Capturing, Managing, and Leveraging

Customer Support Knowledge

 

 

Edgar A. Painter

Marshall University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY                        4

METHODOLOGY                        5

1.0 LEARNING ORGANIZATION                        6

2.0 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT                        9

     2.1 MANAGING AND DELIVERING KNOWLEDGE IN THE DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT                        9

    2.2 THE INCREASING COST AND HIGH VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE

    2.3 POOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CAUSE AND EFFECT                                                              12  

3.0 EXPLICIT AND TACIT KNOWLEDGE WITHIN AN ORGANIZATION                              14

   3.1 DOMAINS OF KNOWLEDGE WITHIN THE WMCO ORGANIZATION                        155

   3.2 REPOSITORIES OF EXPLICIT TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION                        17

    3.3 REPOSITORIES OF TACIT KNOWLEDGE WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION                        18,

   3.4 BENCHMARKING KNOWLEDGE BASED ORGANIZATIONS                        19

   3.4.1 McKinsey and Company findings                        19

   3.4.2 Andersen Consulting findings                        20

4.0 GAP ANALYSIS                        24

5.0 CAPTURE AND LEVERAGE HIGH VALUE KNOWLEDGE                        25

6.0 DEALER TECHNICAL SERVICES CASE STUDY                        26

   6.1 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STATUS PRIOR TO INSTALLATION OF HEAT AND KNOWLIX TOOLS                        26

   6.2 PRODUCT PROBLEM MANAGETMENT AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS HELPDESK SOFTWARE

            HEATO CALL TRACKING AND MANAGEMENT TOOL                                            27

   6.3 BETA TEST RESULTS                        30

7.0 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS                        32

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY                                           35

APPENDIX A                                                  37                  

    Off Highway Truck: Case Study                        37

APPENDIX B                       

    Millennium IT Manifesto, Howard Rubin, Information technology is high cost and difficult to manage. ... ..51

APPENDIX C                    

    Knowledge Management Model                        52

APPENDIX D                    

    Solution Value Process Model                        53

APPENDIX E                       

    Knowlix® Return on Investment Calculations                        54

APPENDIX F                       

    Product Problem Management Process                        55

 

 

 

 

 

 

3                        Capturing, Managing, and Leveraging

Customer Support Knowledge

 

Capturing, Managing, and Leveraging Customer Support Knowledge

 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

 

The knowledge contained within documents and the heads of technical staff is the most valuable asset of almost all businesses.  Yet managing and delivering knowledge across an enterprise is becoming increasingly difficult.  High value knowledge is not viewed as an enterprise asset to be managed and leveraged for profit by most, if not all product support organizations.

 

This paper discusses why conventional approaches to managing and delivering knowledge are inadequate, and how a new approach will eliminate the problems and limitations imposed by the currently accepted ad hoc methods used to manage the knowledge of a product support organization.  "Knowledge management” is a very difficult subject to discuss and understand because there is a lack of common naming concepts and features.  Knowledge management is a concept that does not really exist, as an established process, in the majority of business organizations today.  Innovative technology is easier to understand and grasp when it replaces an existing machine or business process.  Word processing, for example, was typewriter replacement; spreadsheets were a calculator replacement.  Electronic document management systems have designs based on known business processes that occur without computers.  Knowledge management is more difficult to understand because the business system it is designed to computerize does not exist in the real world for most organizations.

 

There is a tremendous need to capture knowledge generated by all employees in a product support organization.  The primary obstacles preventing this are the resources of personnel, time, and systems to accomplish the automatic capture, archiving, and indexing of created knowledge regardless of the application or platform that created the document?  Enabling a product support organization's Technical Services Team to search among all corporate knowledge with a single command, and retrieve only pages of interest would represent an "ideal state" for many businesses.  Equally important, the ability to capture and leverage the solutions created by the Technical Staff, combined with the ability to make those solutions available to all who need them in the organization will provide a powerful competitive advantage.

 

This paper discusses the current state of knowledge management in a large capital goods, product support organization and reports on the implementation and results of establishing a software, computer network, Internet and Intranet based "Knowledge Management Solution" within the organization's Technical Service Operation.  Emphasis is based on capturing the work as it is done, real-time, in the work group.  Knowledge is captured as it is created using a business model and tools now associated with the computer network information systems industry.

 

 

 

 

4             Capturing, Managing, and Leveraging

Customer Support Knowledge