Infosys Technologies, Limited Nikhil Mehta, Auburn University, USA Anju Mehta, Auburn University, USA Knowledge has no equal. - Ancient Indian Scriptures EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Despite the emergence of knowledge management (KM) as a critical success factor, few Organizations have successfully orchestrated the implementation of a KM initiative. This chapter highlights the implementation efforts of one such firm Infosys Technologies, Limited. In this case, we discuss how KM emerged as a strategic requirement of the firm, and various capabilities the firm had to develop to fulfill this requirement. In other words, we discuss KM implementation as a confluence of multiple initiatives. We hope that by presenting this idea through the use of a case study we will assist readers to understand the intricate relationships between different facets of KM implementation. BACKGROUND Haris, account manager with Infosys's North American operations, pulled out of the multilevel parking lot in downtown Detroit. His meeting with the director of sales management systems of a large automotive manufacturer went fine. The company's sales 290 Mehta and Mehta Copyright 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. and order management across the country operated in silos and the director wanted to integrate them. \"This will improve our customer service and, at the same time, reduce cost. Can you help?\" the director had asked. Haris was slightly anxious as he negotiated the evening traffic of downtown Detroit. He had to get back with the proposed solution by the next day, but the technical team was busy on a client site in Canada. Late that night, he contacted Infosys's Domain Competency Group (DCG), the company's think tank in India that provides round-the-clock domain knowledge support to practice units around the world. It was morning in India and an automotive expert replied, \"This sounds similar to a project we completed for a German automotive company a few months back. We can leverage that experience to propose a solution for the U.S. retail channels. I'll send you the material. And, let me ask the folks in Germany to update you on this.\" As Haris presented the proposed solution the next day, the client admitted, \"You seem to have clearly understood our problem. I like your approach to integrate our applications and create a unified customer interface layer. Let's get a formal proposal on this.\" In the India head office of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, the CEO, was gratified to notice how knowledge flows had improved across the organization as a result of their KM initiative. The initiative had slowly emerged as the organizational backbone, connecting Infosys's 30 offices around the globe into an intellectual monolith. Based in Bangalore, the IT hub of India, Infosys was founded in 1981 as an offshore software service provider by a group of seven software professionals led by N.R. Narayana Murthy (\"Murthy\"). The journey over the past 23 years was a mixed bag. Early years were tough but the founders stuck together, at least for some time. \"We had strong hopes of creating a bright future for ourselves, for Indian society, and perhaps even for the world,\" recalled Murthy, \"Confidence, commitment, passion, hope, energy, and the capacity to work hard were available in plenty. However, capital was in short supply. We struggled to put together a princely sum of $250 as our initial seed capital.\" Revenues in the first decade were an unimpressive $3.89 million. In 1989, when one co-founder left, others became cynical of the future. It was Murthy's unflinching belief in success that finally kept them going. Strong Leadership A firm believer in being a role model for the rest of the employees, Murthy had a strong influence on virtually every area of Infosys's operations. His daily life was a blend of austerity and hard work. He reached office by the company bus and typically put in a 12-hour workday. For the past 20 years, he had never denied audience to anyone at Infosys at any time of the workday. People respected him for his tranquility, humility, and simplicity. His non-conventional management style was matched by his singular ideas of doing business. A firm believer in an intellectual, philosophical, ethical, and spiritual management, he once mentioned, \"It is better to lose $100 million than a good night's sleep. The softest pillow is a clear conscience.\" He implemented his management philosophy by infusing Infosys with five core corporate values. Symbolized as C-LIFE, they include Customer Delight (surpassing customer expectations), Leadership by Example (commitment to set standards and be an exemplar for the industry), Integrity and Transparency (commitment to be ethical, sincere, and open in dealings), Fairness Infosys Technologies, Limited 291 Copyright 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. (commitment to earn trust and respect), and Pursuit of Excellence (commitment to constantly improve oneself). These values were echoed in company's vision statement: \"We will be a globally respected corporation that provides best-of-breed business solutions leveraging technology delivered by best-in-class people.