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Knowledge Management Review

Ideas are one of the most valuable commodities in knowledge-driven organizations. Knowledge
creation is a critical part of a whole knowledge management initiative, yet often KM programs are
focused more on the capture of knowledge. Here, Steve Lakin describes how BT is encouraging
knowledge creation, while managing to store it for re-use.

BTS APPROACH TO IDEAS

MANAGEMENT
Why harnessing bright ideas has already saved BT UK85 million
By Steve Lakin

CASE STUDY
BT
operates out of the
UK and is one of the
worlds largest
telecommunication
companies, with a
turnover in excess
of UK22 billion.
Setting itself the
ambitious target of
becoming a new
wave, global,
communications
company, BT is
constantly reevaluating its
business and
increasingly taking
advantage of the
new opportunities
offered by Internet,
multimedia,
mobility, data and
integrated
solutions.

24

The exchange of ideas is at the heart of learning

and collaboration. Its crucial to have the best
ideas available when determining actions, making
decisions and solving problems at all levels of a
company. But how well equipped are we to
develop, share and exploit insights and ideas
outside of the boundaries of geography and
immediate contact circles? The answer is, too
often, not very well. Systematically harnessing
ideas should be part of any organizations
knowledge management strategy. This is one area
where the returns from a knowledge
management intervention can be clearly assessed.
For the last five years, BT has been improving
its capacity to harness employee ideas. The result
has been to empower individuals to find creative
ways to improve the business. This strategy has
already had dramatic results and saved the
company in excess of UK85 million this year
alone. And at the same time it has created a
uniquely valuable knowledge base.
BTs approach is nothing new. Many companies
used suggestion schemes as a mechanism for
involving their employees in improving their
businesses. But all too often such schemes are
poorly used. Any good ideas received often fall by
the wayside because companies lack the complete
infrastructure required to promote, develop and
champion them. BT has succeeded by marrying
the use of technology with effective processes and

support. And by working hard to promote a

culture that welcomes and values ideas from
whatever their source.
As a result, BT Ideas has become a central
mechanism for harnessing and placing ideas
wherever they are needed within the company. It
operates on the premise that people are
immensely creative and want to contribute to the
business whether its with little changes that
make the job more satisfying or with big changes
that can have a dramatic effect on the business
and its bottom line. At its heart is a purpose
designed workflow application that allows ideas
to be captured, and most importantly tracked
and monitored as they move through the stages
into action. Alongside this workflow are other
applications to proactively solicit ideas on specific
hot topics and for groups and communities to
work online to incubate ideas that show
potential. Together they provide a complete
environment for effective ideas management.
BT Ideas
The genesis of BTs ideas management approach
started five years ago. Its origin was a local
suggestion scheme operated to help solve some
of the challenges facing a small part of the
organization. What triggered the transformation
into an integrated company-wide approach was
the decision to operate as an independent ideas

Volume 4 Issue 1 March/April 2001

Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2001. For more information, go to www.melcrum.com or e-mail us on info@melcrum.com

Knowledge Management Review

KEYPOINTS
BT ideas originated as an employee suggestion
scheme and grew into an ideas brokerage.
Idea donors are afforded the status of customers and
treated accordingly.
Contributors to BT ideas are incentivized with a 10
percent share of the benefits afforded by
implementing the idea.

On average over 40 ideas are submitted to BT Ideas

every working day.
The best guide to performance is customer
satisfaction and loyalty. In the last three years,
satisfaction levels have risen 15 percent to 85 percent.
Voice recognition technologies will make it possible
to record an idea direct into the database.

brokerage business. The BT ideas scheme now

sits within the overall knowledge management
framework at BT under the innovate category.
See figures 1 (below) and 2 (overleaf) for the
whole KM framework.
One of the first important decisions was to
introduce the balanced scorecard as the framework
for articulating a strategy and monitoring the
performance of this business. Return on ideas
and costs per idea handled became key financial
indicators, indicative of the philosophy that
attracting high quality ideas was more important
than attracting large quantities. New processes and
procedures for handling ideas were drawn up,
implemented and their impact tracked through
measures such as speed of response and total cycle
time. Idea donors and recipients were afforded the
status of customers and clear customer satisfaction
guidelines were drawn up and satisfaction levels
comprehensively measured and reviewed. A
commitment was given to customers that every
idea would receive feedback, irrespective of its
eventual outcome. Other measures were designed
to promote best practices, encourage innovation
in approach and develop the administration teams
professional skills.
As a result the scheme grew organically by
attracting people willing to share ideas, solve
problems, suggest value enhancements to
products and save the company money. And it
grew inorganically by encompassing more and
more areas of the organization. But this growth
was not without problems; not least the need to
introduce greater automation whilst retaining the
flexibility needed to manage the growing
volumes of ideas that crossed organizational
boundaries.

