Knowledge Management in BASF

1. Knowledge Management in BASF
By:
L001 Jalaj Agrawal
L003 Pratik Bansal
L008 Neerja Gandhi
L028 Bulbul Thakker
L032 Mulya Nisar
J087 Parkhi Tyagi

2. Need for KM in Chemical Industries
Integrating global economy
Investment focus of
multinational companies in
developing countries
Challenges and opportunities for
chemical professionals
Need for knowledge
management expertise in
chemical companies

3. About the company
-Baden Aniline and Soda Factory
-German chemical company and the largest producer in the world
-Chemicals, plastics, performance chemicals, catalysts, coatings,
crop technology, crude oil and natural gas exploration and
production
- Employee strength of over 110000
BASF

4. KM in BASF

5. -Collaborating to understand trends and need of the market
-To create new technologies and solutions
-To build business in different product offerings of the company

6. GOAL OF CONNECT.BASF

7. Process of the concept to implementation

9. 10 step roadmap for implementing KM
Phase I. Infrastructure Evaluation
1. Analyze the existing infrastructure
2. Align KM with Business Strategy
Phase II. KM System Analysis, Design, and Development
3. Design the KM infrastructure
4. Audit existing knowledge assets and systems
5. Design KM team
6. Create KM Blueprint
7. Develop the KM System
Phase III. Deployment
8. Deploy using Result-Driven Incremental Methodology
9. Manage change, culture, and reward structure
Phase IV. Evaluation
10. Evaluate performance, measure ROI and incrementally refine the KMS

10. Employees can ...
Network
 Profiles, StatusUpdates
 Communities,Network
 Search,Tags
 Blogs, Forums,Bookmarks
 Files,[Activities]
 Wikis
Collaborate
Share Knowledge
10
connect.BASF offers ...
(based on IBM Connections software)
Fosters Connectedness in the
Workplace

11. Involving all stakeholders
• Top-down or bottom-up?
– A combination of the two approaches was the way to go at BASF.
• Identify expert communities
– IT platform
– Internal think tank by employees
– Support from the Directors
• Concept Development by Project Team
• Internal marketing and sales initiative taking the lead.
• Communication and innovation management joined later by various IT,
HR, research and innovation communication.
• The owners of existing isolated applications were invited to contribute
– Advantages: Experience
– Opportunity to input their requirements

12. The right mix of participants
• Did not “skip the pilot” for enterprise 2.0
• Pilot to demonstrate how virtual networking,
knowledge sharing and collaboration work.
• Enabled to convince senior management and
stakeholders.
• Impossible to stimulate all of the interactions by
just 1000 members.
• Fans of external social networks amongst the pilot
users.
• Networking and cross-unit knowledge-sharing and
helped establish an open and constructive tone
• Picked out expert communities in the pilot.
• Helped the project team members to shape the
system
• The platform soon filled with interesting content,
in turn increasing the appeal for further users.

13. Developing an effective launch
campaign
• “If we build it, they will come.”
• Emphasized the business character, the practical benefits for employees and the unique
proposition of being the one and only corporate communication network.
• Communicating the launch
• Aims of connect.BASF were translated into specific value propositions and user benefits.
• “Build up a network” was translated into “Now it’s going to be easier to find experts on any
subject.
• ” Key visuals were chosen to illustrate that the network is about people, not technology.
• Networks of BASF employees of various nationalities, professions, levels and generations
were assembled and photographed for these visuals.
• Our sponsor on the Board of Executive Directors also took part in the photo shoot.
• Personal letter to the senior management asking them to support connect.BASF.
• Mysterious teaser whose secret was then revealed a week later.
• Central information pages on the corporate intranet, teaser boxes on regional intranet start
pages and announcements in internal online and print newsletters (global and regional).
• Storytelling , Flash animations were used.
• The launch communication efforts increased the number of employees registered
with connect.BASF from 1,000 to 8,000 in just six weeks.

14. 5000
10000
15000
20000
30000
25000
Results:
Number of Registered Users
[Dec.19, 2011]
 One Network: 40% Integrated;
30% Plan Integration
 Viral growth: 36% join connect.BASF
from recommendation (Nov.2010 survey)
0
M J J A S O N D J F M A M J
2011
J A S O N D
2010
Dr. CheeChin Liew & Cordelia Krooss (BASF SE) , Lotusphere 2012, 17.Jan 2012, Orlando,
Florida.
14
 More than 28,500 users
registered in 18 months

15. 2500
2000
1500
1000
500
Results:
Number of Communities [Dec.19,
2011]
All Communities
Open
Moderated
Restricted
 More than 2300
communities
0
M J J A S O N D J F M A M J
2011
J A S O N D
2010
Dr. CheeChin Liew & Cordelia Krooss (BASF SE) , Lotusphere 2012, 17.Jan 2012, Orlando,
Florida.
15
 50% of users are
Members

16. Communities in connect.BASF
By users
for organization
Experts &
Professions
(Expertise)
 Focus:
Knowledge sharing
 Goals:
Problem solving,
gain recognition
By users
for users
Personal
Networks
(Interest)
 Focus:
Networking
 Goals:
Strengthen ties,
build trust
By organization
for organization
Projects &
Working Teams
(Practice)
 Focus:
Collaboration
 Goals:
Business objectives,
process integration
By organization
for users
Initiatives &
Services
(Engagement)
 Focus:
Internal
communication
 Goals:
Feedback,
transparency
Restricted
(1,200)
Moderated
(400)Open
(700)

