From IT hub to BPO centre and now the leading destination for knowledge management outsourcing, India has come a long way and many global organizations have tapped the country’s ample human capital to effectively outsource critical business functions. However, the need for knowledge management (KM) -- as much as it is imperative for global organization -- is also being felt by the Indian outsourcing industry.

The variety of processes within each one of the functional domains has triggered of increased interest in capturing best practices, processes and learning from each project that is outsourced.

The biggest challenge to KM in the BPO sector is the lack of it. “Not too many people in the BPO industry understand the actual value proposition knowledge management can offer,” says Ashwin Hoskote, head of enterprise quality group and knowledge management at Infosys BPO. However he also believes that despite this implementation of KM practices is not something that cannot be overcome. There is also that section of the industry who understand the value-add and are implementing it within their organization.

Various surveys indicate that all organizations have begun to realize the importance of KM. In a KM survey finding at Infosys that Hoskote quoted, 100% of the respondents felt that knowledge sharing is very important for their teams to be effective.

A robust KM system leads to development of service intensity, better quality of work and culture, globalization and uniformity of processes across the organization, shortening of product life cycles, and removal of redundant processes.

Anand Subramani, head of payer and business process solutions at Perot Systems believes that as the offshore BPO model graduates to the Gen 2.0, an increased number of clients are demanding end-to-end process delivery capability. “And here KM becomes an integral part starting off even prior to engagement with the client,” he says. However he agrees that managing continuous change and ensuring everyone is on the same plain is a huge challenge. “How do you ensure that the knowledge captured and transferred is what the client is expecting,” he adds.

Subramani emphasizes on the practice of having a pilot period in place which ensures that gaps are filled before actual implementation of BPO practices. “This is something we practice in Perot Systems and it gives us an insight and allows us to go back and forth to see is and where improvisations need to be made.”

Another key challenge that the industry faces is the high rate of attrition and loss of knowledge when people move across departments as part of changes in job roles. “With a high rate of attrition that the BPO industry faces, it becomes even more imperative to have a buoyant knowledge capture and management process in place,” says Hoskote of Infosys. “At Infosys for example, we have robust processes and technologies in place, there is a knowledge exchange in the form of portals and there is a strong emphasis on training.”

Devender Malhotra, head - KM and quality at Wipro BPO also believes that a top down approach -- starting in the top echelons of the organization is important for successful implementation of KM practices. “KM is the key differentiator between success and failure. For any organization to actually benefit from it, KM has to be imbibed within the culture of the organization, and this in essence is possible when you have it being driven from the top.”

From a BPO perspective, KM also involves harvesting new knowledge for gaining competitive advantage, enabling access to a vast amount of project and process information and sharing best practices evolved in the course of working those processes. Further, it also involves applying management strategies and technology that support all the mentioned functions including groupware and intranets. Having said that, it would be quite a challenge to make KM implementation happen in a diverse work environment, which is a characteristic of the BPO industry.