In an industry where information technogy was critical to the advancement and speed of R&D, scientific knowledge capture was still an unfilled need. Traditionally, scientist used hand written notebooks. However, due to impending government regulations, it will become mandatory over the next 5-7 years to have access to all decisions that went into developing new products.
No end-to-end solution existed and Vaxa was engaged to determine the industry common practices, the reasons why information was not being captured electronically, the nature of the point solutions that existed, and the size the potential of the market if a complete solution was offered.
Approach
Vaxa implemented two industry and scientific panels from within R&D. The participants included individual contributors, mid and senior management.
A series of structured and unstructured sessions were conducted to determine why information is captured in its current form, how the impending government regulations will be addressed, and how important was the issue of knowledge capture.
Outcome
It was less about technlogy implementation and more about "that is how things have been done for the last fifty years."
No significant progress has been made since it is too expensive to develop such capabilities in-house and no industry solution provider has attempted to hostically address knowledge capture.
It is felt there is much to be learnt from other industries who faced similar problems but no resources have dedicated to get the information.
There was a clear need for knowledge capture solutions in the very part of the R&D process as well in the later stages. This knowledge can be used as feedback into future product development initiatives or if issues arise once the product is on the market.
The opportunity existed for off-the-shelf solutions and the potential to offer significant customization services.
Client Results
Client developed the next generation knowledge management application for this industry and initially targeted the largest one hundred companies.
A scaled down version of the solution is bring developed for other market segments include companies and organizations in the public and private sectors.
