The challenge
Knowledge is power. Time is money. Nowhere are these maxims truer than in financial services where success depends upon knowing what`s happening - where, when, with whom and how. However, when that knowledge is spread in varying forms across disparate systems in different divisions, it quickly loses value because it isn`t readily accessible when it is needed most. Until recently, African Harvest Limited Group - the JSE-listed financial services organisation - faced the challenge of how to maximise on its knowledge resources.
That`s what led African Harvest to implement Common Knowledge, the holistic knowledge management and collaboration solution from NeuraTech. Delivered by NeuraTech Development Partner AFA Systems (formerly Smacsoft) as part of a tailored financial market information solution, Common Knowledge now serves as African Harvest`s "Enterprise Memory" and is the foundation for enabling the management of its knowledge resources. The result: more effective and informed decision-making, greater efficiency and productivity, superior responsiveness and enhanced cross-selling.
Shanaaz Petersen, group IT manager at African Harvest, explains: "As a leading financial services group, we are active in a number of areas including fund management, investment banking, private equity, corporate advisory services and stock broking. Each service offering falls under a separate operating company and some of these are geographically dispersed. Within each company, we have different teams and individuals who provide a service to each customer base, although serious cross-selling opportunities exist.
"While this approach allows for focus and specialisation, the downside is that it doesn`t provide a single view of customer accounts. In the past, each team had its own system which in isolation worked well, but which didn`t allow for advanced information exchange between teams. Duplication was a major issue and aside from wasted time and questions surrounding data integrity, potentially lucrative cross-selling opportunities were simply slipping away."
According to Petersen, intellectual capital management was virtually impossible since the majority of customer and market-related information was unstructured, residing on individual PCs in a plethora of spreadsheets, documents, e-mails, and frequently in people`s heads. "Most fund managers had a stack of business cards on their desks, none of which had been saved electronically. Consequently, the valuable knowledge they had was not ready available to their colleagues or the group at large. What`s more, where information was stored in files and folders, quite frequently it was never found or re-used again because no one knew where to find it."
Strong relationship management is key
The solution for African Harvest was to move from an asset-centric focus to a customer-centric one. Or rather, a `client asset management` approach which recognises the need to retain and grow customers based on strong relationship management and the creation of an `African Harvest experience`.
It was apparent to Petersen early on that African Harvest needed a solution that combined both contact management and collaboration and she realised that this immediately limited the options. In June 2000, she began evaluating market offerings and had "presentations and proposals from a number of leading global companies".
In November 2000, after extensive research, African Harvest turned to AFA Systems, South Africa`s leading developer and provider of investment software solutions. The company proposed a solution based on Common Knowledge and integrated with SMAC, AFA System`s back-office portfolio management system, and e-Ports, its Internet-based reporting tool.
AFA Systems adds an investment slant to Common Knowledge by integrating it into the investment applications that manage the funds and by customising the solution to meet the specific needs of the investment manager. This effectively removes the organisational `silos` and enables funds information to be shared across teams. The final result is a very powerful knowledge management and collaboration tool for the investment manager.
A holistic solution
The new solution would manage African Harvest`s intellectual capital by efficiently collating data and information in a central access point, making both readily available for knowledge assimilation. It would also provide African Harvest with a holistic view of its clients, including not only their current and historic financial information but also all the interactions between them and African Harvest. This would enable the company to build on client relationships that it, and not individuals, had built up over time.
"We chose Common Knowledge for several reasons. Firstly, it was the only solution which addressed our needs for a holistic information management system for knowledge management and collaboration. Secondly, its flexible trademark 18 Object principle matched our team-based organisational model perfectly. Thirdly, the system`s rich feature set including replication and security was very attractive. Last but not least, its seamless integration with the Microsoft suite of products, including Office, BackOffice and Outlook, enabled us to leverage our existing technology investment."
Turning data and information into knowledge
From the initial meeting with AFA Systems to the new system going live early December took less than a month. During this time, information was uploaded from 24 different sources including spreadsheets, Access databases, Microsoft Outlook, and Personal Address Books and all duplication was eliminated. Installation took one day and AFA Systems provided a trainer and technician for a week to get everybody up to speed as quickly as possible.
Notes Petersen, "Buy-in from our COO Leon Campher proved an essential ingredient in ensuring that Common Knowledge was adopted as company standard from the outset."
African Harvest has some 90 users on Common Knowledge (representing over 90% of the company) and live replication between its Cape Town and Johannesburg offices.
According to Petersen, "When we installed Common Knowledge, we also signed up for ongoing support from AFA Systems. However, to date, we`ve hardly needed to call on them at all which shows just how stable the product is."
Several months on and Peterson says, "The overall response has been very positive and we`re already seeing real value and benefits from using Common Knowledge. A centralised store of information means we have accurate, up-to-date information on all aspects of the business at our fingertips, saving on time and effort. CLOs are more proactive and confident in their service approach and client relationships since they can now track all client interactions, both current and historic. Being more informed means they can be more responsive to customer needs leading to better customer satisfaction and ultimately more business. What`s more, we no longer have to worry about losing information when people leave the company. With Common Knowledge, we`re now in a position to leverage our intellectual capital for the benefit of the company and our clients rather than for the benefit of specific individuals.
"At African Harvest we have adopted and championed a `new business, new rules` approach to how we manage our business, while continuing to uphold our fundamental beliefs which are rooted in the ideology of ubuntu. The essence of ubuntu is that a business becomes successful because of the quality of its people and of the relationships it has with its community of stakeholders. Common Knowledge may be a breakthrough solution but it matches this age-old philosophy perfectly."
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