A Lot of Knowledge Is a Wonderful Thing

Asking colleagues for advice sounds like a pretty straightforward idea. But at companies with operations spread across the country or around the globe, it can be difficult to carry out.

Increasingly, though, employers are recognizing that they can’t afford to forgo the benefits of tapping all their workers when it comes to solving problems and coming up with ideas.

Companies ranging from consulting firms to manufacturers are deploying special computer networks known as knowledge transfer systems to help workers help one another. Some networks are set up like computer bulletin boards, some are based on work-sharing software such as Lotus Notes, and some are intranets. All allow workers to visit online centers to post questions and share their work experiences and advice. These systems are more advanced than electronic messaging systems because they can store documents and provide a place to access information when needed.

When employees in separate Hewlett-Packard Co. marketing divisions in California, Canada and England were independently trying to determine the market sizes for new consumer products, they turned to a companywide computer network to solicit help from their colleagues. Once they found one another, they were able to share what they knew and work more efficiently, the company said.

“Since they found out about each other, they were able to pool their resources and do things faster,” said Sabrina Lin, an HP marketing program manager who set up the network.

Said HP spokeswoman Mary Lou Simmermacher: “The capability of technology today actually takes us back culturally to the way HP started in the early 1940s.”

Consulting and other professional service firms--whose main asset is knowledge--were among the first to develop knowledge transfer systems. Now companies in other industries are building the systems, said Ellen M. Knapp, chief knowledge officer at Coopers & Lybrand, the New York-based accounting and consulting firm that has set up more than two dozen computer networks to allow its 70,000 employees in 143 countries to share information and advice.

Dick Baumbusch helped set up a bulletin-board-style knowledge transfer system recently when he was an executive director at US West, the regional Bell operating company based in Englewood, Colo. He said users were overwhelmed with offers of help, some of which came from surprisingly high-level executives.

Although the US West system was shut down after about two months because of a corporate reorganization, Baumbusch, now president of the Knowledge Advantage Group in Greenwood Village, Colo., said the appeal of the knowledge transfer system endures.

“I believe this is crucial to a company’s success in the next 10 years,” he said. “They’ve got to learn how to tap that reservoir of knowledge, experience and success in their work force. The companies that do this are going to run circles around their competitors.”

Karen Kaplan covers technology and careers. She can be reached via e-mail at karen.kaplan@latimes.com