\" Murthy's value-driven entrepreneurial paradigm, impeccable corporate governance record, and Infosys's outstanding financial performance won him the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2003. He and the current CEO and managing director, Nandan Nilekani, were also declared by Fortune as Asia's Businessmen of the Year 2002-2003. Robust Growth Things changed dramatically for Infosys in the early 1990s. The economic reforms declared by the Indian government brought a new lease of life to the Indian software industry. Infosys was among the first to ride the wave of resulting opportunities. Strong performance buttressed with planned growth brought impressive results. By 1999, the company had floated a successful public issue in India and the United States, thus becoming the first Indian firm to be listed on NASDAQ. Exhibit 1 summarizes the performance of company's stock over the past few years. The company also topped $100 million in annual revenues, 90% of which came from the IT and business consulting services to Fortune 1000 firms. Exhibit 2 charts company's revenue growth over the years. By 2003, Infosys employed over 21,000 people scattered over 30 offices and development centers (DC) in 17 countries. With a market capitalization of $10 billion, and 2002-2003 profits of $245 million, Infosys emerged as the second largest IT company in India. The company had grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 70%. Exhibit 3 traces Infosys's corporate journey over the past 23 years. During these two decades, Infosys had a number of firsts to its credit. It was the first Indian company to offer stock options to its employees. It became the first Indian company to include the assessment of intangible assets in its financial results, which it declared in accordance with the accounting principles of seven countries. Exhibits 4a, 4b, and 4c show Infosys's selected financial results per the U.S. GAAP and the Intangible Assets Score Sheet, respectively. It was also the first Indian company to win Asia's Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) award in 2002 and 2003 and the Global MAKE award in 2003. From Software Services to IT Consulting Infosys gradually evolved from an offshore software service provider to an IT and business consulting firm. Murthy remembered, \"We wanted to expand our portfolio of services and were developing the skills to do more of consulting. We built a team of around 300 business consultants and also started a business process outsourcing arm.\" The expansion was carefully planned and timely executed across five core domains: software development, software maintenance, software reengineering, Y2K technologies, and ERP and e-commerce systems. Exhibit 5 highlights the past two years' revenue contribution in terms of the service offering. Software Development: Infosys started with providing piecemeal solutions to small IT-related problems of their clients. Over the years, as its processes matured and its project management skills improved, it started offering comprehensive software solutions for all the IT needs of its customers. The fixed-price tag, fixed-time frame, and 292 Mehta and Mehta Copyright 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. stringent quality guarantees attached to the large project responsibilities improved clients' satisfaction as well as Infosys's profit margins. In addition, its ability to manage and successfully execute large projects positioned it as a long-term service provider to its clients. The client list swelled to 350, with more than 85% repeat business. Software Maintenance: Infosys's early offerings in this field included maintaining legacy systems. Later it developed expertise in updating the systems to keep pace with the changes in the marketplace. Especially for its US-based clients, the 11-hour time difference between India and the United States helped it update the systems while they were idle at night. Y2K Technologies: One of the earliest areas of growth for the Indian IT industry, Y2K technologies helped Infosys as much as it did any other software company. But Infosys was prudent enough to realize the short-term nature of this domain and to consciously reduce its revenue dependence on Y2K-related businesses. Much before the deadline of the year 2000, Infosys gradually detached resources from Y2K-related projects and allocated them to long-term projects. Software Reengineering: Infosys helped its customers graduate to new technologies without abandoning the existing ones. The company, for example, developed software solutions to help clients shift from a mainframe-based system to client/serverbased system or from a simple database to a relational database. ERP and E-commerce: Infosys's management was visionary enough to have anticipated an increase in global business opportunities on these two fronts. Before stepping into ERP domain, Infosys implemented SAP for its own operations gaining valuable expertise in the process. Beginning with ERP consulting, the company started offering customized ERP solutions to suit clients' needs. A simultaneous initiative gained ground in the field of Internet-related services, especially e-commerce, and Web services. Infosys developed a comprehensive range of services targeted at start-ups as well mature e-commerce operations, and e-commerce slowly emerged as one of the highest revenue generators for the company. Scalability Strategy Back in 1990s when the founders formulated their corporate strategy, they realized that to succeed on a global level would require them to create a positive image among global companies. As Murthy mentioned, \"When in the early '90s we went to the US to sell our services, most CIOs didn't believe that an Indian company could build the large applications they needed. The CIOs were very nice to us, of course. They offered us tea, listened to what we had to say and then said, 'Look, don't call us, we'll call you.' We realized a huge gap in our perceptions. We wanted a situation where if you ask CEOs in the US, Europe, or Japan, 'Which is the company you want to outsource software to?' We wanted them to say, 'Infosys.'