Why is consistent Knowledge

Management important?

October 26, 2007

• Phillip Kimball• Manager of Communication, Customer

Service and the Help Desk for Information Technology Services at the University of Utah Hospital, Clinics and Health Sciences

• 8 years with ITS at the UUHSC

• Previous IT work for Franklin Covey & Customer Service work for Delta Airlines

Key Topics:• History of Knowledge Management• Why is KM important?• Available KM tools• How does the ITS Help Desk do it?• Our Knowledge Management Attitude•Cost of Knowledge Management• How should you structure your data?• Who will be using this information?

History of Knowledge Management

• Typically, the most senior person holds most of your knowledge

• The senior person trains the new hires

• Each person retains information differently

•Knowledge is stored in various places; Enterprise tools Word Files, Printed Help Files, Scratch Paper, Sticky Notes, etc.

Typically, the most senior person holds most of your knowledge

What happens if this person:

• goes on vacation?

• finds employment somewhere else?

• has a billion other things to do?

• develops amnesia?

The senior person trains the new hires

• Excessive time spent teaching technical details instead of troubleshooting calls• Process is repeated with each new hire… including any wasted time teaching things which could be stored digitally•Training costs and time away from your customers is very expensive

Consistent Knowledge Delivery within Team

• Knowledge is stored in various places; Enterprise tools, Word Files, Printed Help Files, Scratch Paper, Sticky Notes, etc.

•How important is consistent trouble shooting from your Help Desk?

•How important are your problem / solution sets?

Why is Knowledge Management important?

• New hires / turnover (at the ITS Help Desk ours is one new employee each month)• Training period (2 to 3 months for us)• Changes in the environment• Our users expect consistent troubleshooting• Problems or applications we don’t hear about frequently•Cost of knowledge – more details later

Available Tools / Methods

• Enterprise Knowledge Base Tools

• Wiki space

• Help Files

• Content Management Systems

• (Indexed) Web Sites

•Self Service

Knowledge Base Tools

Enterprise Tools;–Pros: Search Engine, Track Changes and Use, Input and Flow of data etc.–Cons: Cost, Input and Update of Data, Back-end Support

• Knova• FrontRange• Altiris• Remedy• Right Now

Wiki SpacePros:• Allows anyone to easily contribute• Flexible layout options• Can store different doc formats (PDF, XLS, DOC, etc)

Cons:• Allows anyone to easily contribute• Difficult to maintain consistent information• Get cluttered quickly if not heavily maintained• Need to use proprietary code for maximum effectiveness

Help Files

• These can be used offline and without having to load 3rd party software• Easy to train authors how to create these documents• Difficult to maintain a consistent knowledge store• Little to no tracking on changes / updates

Content Management System

• Easy to maintain consistency (Templates are the norm with a CMS)• Authoring is (typically) very easy• Designed to manage documents and data (these are meant for ease of updating and for conformity) like a knowledgebase•Good place to start with a CMS; http://www.opensourcecms.com/

(Indexed) Web Site• Authors need at least a rudimentary understanding of HTML/CSS• Updates done manually• Flexibile layout and organization• Changes/updates need to be carefully assigned in order to avoid having two authors editing the same document at once• Able to build in modules (search, document linking, document conversion) using web programming•NOT PROPRIETARY

Self Service• Self Service provides an avenue for you to publish your

knowledge and let others find their own solutions• This is common with FAQ sections within an IT

organization• Vendors like Novell, Microsoft, Mcafee, Symantec etc.

have good examples of Self Service modules• Pros - customers are able to find your published

knowledge without calling the Help Desk• Cons - time to input and maintain data. Setting up

search strings and solutions that are easy to find. Receiving feedback on the quality of your solutions

What does the UUHSC ITS HD look like?

• 18 full time Help Desk Agents

• 8 of these are knowledge authors

• Staffed 24x7x365… we never close

• We are the front line support for the University of Utah Hospital and Clinics and UUHSC

How does ITS HD Manage Knowledge?