17. Model 1

18. EXPLANATION
• Socialisation
– (tacit to tacit) is the process of learning through sharing experiences that creates
tacit knowledge as shared mental models and professional skills e.g. expert
consensus achieved during meetings
• Externalization
– (tacit to explicit) is the process of conversion of tacit into explicit knowledge, for
example, the translation of trial result into a recommendation for practice
• Internalization
– (explicit to tacit) is the process of an individual learning by repeatedly executing an
activity applying some type of explicit knowledge, e.g., absorbing the relationship
between actions and results as new personal tacit knowledge
• Combination
– (explicit to explicit) is the process of enriching the available explicit knowledge to
produce new bodies of knowledge, for example, combining knowledge gained and
organizational knowledge into a decision support system

20. Bukowitz and Williams
• Get Stage : Seeking out information required in order to make decisions,
solve problems, or innovate.
• Use Stage : Deals with how to combine information in new and interesting
ways in order to foster organizational innovation. The spotlight is primarily
on individuals and then on groups.
• The Learn Stage : Points to the formal process of learning from
experiences as a means of creating competitive gain.
• The Contribute Stage : Deals with encouraging employees to post what
they have learnt to the communal knowledge base (like a repository).
•Assess: Process of identifying which part of the knowledge is valuable and which
is not.
•Build and Sustain: the main idea is to make sure the organizations future is
secure and competitive by employing resources to create and reinforce the
knowledge repository already present in the organization.

21. Salient Features

22. Team Building
• BASF strategic principle: “We form the best team”.
– Excellent individual players replaced by networking across organizational units
coupled with intensive information sharing and efficient collaboration.
• Flexible, fast and innovative outperformed rivals in tough markets.
• Social media offers
– new opportunities of external communication
– advance virtual networking
– collaboration in the organization
• Internal blogs, forums, wikis and expert profiles in 2006.
– No coherent underlying concept
– Isolated applications
– Limited capacity to add value.
• Missing corporate network
– Bringing together BASF
employees as one community.

23. On the way to Organization 2.0
• Accumulated a wealth of experience by the use of connect.BASF.
• Fostered professionalization towards work.
• Technical optimization of the platform.
• Polls can now be used to ask employees for their opinion.
• Ideation blogs are used to present new ideas to the internal audience
• Function called “activities” allows employees to organize a project
completely within connect.BASF.
• Enterprise 2.0 maturity models propose more extensive integration in
business processes.
• Potential for efficient information-sharing and collaboration, the voluntary
network will most likely become a tool critical to business.
• Partial opening, for example to external development partners, has been
evaluated. This would enable open innovation processes.
• Open information-sharing and global, transparent collaboration as a
regular habit
• Social media can contribute to the further development of corporate
culture toward a self-organized network.

24. • Technical Setup Challenge
• Encouraging employees to actively use the platform to share their knowledge in an
open network or collaborating with colleagues in a community – rather than via
email.
• Skepticism towards social media being a purely leisure time activity by older
employees.
• To overcome organizational, language and cultural barriers, before the
development of a global community within the network.
• Employees with a limited digital skill-set or those who are unsure about the type
of content they should publish.
• Managers fear losing ownership of internal opinion markets.
• Corporate communication staff wonders whether they will still be able to meet
their traditional role as gatekeepers.
• The success of connect.BASF depended on providing guidance and support both to
staff and managers and getting them to appreciate the benefits of the new online
business platform.
Challenges Faced by BASF

25. Benefits of connect.basf
 Helps employees to find experts & potential
stakeholders
 Increases the value ofknowledge
 through sharing
 Boosts efficiency through open communication
across theorganization
 Facilitates on-line collaboration of teams and
communities
 Reduces e-mails by transferring
conversation to a commonplatform
 Provides a familiar working environment
for GenerationWeb

26. Success Story Example 1:
Efficient Project Work in a Virtual Team
Project coordination with members from
four continents needed, in a short time
 Community as collaboration hub
where all information came together
 Open exchange accelerated progress
and no e-mail
 The project was self-documenting,
new members could easily orient
themselves
 The project was successfully
completed and now inspires other
users as Best Practice

27. Success Story Example 2:
A Practical Use Case for connect.BASF
connect.BASF
facebook
A comment in BASF facebook:
“Holi hay ghar me mat bhetto.“
 Social Media Manager asks in
connect.BASF: “What does it mean?”
 Answer within 13 minutes
 Received proposal: good opportunity
to promote BASF pigments
 Uploads video on pigments
 35 likes, 4 positive comments in
just a few hours on Facebook

28. Success Story Example 3:
Feeling Connected in an Hour of Need
BASF employees were deeply moved
by the devastations caused by the
earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan.
 Communication of BASF Asia Pacific
created “Origami Cranes for Hope”
 Employees from around the world
posted messages and well wishes
for their colleagues in Japan
 Community shows the fastest growth
ever seen in connect.BASF
 Employee donation campaign for
Japan is very successful

29. External Recognitions in 2011 for
connect.BASF
International German PR Award
for "Community Communications"
German Online Communications Award
for "Internal Communications" category
European Digital Communication Award
for "Internal Communications"
 Invited to external talks at several conferences
 Press coverage as case study or reference in several external magazines
 Three external awards:

30. Integration:
A Part of BASF Online Communications
connect.BASF - Online BusinessNetwork
Internal External
Monitoring
Social MediaChannels
Corporate Blogs &Widgets
Intranet Internet
GuidelinesGovernanceTrainingConsulting
News channels “BASFtoday”

31. Conclsion
Best Practices in Adoption
 Visible commitment from top management
 People-oriented and voluntary character (opt-in)
 Leadership by advocates and community builders
 Sharing and transfer best practice and success stories
 Integration of communication and workflows