Abstract
In the Asian subcontinent, the insurance business is highly competitive. The Indian insurance industry too witnessed tremendous growth and competition in the last few years. Both public and private insurance companies are currently facing two main challenges: struggling to retain their customer base and knowledge loss resulting from employee turnover. Insurance companies are realizing that efficiently managing its customer and employee knowledge and utilizing the same in designing insurance products and services is a key to survival. While effective knowledge management (KM) has been acknowledged as the key driver for new knowledge and new idea generation, the fact that academics still write about it and organizations are actively pursuing the concept makes us believe that this trend is going to continue in future too. This article discusses the KM planning and implementation journey undertaken by Max Life Insurance Company Limited, India. The company not only has successfully implemented KM but also has plans to roll out the project in other group companies. The case presents instances and examples of how the company has used KM for real business improvements with measurable outcomes. It also investigates the critical success factors for KM implementation using secondary and primary data collected from published literature besides the company under study. The study will be beneficial to organizations that are willing to implement KM but do not have a clear idea of how to proceed with it. It also provides directions for future research and implications for global managers for having KM into place.
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