management initiative finding who had already

solved the problem and building from there. The
result was to adapt call center technology to meet
the needs of the business. Such systems operated
under the same principle and processes creating a
database record, passing on requests for action,
monitoring progress and then feeding back to the
customer. The big advantage over proprietary
suggestion scheme software was the built-in service
management features. This made it possible to set
service levels and for the system to automatically
auto-escalate when these were not met. The second
element of the solution was to move the system
completely online. This offered anyone with a
standard browser the facility to enter, administer
and track the progress of ideas from their desktop.
The result has been to transform both
productivity and speed of response. Volumes
have doubled in each of the last two years whilst
the administration resource has declined. And at
the same time customer response times have
improved significantly, with some suggestors
receiving a response within minutes of their idea
being registered.

Steve Lakin
is BT's Manager for
Intellectual Capital
leveraging greater
value from the
companys
extensive
knowledge assets.
He leads on the
future
development and
commercialization
of BT Ideas.

Figure 1: BTs KM framework

The technical solution

Recognizing that the main function of the business
was to take a basic idea and track it as it made the
necessary rounds, the Ideas Management team
started looking at technology solutions that could
support the growing administration task. They
found the answer through their own knowledge
Volume 4 Issue 1 March/April 2001

Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2001. For more information, go to www.melcrum.com or e-mail us on info@melcrum.com

25

Knowledge Management Review

BTS APPROACH TO IDEAS MANAGEMENT

Creating an ideas culture

Whilst new systems have transformed the
productivity and capacity of BT ideas they alone
do not determine success. Like any knowledge
management system, people have to be
motivated to participate and must feel that their
contribution is valued and respected. Its only by
getting these elements right that the objective of
keeping a constant flow of ideas percolating
through the business will be achieved.
Motivating people to contribute
The first rule for any KM system thats not
directly locked into a work process is that the
benefits from contributing must exceed the
effort required to participate. BT Ideas addresses
this partly by offering a significant financial
incentive whereby contributors share a
percentage of the benefits that accrue from
implementing their ideas. These rewards are 10
percent of savings achieved or additional income
generated up to a ceiling of UK30,000. Under
this arrangement over UK400,000 has been
paid out to BTs employees so far this year. The
arithmetic is compelling as the incentives only
follow when business benefits have been
achieved. The result is that anyone entering an
idea knows it will be taken seriously and that
they have a stake in whether and how it is used.
As well as offering direct financial incentives,
BT Ideas runs an extensive and high profile
recognition program for its suggestors,
evaluators and champions. Individuals
contributions, both large and small are featured
in the company newspaper and through the BT
Ideas News Desk, which offers the facility to
automatically publish letters of appreciation.

Figure 2. How the best ideas fit into the overall KM strategy
KM strategy
Learn
building knowledge

