Powered by...knowledge

Eureka Forbes has found a way to retain - and share - information

Knowledge mangement is a concept you associate with companies that do a lot of R&D, not with a consumer goods company," says S K Palekar, senior vice president, marketing & knowledge management, Eureka Forbes.

But there's every reason for Eureka Forbes to get into unconventional areas of sharing knowledge because the 5,500-strong sales team at the organisation has a high employee turnover, with 3,000 sales people being recruited every year.

"The idea was to ensure that the knowledge doesn't leave with the employees," he says.

No wonder the three-member knowledge management team based in Mumbai has spent the better part of four years innovating programmes to increase employee productivity and sales. It's focus?

To ensure that consumer insights gained by any single employee would be accessible to the rest of the team to enable freer dialogue within the company.

Says Varda Pendse, director, Cerebrus Consultants, "By having a knowledge management system in place, it becomes easier to bridge the gap when new employees come in, as the knowledge is not restricted to an individual but everyone has access to it."

The manpower and events cost the company close to Rs 1crore, but the benefits from the programme, says Palekar, though intangible, have been known to translate into lower attrition rates in cities like Pune and Hyderabad where the Euro Ambassador project was piloted.

The Euroshare portal, accessible to all employees across the country, enables employees to share their customer experiences, leading to discussions on the best practises in the business.

"There have been examples of sales staff using innovative measures to sell products; for instance, one of them carried a card with a picture of a dust mite on it which he would use to explain to the potential buyer why she needs a vacuum cleaner. More often than not, the picture worked," shares Palekar.

There have been examples of productivity increasing by up to 30 per cent in some cases. Eventually, these best practices across the organisation were standardised and complied in a book, Power of your Personality.

Last year, the company announced a Knowledge Olympics, creating events out of 26 challenges such as market barometer, customer profiles etc, where employees were divided into 16 "countries".

One of the contests included fixing machines from which spare parts had been removed and hence were not fit for sale and were eating into the bottomline.

This worked so well that one of the persons from the service staff is now the regional manager for Hyderabad. With over 2,800 entries, one of the fallouts was a massive exercise in employee bonding across the country.

This time around, Palekar and his team have set up a Mount Everest Challenge for the company. Participants are required to clear challenges at each level to proceed to the next one before, finally, reaching the "peak". And as further incentive, the winners will actually be taken to Mount Everest and flown around it.

The company too is hoping it won't be long before it too scales similar heights.