\" To realize this dream, Infosys started crafting a corporate strategy with a focus on building a high-growth, high-margin, and low-risk company. The management had a mix of completely opposite objectives at hand. They had to maximize profits while reducing risk. They had to choose sustainable sources of revenue and yet remain responsive to new market trends. They had to maintain excellent quality while cutting costs and project delivery times. These opposing sets of objectives required the resource clout of a Infosys Technologies, Limited 293 Copyright 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. corporation but the nimbleness of a start-upyet another paradox. As a result, Infosys developed a complex strategy characterized by: Scalability Murthy wanted to build a scalable corporation that could simultaneously grow in terms of revenues, profitability, people, cultural value systems, and value chains. Nandan, the then COO, summarized scalability as \"the ability to constantly evolve while avoiding a major disconnect in our operations. We constantly dissect the global IT domain not just our competition, but also our customers, their businesses, their processes, and then try to foresee problems they would face in the future. Then we test our analyses and learn from our mistakes.\" Infosys's initial trials with scalability were frustrating, but with time, the management realized benefits of developing a scalable organization. As K. Dinesh, one of the directors, said, \"IT firms operate in an environment that, at best, can be described as the sum total of all the business environments in which our clients operate. We have to master numerous technologies, which change very frequently, customer needs are in constant flux, and projects have to be executed across multiple cultural systems. We couldn't have survived as a stable organization!\" Developing scalability required meticulous long-term planning. The management would take a cold hard look at the future and try to project revenues by different growth areas. These projections were used to assess the future requirements of capacity, people, training, and investment in technology. As Nandan explained, \"You have to do forward planning, take a long view of the business, which in turn translates into the necessary investments in people, technology, and physical infrastructure.\" Scalability ensured that despite the operational rigidity that usually accompanies a firms' organic growth, Infosys remained a flexible organization that adapted with time. Murthy summarized: \"The crux of scalability is to ensure that we grow simultaneously on all fronts while maintaining the quality, agility, and effectiveness of a small company.\" PSPD Model Another one of Murthy's brainchild, the Predictability Sustainability Profitability and Derisking (PSPD) model was a robust revenue forecasting system. Exhibit 6 illustrates the model. Predictability and profitability referred to the future revenue situation of the company. For example, Murthy mentioned regarding predictability: \"I just cannot imagine how any company can fail to estimate its revenues for the next year and still call itself a healthy business. Which Fortune 500 client would like to depend on a vendor whose CEO is not certain about the company's future?\" Sustainability had a broader meaning and was defined in terms of five parameters that ensured longevity of the corporation. They include: a climate of openness, learning attitude among the employees, a value system ensuring fairness, increased speed of execution, enhanced imagination to pioneer great ideas, and excellence in ensuring a seamless execution of these parameters. Submodels were developed to achieve the three strategic goals of predictability, sustainability, and profitability. Predictability and sustainability were ensured by the Customer Relationship Model (CRM), and profitability was ensured by the Global Delivery Model (GDM), which required shifting costly project components from the client location to relatively cheaper locations around the world. 294 Mehta and Mehta Copyright 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. The Derisking component was added to the model after an unfortunate incident. In 1992, Infosys had General Electric (GE) as their largest customer accounting for about 40% of its revenues. Realizing their clout, GE exerted pressure on Infosys to bring down their rates. After one year of intense bargaining, Infosys severed its contract with GE. Since then, Infosys decided not to be depend on any client for more than 10% of their business. Derisking aimed at building risk management abilities, both short term as well as long term. Murthy explained, \"Our derisking model says that we must have a balanced portfolio of markets, technologies, and practices.