Innovate
creating knowledge

Collaborate
sharing knowledge

Soft interventions
Mentoring, Team-based Awareness,
Corporate Universities

e-Learning, Competitor Intelligence,

Newsfeeds, Corporate Portals

Ideas Incubators, Incentive Plans,

Continuous Innovation Programs

Ideas Management Systems,

Creativity Tools

Communities of Practice, Centers of

Excellence, Workplace Design

e-Collaboration, Groupware, Video/

audio Conferencing

Integrate

Process Design, Competency

connecting knowledge Frameworks, Alignment Strategies

Intranet, Workflow, Network &

Messaging Platforms

Lever

Search & Retrieval Tools,

Repositories/ document
Management, Yellow Pages

using knowledge to
create value

26

Technology interventions

Best Practices, Intellectual Property

Management, Intellectual Capital
Strategy

Letters of recognition are sent to most first time

and more active suggestors. And recognition
awards are offered to individuals who
consistently provide high quality evaluations.
Ensuring the quality of contributions
The second rule for a KM system is to manage
the information overload problem, as this makes
the task of finding the real nuggets that much
harder. BT Ideas addresses this by being clear on
the criteria for accepting ideas and by operating
an initial screening process. Unlike many other
schemes, BT Ideas only accepts ideas when these
are outside an individuals normal area of
responsibility. This can mean turning back ideas
with the recommendation that they are evaluated
locally. The screening process traps ideas that are
not properly articulated or lack originality in
that they have been proposed and evaluated
previously. A number of ideas come up again and
again. So every suggestor is encouraged to check
a list of oft-suggested ideas before submitting
their contribution. Suggestors can also search
across an online knowledge base containing the
details of over 8,000 previously evaluated ideas.
Finding the right home
Analyzing the flow of ideas has shown that over 60
percent of suggestions relate to another division or
unit in BT. The issue is to channel these to the
right recipients those people with the need and
resources to exploit them. This task relies on both
tacit and explicit knowledge. The tacit knowledge
relates to an understanding of how BT operates,
the departments in need of fresh ideas and those
people receptive to looking at things in new ways.
The explicit knowledge relates to who does what
in BT information thats held in the companys
online directory. Both are vital to the task of
finding suitable fertile ground for ideas. Keeping
both knowledge bases up-to-date is a difficult task
in a fast-changing organization like BT.
Nurturing ideas
Experience has shown that the most obvious home
for an idea may not be the best first place to take it
it may do better incubating somewhere else with
a sympathetic champion. This is particularly true of
the more radical ideas where engaging a neutral,
but supportive third party can be a route to ensure
they get serious consideration. This is also true of
ideas that are not well articulated where a
potentially strong idea is presented without the
detail needed to make a full assessment. This is
where BT Ideas deploy their Ideas Incubator,
giving the suggestor the ability to develop their idea

Volume 4 Issue 1 March/April 2001

Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2001. For more information, go to www.melcrum.com or e-mail us on info@melcrum.com

Knowledge Management Review

online with the help of an appropriate community

of interest. The incubation process can be
conducted in a private or public forum. In the latter
case, anyone in BT is free to help in the
development process.
Getting the timing right
Another key issue is that many ideas have a
limited life span and have to be acted on quite
quickly if they are to benefit the business. This
has two aspects. Firstly, an idea is sometimes
ahead of its time and may have to wait for
something else to happen such as a system
development before the company is in a
position to exploit it. In this case its important
to store and flag such ideas for consideration at
a future date. Secondly, ideas are often
triggered in response to a topical issue or
problem. In this case its important that they
speed through the system with a minimum of
delay. And its in the area of speed that
electronic systems come into their own. Not
only do they deliver improved communication
channels but they combat the problem of
timeliness that plagues paper-based systems.
BT Ideas operate a campaign and event system
to capture and channel ideas on topical issues.
Any individual within BT is free to sponsor an
ideas generation campaign which is then
promoted to relevant audiences across the
company. Promotion includes the facility to
direct mail BTs club of frequent suggestors
individuals who have indicated that they are
willing to contribute ideas on their specific
interest areas.
A range of different campaigns have been run
by BT Ideas. One such campaign ran alongside a
two-day change management event addressed by
the CEO and a number of senior directors. Each
speaker was asked to finish his address with an
appeal for ideas on a specific issue of interest.
These were then publicized and suggestions
invited from anyone in BT. The response was
immediate with the CEO, for example,
receiving over 100 screened and sorted
suggestions within hours of his request.
A recent broad-focused campaign Whats
Bugging You asked people to say what it is
that annoys them about BT. But more
important, it also asked them to suggest practical
ways to address the issues they identified. This
campaign generated in excess of 1,700 ideas.
Another campaign asked for suggestions on how
to improve BTs Desktop Directory. This
generated over 500 ideas in less than two weeks
and has heavily shaped the development of this

application. Whats more, it had the added

benefit of bringing the development team closer
to its client base with many of the ideas
spawning online discussions of key areas of
functionality.
The campaigns and events system has also
been deployed to support wider knowledge

