1. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT :
CASE OF SIEMENS
Sepehr Haghighat Afshar
Vahid Karimi
Knowledge Management Course
Instructor: Dr. Sadeghi
Fall 1390

2. CONTENT
About Siemens
Emergence of KM in Siemens
Technical infrastructure
Managing of Change
Organizational Outcomes
Conclusion
References

3. ABOUT SIEMENS
 World leader in electrical engineering and electronics
 Comprehensive product range – everything from mobile phones to
power plants
 Net sales approaching DM 150 billion
 Broad base of 570,000 shareholders
 More than 440,000 experts in over 190 countries

4. I give you an idea
Emergence of KM in Siemens
What if they fall in love, get married and have kids?
You give me an idea

5. WHY KM IS IMPORTANT FOR SIEMENS
• Products and services increasingly knowledge-intensive and customized
• Organization’s value resides in people - but they are more mobile than ever
• Innovation increasingly in processes, organizations, financing
• Strategic partnerships and alliances growing competitive advantage

6. WHY KM IS IMPORTANT FOR SIEMENS
• e-business and service business the major business transformations
• Global, decentralized, process-oriented and team-based organizations
• Accelerating volume of information
• Live-long learning becomes a must for every employee
• New ways of collaboration and management - “the orchestration of
global knowledge networks” - are becoming the crucial competitive
advantage

7. EMERGENCE OF KM IN SIEMENS (STAGE I)
• Initiated 1996 by a community of interest through the organization who were :
 Doing Research
 Learning what others were doing
 Aware of KM’s benefits
Steps to implement KM
• Creating repositories
• Communities of practices (CoP)
• Informal tech. of sharing knowledge
! Without senior executive support

8. EMERGENCE OF KM IN SIEMENS (STAGE II)
• In 1999 central board of Siemens
• Created an organizational unit for KM purpose
• Developed ShareNet
• Appointing Expert Moderators Responsible for Virtual Networks
• Carried out Resistance Management Strategies

9. SHARENET : MAJOR FUNCTIONS
• Combines elements of a database repository
• Chartrooms available
• A search engine
• Online entry forms for storing useful information
• Browsing by topic
• Urgent requests

10. TECHNICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
SHARENET
The Goal:
To provide their
customers with
world-class solutions
by leveraging their
global competences
The old system
The Status in October 2000:
 ShareNet implemented in 51 major countries
 51 ShareNet Managers assigned and trained
 8.000 ShareNet users registered
 8.000 „Knowledge Objects“ available
 2000 urgent requests answered last year
 400 reuse cases
The ICN ShareNet® World
A new spirit
Globally networked flows of
knowledge
Centralized flows of
information
= Countries using ICN ShareNet (51)

11. THE FOUR KEY ELEMENTS OF SHARENET
Valuable knowledge and best
practice externalized and
structured to facilitate knowledge
reuse
Sales activities and decisions
where leverage of knowledge is
critical
Global human network of
the creators and users of
the sales knowledge
committed to drive
knowledge sharing
Technical and managerial systems
enabling and encouraging the
leverage of sales knowledge
© Boston Consulting Group
Content
Sales
Process
Systems
Community

12. COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
A CoP is a group of persons who, based on a shared interest in a subject area of
relevance to the business, exchange and develop knowledge and provide mutual
support beyond the boundaries of organizational units. The participants pursue
both individual and business goals through forms of cooperation that are not subject
to any restraints in terms of time and may be either virtual or face-to-face in nature.

13. COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES AND COMMUNICATION
CHANNELS
 Communication & information management
 regular sharing & coordination meetings
 Ad-hoc problem solving & cooperation
 Creation of transparence to experts,
contact persons and information sources
 learning, documentation & training
 Benchmarking, knowledge acquisition,
idea generation & innovation

14. better,
faster & JIT,
more innovative
more efficient
business-processes
of involved
community
members
CoP-Outputs
solutions
for daily
problems
Targets
used
synergy
effects
developed or
combined new
knowledge
coordinated
activities in the
organisation
quick learning
curve; high
knowledge level
relevant,
qualitative
information
business-contacts;
identified
experts
Info

16. COMMUNITY-ASSESSMENT
Background
Information
Customization
Incentives
result-database
deskriptive
detailreport
Executive
Summary
-1
0

17. • Change through content (Blue change)
• Technical change
• Introducing ShareNet
• Bilingual interface
• …
• Change through people (Red change)
• Change individual attitudes
CHANGE
Change management is supporting individual
to change their attitudes

18. MANAGING THE CHANGE
• Implementing the new system encountered multiple barriers
Corporate
culture
Loss of
personal
market value
Time
constraint
As internal competition
increases the level of
knowledge sharing
decreases
Employees are afraid of
becoming superfluous if
they
share personal knowledge
Sharing of knowledge
takes
time, which people in
general
do not have

19. not everyone wants to share
knowledge

20. MANAGING THE CHANGE
• One of the most admired methodological approaches to change management is one
developed by Senge P. named ADKAR
Awareness Desire Knowledge Ability Reinforcement

21. MANAGING THE CHANGE
Awareness
• Communication
• sponsorship
roadmap
desire
• incentives
• Top
management
support
• ShareNet itself
knowledge
• training
ability
• coaching
reinforcement
• Changing
compensation
system (stable
incentive system)
• Selection
strategy (job
description)

22. Outcomes
Product Leadership
 higher quality products, thereby providing
higher value to customers
 more innovative and advanced products
Customer Intimacy
 increased orders and number of winning
proposals
 best practice and tailor-made solutions
 improved customer satisfaction
Operational Excellence
 less costly client services and higher net
profit
 more timely product services,
less rework and reduced inventories

23. CONCLUSION
• KM may be one of the major tools that will help Siemens prove that large diversified
conglomerates can work and that being big might even be an advantage in the
information age.
• Implementing a profound KM project will result in high organizational profits when
organizations not only consider technical side of the project, but also human and cultural
sides. This needs a systematic, methodological implementation of change management
process.

24. REFERENCES
• Davenport, T. H., & Gilbert, P. J. (2002). Knowledge Management Case Book. John Wiley
and Sons.
• Nielsen, B. B., & Ciabuschi, F. (2003). Siemens ShareNet: knowledge management in
practice. Business Strategy Review, 14(2), 33-40.
• Peyman Akhavan, Mostafa Jafari, & Mohammad Fathian. (2006). Critical success factors
of knowledge management systems: a multi-case analysis. European Business Review,
18, 97-113.
• Rothnie, D. 2001. ShareNet: Siemens Information and Coomunication Networks. In V.
Mellor, E. Barn Field , Startegies for best practice intranet management ,London Melcrum
Publishing : 186-194.
• Voelpel, S. C., & Han, Z. (2005). Managing knowledge sharing in China: the case of
Siemens ShareNet. JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT, 9, 51-63.
• www.siemens.com

25. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION