The Importance Of Platforms For A Knowledge Management Strategy

Brian Stice, Director, Training & Knowledge Management, North America, Enel Green Power

AtEnel Green Power North America, we have an innovative Knowledge Management strategy that revolves around four pillars: People, Process, Platforms, and Culture. By focusing on these components, we empower our employees to actively drive the success of meeting business objectives, share processes and procedures, find solutions to business problems, and actualize our vision for digital transformation.

A key driver in our strategy is how we leverage our technology stack, the Platforms pillar, to store, exchange, improve, and analyze knowledge captured from our various teams. Across business lines, we standardized our digital platforms to streamline the flow of information and defined a purpose or business function for each. It is important to do more with less and evolve with technology rather than keep adding tools or platforms on top of the others already in use without a logical reason. We use a combination of tools developed/ augmented in-house and well-known third-party tools to support thousands of users globally.

When we think about KMS (Knowledge Management System) platforms, Enel Green Power North America puts them into three buckets: tools for quick and constructive knowledge exchange (Teams, Slack, Yammer), tools for task and knowledge management (QuickBase, Smartsheet, Confluence), and long-term storage (SharePoint, OpenText). Together, these components create a cohesive framework around our Platform pillar and drive success.

You may be asking why we designed this strategy. There are significant cost reductions in enabling users to contribute expertise using these various buckets and empower employees to cultivate a positive knowledge-sharing culture. Our team of renewable energy professionals and subject-matter experts (SMEs) count on us to innovate to maximize efficiencies to meet ambitious goals. Due to the ease of use of the tools we selected and the ability to collaborate, our Tech Stack improves teamwork, increases the quality of information shared, and builds a safety net if SMEs leave the company.

Now, the Platform pillar becomes not just about the tools themselves. If your team does not find value in their contributions, then adoption will be low and the quality and completeness of your KMS will suffer. This is why, as part of our KM (Knowledge Management) strategy, we employ tools to support enrichment and apply a continuous improvement methodology. Our KM team allows users to comment on content, steer focal areas for improvement, and add depth to the information provided, for example, via audits and SME reviews. We actively engage with our teams to contribute their expertise to improve the KMS, help run our power plants reliably and efficiently, and generate power safely. With an industry as transient as renewable power generation, it is not only important to get the intrinsic knowledge out of someone’s brain and into our KMS but to constantly improve the quality of shared information over time in a way that is open to all applicable contributors and users.

I mentioned continuous improvement earlier. It is critical that we understand and analyze the impact of knowledge sharing throughout the organization. By creating KPIs and metrics tied to our KM platforms, our reporting integrates into our KM process and keeps us focused on creating more shared value. We discuss these metrics in business reviews, strategic meetings, and our day-to-day work with colleagues so that stakeholders have visibility into the impact and frequency of the content they contribute.

" Digital Platforms And Transformation Are Key Components Of Our Success In Our Kms"

As one of the largest energy companies in the world, knowledge sharing, both locally and globally, is extremely complex. To store, organize, adapt, and share information properly, leveraging data integration techniques such as APIs, synchronization, and platform mapping is critical to our KMS strategy. We work closely with our IT teams to ensure there is a two-way transfer of knowledge gathered. We use local tools that our global team does not, and vice versa. We utilize innovative techniques and take an integrated approach around a distributed information model, where documents, pages, and data can be accessed and enriched around the world. It does not matter if tools are utilized locally and not globally. We have mechanisms in place to translate the infrastructure and provide a way for global colleagues to collaborate.

In closing, Enel North America focuses on leveraging our SMEs and teams, providing a digital infrastructure and a clear knowledge management strategy to continuously improve the way we do business. Digital platforms and transformation are key components of our success in our KMS and will continue to be when we leverage tools, methodologies, and, more importantly, a positive knowledge-sharing culture. When we build these critical pieces into our KMS, we will succeed in our mission and achieve our goals.