case KM III (Marconi)
Making It Work
Demiral spent a lot of time working with the Level 3 agents to make their solutions less complex and streamline the review process. “We had to go through two iterations of how to organize and present the content,” Demiral says. “Customers tend to think in terms of the product and then the problem. But engineers often think about the problem first and then the product.”
The result: Customers often wouldn’t fully understand the solution. At the same time, Marconi had to work at easing Level 3 agents’ concerns that making them responsible for reviewing solution content would suddenly turn them into technical writers.
Marconi confronted cultural issues as well. “Business needs are different in different parts of the world,” says Demiral. “What may be normal business practice for Americans may not be common elsewhere.” In Europe, for example, the value of the KnowledgeBase system was not readily accepted. But once employees there saw that customers could use the system to solve some of their own problems, they got on board. Such an experience has been incorporated into how Marconi approaches KM. “We sometimes have to introduce the idea of knowledge management over time, validate it, and then move forward,” Demiral says.
To ensure that agents continue contributing new knowledge to KnowledgeBase, Marconi uses rewards. Besides bonuses, knowledge contributors receive recognition during meetings and in a newsletter. “Rewards help feed this culture,” Breit says. “Peer pressure also plays a role. Everyone wants to contribute because it’s the right thing to do. You also have to make sure that the system works well and that employees use it long enough to see it work. It has to be embedded in training and fully integrated into daily operations so that it just becomes part of how you do business.”
