An assessment of the knowledge needs of Lopez Group's Business Excellence Practitioners : baseline for the BE electronic knowledge network / Maribel S. Relatado

Year : 2006

Number of Pages : 36 leaves

Executive Summary

Competitiveness is the language of both local and foreign businesses today. But one does not achieve competitiveness overnight it is an arduous journey and those who are not properly equipped would be left behind. The Lopez Group adopted the overall performance excellence as its strategy in the competitiveness game. This led to the birth of Business Excellence Programs such as ISO, Environment Safety and Health (ESH), Oscar M. Lopez Award for Performance Excellence (Oscars) and Six Sigma. The Oscars was patterned over the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award of the United States. Subsidiaries integrate the principles of these initiatives in their organization and use them in running the business in order to reap the desired business results. The first program introduced was the ESH, followed by ISO, Oscars in 2002 and Six Sigma in 2004. The Business Excellence (BE) Progra Management administers these programs for the Group, with the Business Excellence practitioners acting as conduits at the subsidiaries level. They are assigned by their respective heads to roll-out these programs at the firm level. These practitioners form sets of social networks within the Lopez Group on a per program basis. The BE Program Management uses the 5-Pillar Approach in managing these programs : the Advocacy, Design, Organization, Learning, Assessment/Audit pillars. In effect, the subsidiaries are encouraged to adopt this program management approach as well. For the past years, the Program Management has been receiving feedback symptomatic of initiative and audit fatigue from the subs. The corporate office then has to know how it can better serve its customers : the companies represented by the BE practitioners. The project is all about how to be more customer-focused by delivering greater value. The primary objective is to determine the specific info and knowledge needs of the Business Excellence practitioners who are in the various stages of the excellence journey. The proponent used the 5-Pillar Program Management Framework and Ladder of Maturity : Company's Journey to Performance Excellence as guide in analyzing the different knowledge needs of the companies. Using the inventory method, guided by a survey instrument, the survey results indicated that companies' knowledge needs advance as they progress in their approaches and deployment of the programs. There is a wealth of information generated through the survey such as the knowledge needs classified to human, structural and network types. These needs identified would later on become the basis for customizing the strategies ans action plans by the Program Management in delivering greater value and in working towards programs integration (a strategic objective). The proponent also capitalizes on the social networks' ability to generate knowledge for themselves, as means of responding to the identified info and knowledge needs. They need to be constantly connected in "trans-program" mode in order to create and recreate relevant knowledge for each other. Based on this inventory of needs, the proponent recommends contents for the Business Excellence Knowledge Network, the electronic knowledge base that aims to capture, promote, store and generate knowledge within the circle of Business Excellence practitioners. The secondary objective of the study is to come up with appropriate design components for the BEEKNET responsive to the needs identified. The proponent used the IBM Community Evolution Model in identifying the enabling technology appropriate for the behavior of Business Excellence practitioners. The set of enabling technologies in the form of collaborative tools, are reflected in the design of the BEEKNET. Some of BEEKNET's functionalities that would promote collaboration are the Blog technology, E-forum or logbook tool, and instant messaging. Some of BEEKNET's contents would be the Yellow Pages of Group's experts, database of lessons learned, best practices arranged according to the Baldrige categories, Group memories, and important links to websites pertaining to quality.