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Nominee
Transforming learning into knowledge
Hexaware was going through the process of HR transformation
where HR service delivery was being re-defined.Transforming graduates into productive
employees was the goal.
Knowledge, learning management and career path management were the key requirements
for this transformation. The project implementation turned out to be successful
in improving the performance of their human resources and the organisation as
a whole.
The main objective of the initiative was to facilitate easy access to all knowledge
content and information with maximum three clicks to access any information.
The focus was on providing paced learning so that employees could learn at their
own pace, at their desks. Also, the company wanted to integrate knowledge management,
learning and career planning into the system so that all employees could access
these through a common interface.
To meet all these objectives, Hexaware was looking for a
solution that would enable employees to access the streaming video of the training
sessions conducted by experts at all times and facilitate accessibility to “subject
matter expert” and mentor tracking within the company.
Moreover, the company was looking for tools for every Centre of excellence (COE),
practice, delivery units and competency and a community framework for each of
the COE units and delivery units to communicate.
Capturing intellectual capital
According to Madhavi Mallineni, Associate VP, Hexaware Technologies, “Intellectual
capital is the wealth of an organisation. The essence of any IT service organisation
is how well and quickly we can transform graduates that we recruit to productive
members of the organisation. Hence we planned to extract learning and knowledge
from the minds of the individuals and put it in a form that could be used to
train rest of the employees.”
The company was facing problems in providing framework to
promote an abundance mentality in sharing the knowledge and retaining and improving
collective ever-growing knowledge. Promoting learning and institutionalising
learning in the organisation was also an area of concern.
Also, the company wanted to deploy such technology that was easy to use, easy
to maintain and scalable so that new features could be added in a plug and play
manner. Usability and navigability were other focus areas.
| Name of the company |
Hexaware Technologies |
| Project deployed |
KnowHow |
| Project started |
September 2005 |
| Project completed |
January 2006 |
| Investment made |
Rs 58.8 lakhs (year one) |
| Benefits |
The KnowHow tool minimises time taken
to become proficient and maximises performance. It enables project teams
to build or re-use solutions in a rapid pace for delivery excellence. The
delivery team has access to experts disseminating training or knowledge
across on-site and offshore in a secure medium |
Project Know-How
The solution chosen was KnowHow, a combination of open-source frameworks and
technologies. The system blends learning and knowledge management with career
planning to deliver a comprehensive knowledge management system, which is also
an expert guidance system.
Adds Mallineni, “The technology is open source so that time and effort
spent on development is minimal. The guiding principles for the application
was easy accessibility of information, a combination of knowledge management,
e-learning and career management system as all three are very tightly linked
from a business perspective.”
The KnowHow platform uses Sakai Framework for portal integration and knowledge
management. The spring framework provides JavaBeans based configuration management,
so that applications can be quickly readied. The spring framework also simplifies
error handling and reduces the amount of code that programmers need to write.
Furthermore, KnowHow uses Hibernate for object relational mapping (O/R Mapping).
| Year |
Returns (Rs) |
Investment (Rs) |
ROI (Rs) |
| 1 |
8,957,780 |
8,957,780 |
3,077,780 |
| 2 |
12,174,280 |
5,000,000 |
7,174,280 |
| 3 |
15,390,780 |
5,000,000 |
10,390,780 |
| 4 |
18,607,280 |
5,000,000 |
13,607,280 |
- MySQL: KnowHow Database
- Tomcat: Application Server.
- Apache Server: Web Server.
- JTrac: for issue-tracking.
- Xwiki: A community site within the`KnowHow
tool, where one can find all the details about KnowHow portal.
- Adobe Premier Pro Software: for digitizing,
editing and rendering SOD’S.
- CruiseControl: for build process.
- Maven: for Build and Deployment activities.
- SVN: for Source Code Version Management.
- Canoo: Canoo WebTest is a free open source
tool for automated testing of web applications.
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There’s more to come
After successful implementation of the project, company has envisioned deploying
technologies and processes like ideation workbench, automated career path tool,
book marking, personal homepage and customer COE site by 2007. Ideation Workbench
provides an ideation framework for employees to contribute innovative ideas
relating to process improvements, tools and accelerators, service offerings
etc.
By 2008, it plans to have engagement briefcase; an automated tool to build a
briefcase based on the engagement, service offering or role. This briefcase
will consist of methods, templates, wizards, check lists and accelerators. Further
it plans to deploy MVP dashboard, an online real time dashboard to graphically
depict updated information.
The company also plans to have an IP measurement mechanism to automatically
track and value the intellectual property, SME tracker to track subject matter
experts by various parameters and dimensions across the organisation and an
automated COE management tool.
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