CKOs or chief knowledge officers is slated to be a buzzword in recruiting circles. Cost-to-company of CKOs at current rates is between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 15 lakh, with IT industry being good paymasters.

Gohil expects that the KM@asset programme to be even more successful than the other two existing programmes - ADSET 2000 launched in August 1998 aimed at client-server end and e-comm launched in early last year, partnering IBM.The development of the package took 14 man-months for the design team of Asset International and Microsoft's technical team with the former investing around Rs 6 crore.

Pointing out that knowledge management leads to better business practices and offers information for use, Microsoft's business head in the East Sanjiv Mathur pointed out that the Microsoft sales team, has all the relevant data on a client before making a call on a prospective customer of Windows 2000.Knowledge management will involve expansion of business intelligence, enterprise reporting, data warehousing, data mining and customer relationship management (CRM).

Zonal manager Sandeep Chatterjee in his presentation on KM@asset pointed out that knowledge management will bridge the gap between industrial culture and the knowledge culture through the responsibility component.