SIDEBAR: I Was a KM Cheerleader
-Ray Kotcher
Historically, a successful PR practice has relied heavily on the ability of its partners to build relationships. For example, when I started in PR in the late 70s, it took a lot of interpersonal skills to get a client's story into top media outlets such as The New York Times or the major TV networks.
But the Internet has changed things. PR people are inundated with information from e-mail and the Web. And as they struggle to sort through this informational torrent, it's easy for the personal exchange of information - both with clients and with colleagues - to suffer.
Convinced that Ketchum needed to respond to this change, I convened our senior leadership in 1999 to examine how the company dealt with internal and external information exchange. We quickly realised that we needed to get a better handle on the vast rivers of electronic information flowing through our company.
The group decided to create an intranet and extranet that would allow employees and clients to rapidly sift through a huge knowledge base in a focused way, and would also give them the ability to contribute to that knowledge base. The idea solidified into the MyKGN project, a proposed Web portal with a personalised intranet for our employees and an extranet for our clients.
I saw my role almost as a cheerleader - the person who would really get people rooting for the project. So to kick off the development period, I led three days of meetings with 30 of our most senior executives; those sessions resulted in a further gathering of 60 partners from around the world who split into groups of 10 to 15 people to brainstorm desirable features for the new Web portal. These groups continued to meet weekly and reported to me every couple of weeks. We also assembled a top team for building the portal, and I met with them on a daily basis during the 10 months it took to build the application.
When rollout time came around, I knew I had to do some more cheerleading. So we decided to go all out for the kick-off of MyKGN on November 1, 2000. Because I wanted Ketchum employees to think of the rollout as a watershed moment for our company, I chose a noteworthy watershed - the first US manned space launch - to use as a theme. I did a live Webcast from our New York studio to all of our affiliates worldwide. As a backdrop, we used old footage of a rocket launch by Alan Shepard. I donned a helmet and space suit application and went over the features of MyKGN. Afterward, people kept talking about the whole thing. (I heard a lot of comments about the space suit.) I think it really helped them get excited about the new portal.
Since its implementation last fall, all our 1500 employees and about 45 clients have used MyKGN. An independent study said that we can expect a $US12.1 million return on our investment in the project's first four years. Collaboration was the objective of MyKGN, and interestingly, it was also integral to successful completion of the project. By taking the personal approach from the beginning and carrying it through to the end, we were able to build a great application and get employees on board.
Ketchum's ROI
According to Kotcher, Ketchum's hard ROI in terms of dollars and cents was determined based on the following criteria.
1. Increased sales due to the agency's ability to leverage KM capabilities to develop our client base through competitive differentiation and increased cross-selling opportunities with current clients.
2. Productivity gains derived from the reduction in effort of task such as information aggregation, time entry and locating subject matter experts within the network.
3. Productivity gains associated with bringing new employees and business partners up to speed on Ketchum's capabilities and organisational structure.
4. Reduction in travel costs - as part of Ketchum's KM initiative, the agency also launched a platform for online collaboration and application sharing.
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