\" To manage long-term risk, Infosys maintained a strategic balance in its portfolio of clients, accepting only ones that met strict guidelines for revenues potential. It reduced the revenue dependence on its largest client from 15.6% to 6.7% and those of its five largest clients from 43.1% to 29.2%. A similar balance was maintained in its industry focus. Besides assuring predictable revenues, this balance ensured a diverse skill set among the company's professionals. Exhibit 7 summarizes its revenue segmentation by client and industry. To manage risk in the short run, Infosys formed a risk-mitigation group that monitored 120 parameters, and made risk-related recommendations on a fortnightly basis. These parameters included macro as well as micro aspects of various technologies, customers, and markets Infosys was related with. An internal group of executives met every fortnight to discuss and analyze the recommendations of the group. Flexible Organization Structure In 1998 Infosys realized that its Strategic Business Unit (SBU)-based structure was incompatible with its scalability strategy. Nandan explained, \"Scalability demanded that Infosys be lithe, agile, and flexible in responding to the new market trends because emerging market trends could be in any new dimension.\" Murthy had a similar opinion: \"We understood the demands of operating in a market where technology changes rapidly and business models quickly become obsolete. Success depended on our ability to recognize and assimilate these changes quickly. SBUs didn't facilitate that.\" As a result, Infosys reorganized its nine SBUs into a highly flexible Practice Unit (PU)-based structure. The PUs were geographically organized, and each had a dedicated sales and software delivery infrastructure (Nanda & DeLong, 2001). Support functions such as finance, quality, and research were centrally located in India. Global Delivery Model (GDM) The underlying framework for the new structure was the Global Delivery Model. Infosys developed the model on the principle of distributed project management, that is, executing the project at multiple locations with flawless integration. \"We wanted to do the work where it could be done best, where it made the most economic sense, and with the least amount of acceptable risk,\" explained Murthy. The GDM required the PUs to be distributed globally, each made responsible for different markets Infosys was operating in. Each PU had a sales arm, a Global Development Center (GDC) and a Delivery Unit (DU) attached to it. In addition, Proximity Development Centers (PDCs) were opened in Boston and Fremont to take care of the implementation issues in the U.S. market that required close proximity to clients. This reorganization enabled Infosys to work across multiple time zones on a 24-hour work cycle. Infosys Technologies, Limited 295 Copyright 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. GDM envisioned Infosys as a virtual corporation. Marketing teams at the PDCs would pitch in for the projects. Once a project was won, a team of experts would travel to the client's site to assess project requirements. On return, they would quickly assemble a virtual team from multiple GDCs that would execute the project, all this while a small team would stay on-site to update the virtual team on matters related to the project. On completion of the project, the virtual team would be disbanded and redeployed on another project, while a team from the PDC would travel to the client's site to take care of the installation, testing, and training issues. Exhibit 9 illustrates the distribution of project management activities between the client site and the GDCs. Capabilities developed to facilitate the GDM included: a highly flexible infrastructure to avoid resource redundancy; reliable information connectivity to enhance seamless communication between various GDCs and client sites; and standardized processes. To ensure process quality, Infosys attained Level 5 of Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (SEI CMM). GDM accrued many advantages to Infosys: Scalability was a natural outcome. Software engineers at all locations had access to organizational resources, a fact that helped them respond swiftly to clients' changing requirements. Cost of ownership was drastically reduced for the client as well as for Infosys. Derisking of the project was assured, as critical services were available 24/7. GDM enabled a highly networked environment where one project location could act as a complete backup for another to ensure recoverability. Time to market was radically reduced. GDM offered extended workdays across multiple time zones all over the world. Also, projects were divided into modules that could be completed independently and simultaneously at multiple GDCs. SETTING THE STAGE The Need to Improve the Knowledge Flows In 1992, a number of multinationals, such as IBM Global Services, Accenture, and EDS, entered India to demand their share of the software outsourcing market. Infosys was faced with a challenge to retain its personnel and the market share. Murthy and other cofounders realized that success would rely on two pillars: developing intellectual resources and constantly innovating the core processes. Time proved them right on both accounts. Developing Intellectual Resources A crisp human resource strategy was designed, which initiated the following changes: Formalizing recruiting, training, and retaining processes: Murthy mentioned, \"The biggest challenge was to recruit, enable, and retain the brightest talent.