KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Tools & Techniques

What is Tango?

Tango is a very powerful simulation space offering groups of managers the opportunity to link the management of Intangible Assets to traditional financial results. Tango is a powerful starting point since it links knowledge focused activities and the measurement of intangible assets to traditional business results like cash flow, market value and profitability.

While factors like image, know-how and personal chemistry are not tangible, they are nonetheless real - particularly in the eyes of customers. Unless a knowledge company can find ways to visualize these intangible factors, it will have a hard time controlling and improving their offering. Managed properly, however, the intangible factors can be powerful assets.

Using simulations and discussion groups, Tango sheds light on intangible assets. It gives them tangible forms with names and values just like any other asset so that for the first time they can be visualized and managed.

ATango mirrors the real World. Participants are pitted against other companies who are constantly trying to steal the most valued employees and customers. Participants also test new ideas and see how they affect their company - they learn by doing as they choose their business strategy and then manage their tangible and intangible assets for long-term financial success.

Participants in Tango learn:

	To formulate and implement strategies that incorporate both key people and customers.
	To find the balance between increasing your company`s effectiveness and profitability for the short run and enhancing its strength over the long run.
	How your company´s profitability (both short-term and long-term) relates to investments in personnel, competence and confidence building measures with your customers.
	The value of "indirect" marketing, such as customer care attitude and service to influence the company´s reputation. Your customers make their decisions to purchase based in large part on your company´s image.
	How to measure success when your product, professional competence, is intangible. [KS1] Why? Because decision-making has very little to do with computers. Also because human beings learn through the body. Learning is enhanced by actually being able to physically touch the environment.

Some of the globally observed benefits of Tango are:

	Leveraging the organization vision
	Increased creativity and revenues
	Improved customer and supplier relationships
	Improved productivity
	Less leakage of corporate memory
	Improved image
	Improved staff attitude
	Reduced "silo" mentality
	Improved quality of recruits
	Measurable outcomes
	Lasting benefits