Why is Knowledge Management (KM) the most significant part of service transition and the service management lifecycle?
I recently worked as part of a service transition team consulting on behalf of an organisation to work with their suppliers.
One of the suppliers had no concept of KM and didn’t believe that it was part of the service transition and Business As Usual (BAU) support responsibilities. They believed that it would be sufficient to support their services with ‘Hyper support’ and dedicated resources from the project deployment team.
I advised that their existing approach had significant limitations, with inadequate security and lacking the client confidence that a populated and well managed Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) would provide.
Working collectively with the suppliers, we created a standardised knowledge template and requirement list for this project which delivered increased efficiency, productivity and improved decision making.
Consequently, the work was completed post go live and the SKMS was implemented within six months with a seamless integration and 100% adoption across the support for this service. The service was supported by hyper support until the SKMS had being populated and the knowledge was transferred to BAU support.
Interestingly, the supplier I was dealing with did not adopt the practices we introduced across the rest of their business or apply it to their customers. As a result, the company ended up losing a major contract and ceased trading. The reason that they lost the major contract was due to key individuals, with specific knowledge relating to bespoke application for this client, leaving the company. The inadequate recording of knowledge, procedures and process led to an inability to keep some specific applications functioning to the agreed standard. They were trying to relearn the required knowledge to enable them to deliver required improvements. Unfortunately, they were unable to relearn fast enough and as the impact was causing significant financial losses to the organisations customer, which lead to the contract being cancelled in favour of a rival supplier.
This story is just one example of what can happen when knowledge management is not adopted. With this story being the worst possible outcome, here are the key advantages of adopting knowledge management:
- Improved decision making
- Increased productivity
- Greater levels of innovation via increased collaboration
- Increased data retention
- Improved productivity
- Timely access to knowledge
- Increased client satisfaction
- Reduced risk
Knowledge Management is invaluable to your organisation when implemented correctly. It underpins your Service Management (SM) solution.
Knowledge Management facilitates the capturing, from existing resources, of perspectives, ideas, experiences and information, which, when properly utilised, will act as an enabler, empowering your staff to make informed decisions and drastically reduce the overheads associated with the need to rediscover knowledge.
To gain the buy-in from Management, the business case for investing in a SKMS should be focused on reduced risk and cost savings to the business. This is because your risk will be reduced through the retention of procedures, processes and all relevant knowledge within the organisation and cost savings will be achieved as a result of improved organizational efficiency.
With all this in mind, it begs the question “Why do so many organisations allow themselves to be without an efficient service?”.
If you would like to find out how iCore can help you with the implementation of a Knowledge Management system then contact us on 0207 868 2405 or alternatively join us for a free breakfast briefing on Agile Service Transition and Proactive Service Assurance on 19th September 2017 in London.