• What tool / method do we use?

• How was our knowledge originally organized?

• How is it managed now?

• Why the change?

What tool / method do we use (and why)?

•ServiceWare is our current KB

• ServiceWare merged with Kanisa, they formed a new company called KNOVA

•We have been using this product for the past 11 years

How was knowledge stored?

• Every issue used to be a single concept, which was tied to a Knowledge Object or “KO”

How is knowledge stored now?

Knowledge is now organized by application. Each application has its own “SuperKO”

Our Application KO template

What our Application KOs

look like…

Concept Specific vs App Specific KO

• Concept Centric attempt to create a logical relationship between issues and their resolutions• Concept issues may have more than one resolution, and resolutions may have more than one issue• Application Specific KOs are designed for environments where the application (not the issue) is the central focus while troubleshooting

Health Care Environment?

• We support 350+ applications• We interact with 29 different teams in ITS (the application owners of those 350+ apps)• We always find out the application first, then the error message from our end users• Agents searching for an error or issue would get results for 10 or 15 applications at once and would have to sift through these to find the relevant resolution

Our Knowledge Management Attitude

• Where does our knowledge come from and who owns it?

• How do we maintain consistency in authoring?

• How do we track authoring assignments?

• Who hands out these assignments?

• Publishing and notification of changes

Where does our knowledge come from and who owns it?

• The Help Desk doesn’t own the knowledge for apps which are supported by other teams… we use it for troubleshooting

• The team who owns the app owns the knowledge for that application or service

•The Knowledge Object defines 1st and 2nd tier support from the Help Desk to appropriate team

How do we maintain consistency in authoring?

All Knowledge Articles are authored using the same template (as shown previously). Doing so:

• Helps new agents find information

• Makes authoring new articles easier and faster

•Assists with a consistent design if we move our Knowledge to another tool

How do we track authoring assignments?

All authoring assignments are recorded in an Excel spreadsheet, which records:

• Agent assigned to make the update / change

• Date of assignment

• Where we received the information

• Who assigned the change to the agent

Who hands out these assignments?

The ITS HD Manager or a System Analyst delegates these assignments to be authored.Why having multiple authors has worked well for us:• Engages the team in ownership of the KB• Agents look for improvements in articles• Spreads the workload

Publishing and notification of changes

• Publishing is done between phone calls

• Updating Mission Critical articles may require an agent to be off the phones temporarily

• Email is always sent to notify Help Desk of changes / updates made to articles

Quick Review of our Best Practices

(These should be different for each organization… find what works best for you and continually improve upon it)• We are application specific (like having an index card for each app)• Team ownership of the information, not the HD• Multiple people enter data into KB in consistent format•Continually review and improve KB

Financial Impact of Knowledge Management

• Enterprise tools, and maintaining them is expensive• Justify your costs by quantifying your average call time by

the expense to the organization of the caller• Your avg. call times will reduce when there is a consistent

way to troubleshoot your Help Desk calls• The cost of training new staff will reduce with effective

knowledge management• Turnover at the Help Desk will be less impacted when your

knowledge does not leave with your senior staff

How should you do it?First find out what your knowledge focus should be.Knowledge formats;• Issue-centric approach, where each issue is its own article (eg: login error; spyware; etc)•User-centric approach, where groups of users each have their own article (eg: Accounting dept; Legal dept; Customer Service; etc)•Location-centric approach (eg: Colorado Office; all Sales offices; etc)•Application-centric approach; where each application has an index type of card with issues / solution sets

Decide which tool / method works best for your organization

This could be Wiki, KB, CMS, etc.The results of these careful decisions will be:• Reduced time in training and greater effectiveness in training new hires• Increased agent productivity• Decreased call times• Positive financial impact on organization when staff time interacting with Help Desk is decreased• Consistent response / troubleshooting from HD• Increased End user satisfaction with Help Desk

Questions