\" Stringent recruiting standards such as 'academic excellence' and 'learnability' 296 Mehta and Mehta Copyright 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. were outlined. Although these standards helped Infosys hire star academic performers, they shrunk the available pool of qualified applicants. For example, only 2% of 250,000 applicants in 2003 were recruited. Rather than relaxing the standards, Infosys attached its recruiting process to the \"predictability\" component of its PSPD model. The revenue predictions about future were based on assessing the likely availability of qualified workforce. Heavy investments were made in training. An Education and Research (E&R) department and a Management Development Center (MDC) were created. They developed and imparted about 300,000 man-hours of technical and managerial training annually. This included a mandatory 10-day formal training every year for all employees, and a four-month training program in analytical thinking, problem solving, technical fundamentals, and customer negotiating for the new recruits. Retaining an attractive workforce was the most difficult part. As Murthy mentioned, \"Talented employees trained to deliver excellence attracted corporate headhunters. We didn't want to be a supplier of trained workforce to our competitors. But it wasn't easy to convince our knowledge workers (employees) to stay with us. We planned a series of initiatives like employee empowerment, building the right culture, and wealth sharing.\" Employee empowerment: Murthy saw empowerment as a way to improve employees' perspective. For a highly talented IT workforce, this was easier said than done. As he explained, \"Most engineers had a strong identity, clear life goals, and flexible yet defined ways of doing things. Talking to them about individual empowerment was a redundant exercise.\" So Infosys designed a unique approach to empowerment to develop a strong corporate culture by channeling individual aspirations toward a common objective. \"Constant Innovation\" was chosen as an objective worthy for knowledge workers. Murthy felt that \"the future winners will be firms that escape from the gravitational pull of the past on the fuel of innovation.\" Building leaders: The objective of \"constant innovation\" required building a band of leaders who could raise the aspirations of their associates. Murthy mentioned, \"Our focus at Infosys was to breed a whole generation of leaders, mentor them, throw them the challenges, and train them in the practice of management.\" A Leadership Institute was set up in India that started training selected managers from all the global locations. The institute taught courses on business ethics, cultural integration, mentoring people, and relationship building with global customers. An open culture: The next step was to create a culture that heightened the desire for innovation, a culture that gave respect to ideas regardless of where they emerged. Murthy opined, \"It was vital for our people to be able to deliver, execute, and meet challenges of the future. This required an open culture that recognized merit and encouraged ideas from all. A culture that did not get subdued by hierarchy and was free of politics. A culture of excellence, speed, and execution.\" A critical issue while building such a culture was to integrate employees of over 38 nationalities. The challenge was to develop an environment where all these cultures were at ease with each other. The E&R department, the Management Development Center, and the Leadership Institute were asked to handle this issue through their training sessions. Project managers and team leaders were encour Infosys Technologies, Limited 297 Copyright 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. aged to assemble diverse teams to execute projects. On large global projects, employees from different cultures in different offices around the world were asked to propose, win, and execute those projects on collaborative basis. Wealth creation and wealth sharing: Unlike its competitors, Infosys started offering stock options to its employees. It renounced the practice of signing employment bonds with its professionals going abroad, and started offering higher education opportunities to its employees in foreign universities. Murthy summarized these policies: \"We realized that we had to make a value proposition to our people, as we did for our customers.\" It took Infosys over four years to fully implement these components of the new human resource strategy. By 1996, Infosys had a perceptible edge over its competitors employee turnover was at an industry low of 10% and people reported a feeling of pride in working with Infosys. Continuous Innovation Murthy was of the opinion that a scalable company could not be built with static processes. \"Ensuring innovative processes enables an evolutionary architecture,\" he said. In 1992, Infosys launched the Excellence Initiative to brace the software development and delivery processes. The excellence statement declared: \"A commitment to strive relentlessly, to constantly improve ourselves, our services and products so as to become the best.