community will use. Decide the processes that it will use, such as knowledge exchange, peer assists, ‘show and tell’, etc. Define the roles and accountabilities and appoint people as sponsor, leader, core team, facilitator – whatever roles may be required. Decide whether bid projects or marketing projects need peer assists with the other bid or marketing projects. Decide who is accountable for arranging and facilitating these peer assists. Decide whether you need the yellow pages technology to find the peers from around the world. Choose a set of technologies, processes, roles and community structures that will allow the most efficient and effective communication of knowledge between source and user.

Step 6: if knowledge transfer is explicit, define the capture mechanism

The first step in explicit transfer of knowledge is to make the knowledge explicit. Knowledge comes from people’s experience and so needs to be captured and written down and done so in such a way as to retain as much value as possible. Define the processes you will use for this, whether you are using retrospect at the end of each bid, after action reviews during team meetings, individual submission of knowledge to a system or interviews of particularly knowledgeable personnel (or indeed a combination of processes). Decide who is accountable for making sure that these happen and happen well. Who quality-controls the process, for example? If the process doesn’t happen, who should take responsibility for it not happening? Also, define the technology that you will use for capturing the knowledge, whether this is a database, a wiki, a collaboration system or documents on a file server.

Step 7: define the organisation method

Capturing knowledge is the first step; the knowledge then has to be organised, sorted and sifted to be useful and to be accessable. Wikis have to be edited and cross-linked, knowledge bases have to be sorted, common practices have to be turned into current best practices, documents such as the company marketing way have to be constructed. Define who is accountable for this. Who stewards and maintains the knowledge on behalf of the company? Who keeps it fresh? Who commissions the interviews and compiles the results? Define the technology where this knowledge will be stored and made available. Will it be a wiki? Will it be a portal? Will it be a push database, with RSS feeds and tabs? Define the processes for maintaining this knowledge. How often is it upgraded? How often is it reviewed? How do you reconcile differing opinions? How do you decide whether an innovation becomes the next best practice?

Step 8: define the distribution and internalisation mechanism

Even if captured knowledge is well organised and made available, it still needs to reach the user. The user must be able to find it, where and when they need it. You have to define how the knowledge will reach the user and what technology they will use to access it, depending on their work style. Are they sales reps, working with a customer, who need to be able to access knowledge from their smart phones? Are they members of a bid preparation team, working in an office with access to computers and laptops? Do they have search capability; do they browse on tags or use RSS feeds? Also, when should they be looking for the knowledge? At the start of projects or all the way through? Do they need to access the product database before every client engagement? Also, who is accountable for making sure people access the knowledge they need? The individual, the project leader, the sales manager? You need to think through all of these questions.

Step 9: define how you will measure knowledge management activity

How do you know whether people are using the knowledge management framework and using it well? Can you see who is contributing and who is accessing? Can you see knowledge being reused in subsequent bids? Do you have examples where successful marketing campaigns or successful product launches are reused in other parts of the world? Can you see customer service improving and sales and market share increasing? And if people are not contributing to knowledge management, are not sharing their knowledge or not reusing the knowledge of others, how would you be able to tell? If the processes and technologies and roles are not working, would you be able to see this? You need to define a means of tracking knowledge management activity so that you can intervene when necessary.

Step 10: define how you will manage the performance of knowledge management

Once you have decided how you will measure the performance of knowledge management, your final decision is how you will manage this performance. If people or teams are performing well, sharing their knowledge and reusing the knowledge of others, you need to decide how this will be fed through into their recognition and rewards. And if they are not performing well and refusing to fulfil their accountabilities and expectations in terms of knowledge management, you need to decide what will happen as a result. How can these people be encouraged to take part in knowledge management?

We cannot tell you how to make the decisions and answer all of the questions in the 10 steps above. However, in this book we have given you a range of processes, technologies and roles and a series of examples of how these have been used by bid teams, marketing teams and sales forces. It is now up to you to take these examples, roles, technologies and processes and create a knowledge management framework for your workforce, in your context, to address your business needs.

We wish you every success!