SEMINARUL 4

STUDIU DE CAZ - XEROX COMPANY

A. Prezentarea cazului

The document company Xerox is the global leader in its industry, offering the
widest array of document-related solutions, products and services for business
productivity. Xerox provides expertise in the production and management of
paper and electronic documents for the desktop to the network and from the
home office to the global enterprise.

Xerox’ s approach to KM is to promote and facilitate the sharing of best practice

across boundaries both geographical and business.

Eureka is a dynamic central database of problems and service tips to capture

new problems as they have emerged. Technicians are encouraged to add their
stories and experience to the database. To maintain the quality of information
and the structure of the database, technicians themselves not only build also
validate what goes into it. As a consequence of this filtering, the content reflects
the leading edge of the collective understanding of the broad community of
technicians engaged in shared practice, with a shared background and shared
belief in what is usefull and what is not. It represents a turnaround in Xerox
from top-down to bottom-up KM. Business benefits include improved customer
satisfaction, cycle time, productivity, efficiency and quality. To further facilitate
the sharing and exchange of knowledge, Xerox has provided radios to their sales
people so that they can change and exchange information about customers at any
time or place.
Knowkedge management practices are now being used by all business unit
within the organisation. The company-wide KM programme is driven by the
Document Service Group which has designed a project called ICARE
(Intellectual Capital Reuse) to help all business units to share knowledge more
effectively. A central document management system called Docushare is used as
a tool to facilitate knowledge capture and collaborative knowledge sharing.

Xerox also provides convenient places, called ‘distributed coffe pots’, where
employees can get toghether to chat and exchange ideas.

B. Întrebări
1. Indicaţi care dintre caracteristicile firmei bazate pe cunoştinţe se regăsesc
la compania Xerox, indicând informaţiile din text care susţin opinia
dumneavoastră.
2. În ce fază a dezvoltării s-a aflat firma Xerox, potrivit modelului creşterii
cunoştinţelor în firmă, utilizând trei argumente.