11-15 Describe the collaboration tools used at TCS.

What benefits did TCS reap from these tools? Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is an IT-services, business-solutions and outsourcing organization that offers a portfolio of IT and IT-enabled services to clients all over the globe in horizontal, vertical, and geographical domains. A part of the Tata Group, India’s largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 108,000 IT consultants in 47 countries.

The concept of knowledge management (KM)

was introduced in TCS in 1995 and a dedicated KM team called “Corporate GroupWare” was formed in 1998. This group launched the KM-pilot in mid-

1999, which was implemented subsequently by a team comprising the steering committee, corporate GroupWare implanters, branch champions, application owners and the infrastructure group.

At that time, KM in TCS covered nearly every function, from quality assurance to HR management.

While its 50 offices in India were linked through dedicated communication lines, overseas offices were connected through the Net and the Lotus Notes Domino Servers. The employees could access the knowledge repository that resided on the corporate and branch servers through the intranet with a browser front-end or a Notes client. The knowledge repository, also called KBases, contained a wide range of information about processes, line of business, line of technology, and projects.