Knowledge Management in Outsourcing Environment: People Empowering People

This study intends to capture in essence the challenges and the opportunities that might arise while implementing a Knowledge Management (KM) system in an outsourcing environment. The objective of this study is to emphasize the significance of KM in an outsourcing environment, thereby trying to reduce manpower turnover and knowledge loss, thus saving time, funds and effort while training and setting up similar processes, or ramping up an existing process or project. The significance of KM is upheld in the fact that most organizations, including the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, has come to realize the importance of KM adoption and implementation. However, most of these face a challenge in collating and assimilating all information and experiences, which, if done, would create a ‘knowledge pool’. Even if knowledge is captured, getting people to contribute and utilize stored knowledge assets is a challenge. They are not cognizant of the benefits of such an exercise that ‘people can empower people’ by means of a robust KM system, which in turn would lead to the development of service intensity, improved quality, standardization of processes and globalization, further leading to a better understanding of the organizational goals by employees, effective learning processes, improved responsiveness, employee retention, minimized costs, knowledge asset creation, initiatives, innovation and above all, operational excellence which benefits the organization as a whole. The study is the first of its kind and investigates the awareness levels of KM in outsourcing environment and the scope of effective implementation of a KM strategy in the workplace of these organizations. Primary data was collected by means of a comprehensive questionnaire and analyzed.