Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Case Solution

1. (b) For the attainment of the above mentioned highly important value propositions of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Knowledge Management plays a very important role. The first contribution of Knowledge Management is that it keeps organizational structure of the company intact and functioning. Various organizational functions and divisions of the company are separated by physical distances (for instance, offices of the company are located in Boston, Dallas and Virginia) and complexities of the hierarchical structure. Knowledge Management serves as the unification factor which keeps the organizational structure of the company intact. In fact, a vast majority of workers of the company work in an environment of virtual organization, which is only made possible through Knowledge Management (Hansen, Nohria and Tierney).

In addition, the entire Knowledge Management system of the company is built up on creating new knowledge through research. This creation of new knowledge is responsible for responsible for forming innovative solutions related to business processes. It has been described above that Cap Gemini Ernst & Young offers its customers a diverse range of consultancy services under one roof and provides solutions which fits the environment in which the business operates in.

The contributory factor to these value propositions is the Knowledge Management system of the company which is operated by the dedicated teams within the organization responsible for carrying our research and arranging this information in a form which is easy to be shared and retrieved for the purposes of resolving client’s business problems (Nonaka). An example of such an organized system is the EY/Knowledge Web which has been created as the link between consultants of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and knowledge base of the company. Another highly relevant example is that of Knowledge Galaxy which a highly specialized knowledge management project is. Knowledge Galaxy stores vast amounts of information of all consultancy engagements within the company.

2. Various forms of information sharing problems can be anticipated for the above mentioned Knowledge Management initiative of the company owing to cultural clashes following the merger. Cultural clash is an almost inevitable phenomenon whenever two or more organizations merge to form a single entity; however, the impact of these cultural clashes is likely to be highly significant for merger of Earnest & Young and Cap Gemini into a single entity because these businesses operate in consultancy business. For consultancy business, the entire business revolves around management of knowledge resources.

Firstly, employees of the two companies would not be habitual to dissimilar methods of communication with their superiors and their peers. Their working habits would differ about sharing of information within the organization. In addition, employees at Cap Gemini were more accustomed to working in teams with shared responsibilities and credits; hence, shared information freely (University of Nevara). On the other hand, employees at Earnest & Young were more accustomed to individual working style, and they shared information only when it was needed to. Knowledge management is also likely to face a setback following the merger because the IT applications and systems used within each entity prior to the merger were distinct and employees were accustomed to a particular system for Knowledge Management. Also, integration of information which was stored under different archival formats is likely to be difficult. 

3. (a) The key success factors in Earnest & Young’s Knowledge Management strategy is investing resources in developing an electronic document system that codifies, stores and disseminates knowledge rather than relying on transfer of information from one person to another. This is a key success factors because it enhances the scalability of the organization several folds because the system of Knowledge Management through this approach is no longer dependent on human interaction rather it relies on an IT system which is scalable according to the needs of the organization.

Another critical success factor of Earnest & Young’s Knowledge Management strategy is to reuse knowledge which has been accumulated for the purpose of an earlier assignment. To achieve this end, the company had invested heavily in IT and the goal was to generate reusable codified knowledge. Therefore, the organization only needed to invest once in a knowledge asset and was able to reuse it many times for similar assignments or projects. Thirdly, Earnest & Young believed in training its people in groups to be able to work in computer-based distance environment. There are evidences from the case that Earnest & Young’s employees were adapted to working in a virtual environment which increased the flexibility of the organization, as well as, rewarded people for using and contributing to document databases (Hansen, Nohria and Tierney).

3. (b) The critical success factors of the Knowledge Management strategies of Earnest & Young described above can be applied to Cap Gemini. Firstly, the centralized information sharing can be implemented at Cap Gemini by investing in formation of an IT system which makes is possible for employees to contribute information to an online resource. This would be a highly important application of Earnest & Young’s Knowledge Management strategy to Cap Gemini since the care narrates that Knowledge management at CG was more decentralized than at E&Y. In addition, employees at CG can be trained to work from a distance environment, as well.

No evidence can be found from the case of any reward system for employees of CG to share their information with their peers or to contribute the knowledge they have gained by working on a project to a central repository. Such a reward and incentive system can able to implement at Cap Gemini to enhance Knowledge Management system of the organization.

4. The advice for Alberto Almansa is not to renew the Center for Business Knowledge (CBK) owing to high costs associated with its renewal and the existing level of duplication within the Knowledge Management system of the combined entity Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. The company is already under financial distress and is forced to downsize its workforce due to its financial constraints. By renewing CBK, the organization’s financial difficulties will only worsen and it would divert scarce resources of the organization from the much needed expenditure on training of employees for My-Galaxy.

The integration of Knowledge Management systems of the two entities is already a problem for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. It is acknowledged that CBK has been termed as a pillar of E&Y’s day-to-day work, and was one of the reasons behind E&Y’s high performance, the organizational architecture and culture has readily changed following the merger and the company needs to adopt new processes and a different strategy. Galaxy is a much more cost effective solution for the company, and this should be adopted by the organization in the long-run.