\" The initiative had a strong focus on quality and innovation. Over the years, supply chain was tightened using Baldrige's seven criteria, international standards such as Six-Sigma and ISO 9001 were achieved. By 1997, CMM Level 4 was attained, and preparations began to attain CMM Level 5. By 1999, Murthy had started planning a change in leadership, and wanted the then chief operating officer (COO), Nandan Nilekani, to take over as the CEO. As a part of his mentoring plan for Nandan, he assigned him the responsibility to develop the infrastructure for CMM Level 5, which included building a robust system to continuously improve the software development and delivery processes. Nandan, a product of the Indian Institutes of Technology, approached this issue with a purely technical perspective. With an inkling that system requirements for CMM Level 5 will include steady knowledge inputs, he thought of implementing a small knowledge-based system to facilitate knowledge flows to the operations improvement group the team governing process innovation within Infosys. He held discussions in this regard with employees at various levels, and was surprised at the results knowledge flow was more than just a requirement for CMM Level 5; it was also the bane of a different problem of mammoth proportions. Virtually everyone, from software developers to sales managers, complained about the acute lack of knowledge inputs even in their daytoday operations. Highly trained professionals asked Nandan, \"Given the knowledgerelated constraints, how do you expect us to attain the corporate objective of continuous innovation?\" The Need Intensifies Nandan continued to probe this issue further. He remembered, \"I got a feeling of a huge knowledge void, as if Infosys was fast becoming opaque to any kind of knowledge 298 Mehta and Mehta Copyright 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. flow from within as well as outside. Most of the time the required knowledge existed somewhere, but no one knew where. I noticed that while I was searching for solutions to enhance complex knowledge flows for CMM Level 5, the mechanisms for even the simplest of knowledge flows were nonexistent.\" Later, he discovered that the problem was also aggravated by the demands of two of the Infosys lifelines the Global Delivery Model and scalability strategy. Demands of Global Delivery Model (GDM) GDM enabled executing software projects in a geographically distributed environment, yet with high degree of predictability and dependability. Typical software development and delivery units were located at multiple locations across the globe. GDM required a third of Infosys's 19,000 employees to be based at the corporate campus in Bangalore, another 8,000 in four other DCs in India, and the rest across three smaller DCs in India and eight global development centers. Additionally, 10% to 15% of employees were always at client locations. Despite a robust communication infrastructure connecting these locations, knowledge flows among them were conspicuously absent. Each location operated like a knowledge oasis. For example, people would come up with problems in Boston similar to the ones already faced and resolved by people at Bangalore. Ironically, Boston never heard of that and would waste time on solving the problem again. \"There was clear-cut redundancy problem, and there were indications that GDM needed to be buttressed with a knowledge-based system,\" Nandan explained. Demands of Scalability Scalability demanded building a flexible and learning organization that constantly utilized its knowledge assets to replenish its repertoire of resources and capabilities. It was becoming increasingly clear to Nandan that true scalability would elude them unless organizational knowledge assets were made accessible to every employee. He admitted, \"We realized that scalability demanded learnability the ability to extract knowledge from specific concepts and situations and apply it to other situations. And learnability required real-time access to firm's knowledge resources.\" Scalability also demanded efficient utilization of capacity. Management had to ensure that they did not overrun the capacity, and yet remained responsive to new market needs. Infosys had to be ready for project-related opportunities in totally new markets and technology domains. This required a highly responsive system that would quickly assimilate knowledge regarding these opportunities and then disseminate it among appropriate groups to enable project execution with exceptional speed and high quality. In addition to individual demands of GDM and scalability, Nandan also identified problem issues in certain areas of overlap between the two. For example, GDM enabled Infosys to grow exceptionally fast. But the absence of truly scalable knowledge resources and the infrastructure to share them constrained the growth potential. Nandan summarized: \"All said, we needed a system to build domain-specific knowledge resources and the technological infrastructure to share those resources.\" MIS414 - Assignment 1 Knowledge management Written Report Topics: write an analytical report describing the company Knowledge management incentives, practices and covering all the points as directed. 1. Final Written Report due in Week 6 of semester 372 and should include: ( 10 Marks ) a. Report's should include the following : Report's Part Assignment Cover page Tables of content. Introduction, it should include Company's background (ex: type of industry, its products and services, capital, costs, annual profit etc...). The reasons behind implementation of Knowledge Management strategies and practices. Expected benefits from implementation of Knowledge Management strategies and practices. Implementation processes. The critical success factors for implementation of Knowledge Management strategies and practices. Conclusions Writing the references Following the format guidlines Total Mark Notes: Attaching the original copies of references. Plagiarism is not allowed. One Mark will be deducted for each Plagiarized paragraph. Page 1 of 2 MIS414 - Assignment 1 Page 2 of 2