THE FIRST RULE FOR ANY KM SYSTEM THAT S NOT

DIRECTLY LOCKED INTO A WORK PROCESS IS THAT THE
BENEFITS FROM CONTRIBUTING MUST EXCEED THE EFFORT
REQUIRED TO PARTICIPATE.
management initiatives. In one example, the
system was used to stimulate feedback from the
first engineers to work on the deployment of a
new technology. The campaign incentivized
engineers to record the problems they
encountered in the field and to share tips and
suggestions. Their inputs helped iron out process
and information issues and accelerate the
learning of others. In another example, the
system was used to attract and administer
nominations for a company-wide award for
internal Web sites that demonstrated good
knowledge management practice in their design
and operation.
Business impact
On average over 40 ideas are submitted to BT
Ideas every working day. These range from
highly technical solutions to the problems of
managing huge volumes of data traffic on the BT
network to practical ways of eliminating the
problem of alarms set off by the growing
population of rabbits inside Madeley Satellite
stations security fencing.
Many of these ideas offer benefits to
customers. One suggestor recently received a
UK21,000 bonus for helping a Paris-based
customer make the most of satellite technology
in retrieving news footage from around the
country. This customer wanted an easy way in
which journalists and technicians could send
newsfeeds from remote French sites back to
headquarters. The idea proposed was to ask
reporters to record their item and to put the tape
into a local video player. The people in Paris
would then schedule a time to bring the news
clip across a satellite link. New software was
needed to make the system work. Instead of
contracting the project to an external company
the suggestor took the problem home. Within
three days he had come up with a working
model that was then developed in-house over
a six-month period with the customer. The
Volume 4 Issue 1 March/April 2001

Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2001. For more information, go to www.melcrum.com or e-mail us on info@melcrum.com

27

Knowledge Management Review

BTS APPROACH TO IDEAS MANAGEMENT

result delighted the customer and they are

now running 30 to 40 newsfeeds a day across the
network, a figure thats likely to increase. By
keeping the work in-house, BT saved
UK422,000 in a year.
Sometimes the pay-off from an idea is
exceptional. This was the case with one suggestion
received in 1997. The idea offered a way of moving
data calls off BTs voice network at an earlier stage
than was currently happening. The result was to
save BT UK65 million in investment and provide
a platform for the launch of new customer services
such as Surftime and BT Click.
But BT Ideas is not just about breakthrough
suggestions. Every contribution has a potential
value and must be treated as such. Not least
because of the sense of satisfaction individuals get
from having their suggestions both listened to and
acted upon. This is why the processes have been set
up and managed with great care. Its difficult to
always get it right and sometimes ideas do slip
through the net or get handled insensitively. But by
adopting the principle of making everything public
theres every incentive to improve and ensure such
occurrences are infrequent.
The best guide to performance is customer
satisfaction and loyalty. In both cases the trends
are positive. In the last three years, satisfaction
levels have risen 15 percent to 85 percent with
nine out of 10 suggestors indicating they would
use the system again. This has been achieved
against a background where the number of ideas
received has been doubled and then doubled
again and the staff processing them has been
reduced by 30 percent.
The future
Whilst BT ideas has proved its value, theres
substantial scope for improvement. One such
area is participation which, despite the gains of
the last few years, involves less than 10 percent
of BT people each year. Measured on page
impressions, the BT Ideas Web site is visited by
an estimated 15 percent of the company every
month, with many people taking advantage of
the ability to search across the existing ideas
database. Actions are planned to encourage more
of these visitors to lodge ideas for consideration.
One element of this plan will be to extend an
invitation to participate to partners, suppliers and
possibly even customers, most likely through
specific ideas generation campaigns.
The next area of improvement will focus on
adding further functionality to the existing online
28

systems. One thrust will be more sophisticated

targeting when canvassing for ideas. Another will
be to add further functionality to the search
system using BT technologies. When this is
complete it will be possible to automatically
extract and offer up relevant information to the
suggestor when they are making their submission.
Another exciting development is in the area of
personal information agents. This BT technology
will make it possible for any individual to register
to receive immediate notification of a new idea
that matches their interest profile. Or to opt to
receive a periodic digest of personally relevant
ideas delivered via e-mail. This facility will also
work the other way by giving the individual the
facility to broadcast requests for ideas with the
system targeting individual respondents on the
basis of expressed interests.
A further development will exploit the growing
sophistication of voice recognition technologies.
This will make it possible to dial direct into the
database to record an idea and to have existing
ideas retrieved and read over the phone. And
there are developments planned that will raise the
quality of ideas received and improve the current
implementation rate. At one end of the process
this will involve interactive online tools to guide a
suggestor through the process of presenting their
idea. At the other end, tools will be used to guide
an individual or group through the process of
evaluation. And in the middle is the Ideas
Incubator, used to harness the contribution of
both individuals and communities in nurturing
and incubating ideas that show initial promise.
The results from this development program
ensure BT gains even greater value from ideas.
Systematically harnessing peoples creativity
through ideas management will remain a key part
of BTs knowledge management strategy and will
shortly be one of the propositions offered to
BTs customers.

Contact
Steve Lakin
BT
E-mail: steve.lakin@bt.com

Volume 4 Issue 1 March/April 2001

Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2001. For more information, go to www.melcrum.com or e-mail us on info@melcrum.com

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