CURRENT SITUATION 

Nestlé in last years invested a lot of efforts and a lot of money into the development of its knowledge management system. Every step of a knowledge cycle sees the Swiss company act to improve its efficiency and increase its results.

In acquisition field most part of attention is focused on the gathering from the outside: Contact Center pays a strong attention to customers complain (technical support calls and E-mail more than other) but there is a new interest for the between the line data that comes from the market.The internal information gathering is not yet very advanced. Cognitive mapping is used only in small department, under initiative of singular manager: there is no general plan for the whole company. Internal questionnaire are also quite infrequent, and they are almost all focused on IT technology, with no attention to the knowledge in its bigger meaning.  

On using and sharing information, the food giant, like most of companies, focuses his larger efforts. The most evident result is the codification-based strategy. The central codification system that Nestlé chose is GLOBE, a system that connected all the department in every corner of the world and that make information accessible for all 250,000 employees. This data structuring has the advantage that make nobody irreplaceable. From 2001, all employee access to their HR data via ESS and online reports (factory employees had similar access via ‘kiosks’, managers had online access to their staff’s personal data).With the so called employee self-service, there is no more someone that is too important for the company because of the information he has or, more frequently, the font of information he knows the location. In today’s Nestlé, information is available for everyone. The power is now set not in the information itself, but in the way to reach the information, because to have specific data, it needs specific request form. And who knows and understands the system and the information flow is the expert, he has a little bit of old power.  Human resource central database also help in better awareness of the company itself. Every month, only in Nestlé UK, more than 1,800 users log on to the site to use it as a ‘who’s who’ information source. 

In evaluation Nestlé works with FSG: the food giant chose for this critical task one of world most important and specialized non-profit organisation (with clients as Computer Associates, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). FSG helps Nestlé to review its corporate social responsibility activities. This effort culminated in the development of their 2006 sustainability report introducing the company's new CSR focus on the creation of shared value for both the company and society. These kind of process, that of course are no more just knowledge evaluation but also knowledge acquisition, are a big resource for the company. In FSG report are shown, for example, extensive details on Nestlé's practices and acts: this new data, if used in the proper way (that means compared with existing data) became both a new knowledge and a tool to measure the previous information. Nestlé is working with FSG to develop an internal system of evaluation that consistently provides staff and the board with the information necessary to track their progress. The challenge is to use evaluation to improve company’s current and future grant-making.