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Best practices for knowledge sharing in field service are understood but too few companies are allocating the necessary resources, warns John Ragsdale, vice president of technology and social research at the US's Technical Services Industry Association

Ragsdale was revealing the findings in the  TSIA's  annual research: The State of Knowledge Management: 2015.  “It is frustrating when  best practices for knowledge management, such as knowledge-centred support are understood, but companies refuse to allocate the necessary resources. I continue to hear companies struggling with problems we know how to solve, but there isn’t support from executives to provide the funding, staffing and cultural support required to be successful."

But there’s hope as some companies are building modern knowledge-sharing platforms to help techs access the best information available, from any device. Here, Ragsdale explains to Derek Korte, editor of Field Service Digital, how to build a next-gen knowledge base that techs will actually use.

Whose job is it to build a digital, “virtual” knowledge base?
Ragsdale: That may depend on who has the “intelligent search religion” in your company. Some very large companies are hiring a new position —knowledge czar — who reports to the CIO and ensures each department captures and shares knowledge amount peers.

But full-time resources are rare within support and field service companies, so multiple employees dedicate time to nurture the knowledge program. The starting point is to identify all of the content sources across your enterprise — and across the Web — with valuable content to include in the search indexing, then prioritise each source for inclusion.[quote float="left"]The starting point is to identify all of the content sources across your enterprise — and across the Web.

 

Isn’t that complex?
Ragsdale: A simple way to do this is to ask service techs which content sources they find valuable. Field service leaders will likely be surprised at the variety of sources employees use. Look at the search platform analytics to identify content and to find articles that need to be updated or removed. Then, use relevancy analysis to understand the most-used content. Some search products may be able to index everything at once, while others may require some custom filters or integrations to access every repository.

What companies have successfully put this plan into action?
Ragsdale: During my recent Technology Services World presentation, I highlighted three TSIA member companies that have embraced this concept with great results: Tricentis,which sells software testing tools; Broadsoft, a provider of unified communications and collaboration software and services; and Informatica, which delivers enterprise data integration and management software powering analytics for big data and cloud services.

Each company offers an elegant user interface with a single search field that retrieves content from multiple sources. They also offer filtering options to help employees find exactly what they need. It’s a much better option that scrolling through pages of results. In general, once the virtual knowledge base approach is implemented, users will respond. Employees will conduct more searches, access and download more documents, and spend more time overall on the site. That not only helps employees become more productive, but it also streamlines customer self-service, which has huge cost savings implications.

Is a smart knowledge management strategy the best lever at a manager’s disposal to fight against the looming talent gap?
Ragsdale: I think service managers have a few levers to pull (scheduling automation, mobile devices, remote access, among others), but knowledge is definitely a critical element. We continue to hear that large numbers of senior techs are retiring in the next two to three years, so now is the time to proactively begin capturing their hard-earned knowledge any way possible.

Nearly half of field service respondents said a 20-30 percent improvement would be possible, while more than a quarter pegged improvement at 30 percent or more. The results from our latest research, The State of Knowledge Management: 2015, make clear that employees and managers understand the potential value of knowledge.

Why isn’t that potential realised?
Ragsdale: In my report, I talk about the key obstacles to realising this potential, including insufficient resources, broken or outdated processes, and the lack of a sharing culture. I also talk about how to incorporate some key knowledge metrics into executive operational reviews, to at least introduce the subject and hopefully place it on the exec’s radar.

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This feature first appeared on the US Field Service Digital  website and is republished here with kind permission

Understanding and extracting the value of the knowledge within your field service engineers is not just beneficial but essential for field service organisations writes Derek Korte, Editor of thesmartvan.com…

For service leaders, knowledge sharing is a top — and urgent — priority One reason? Older technicians are nearing retirement, and executives need to capture every morsel of those seasoned technicians’ know-how before it’s too late. Another reason is that companies increasingly recognize how powerful the collective knowledge of their workforce could be, if only every employee could access it.

Investing in new technology alone isn’t enough, though. Company culture is the primary driver of knowledge management success. And service leaders set the culture, says John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research at the Technology Services Industry Association. We spoke with Ragsdale about how service leaders can develop a culture of knowledge sharing, and some common mistakes they make along the way.

WHY DOES KNOWLEDGE SHARING MATTER FOR FIELD SERVICE ORGANISATIONS?

Ragsdale: Companies continue to invest in this year after year because they perceive enormous value. In our2014 knowledge management survey, 40 percent of respondents said that great knowledge sharing would improve their team’s productivity by 20 to 30 percent, while a third said they would see a 40 or even 50 percent boost. People really perceive knowledge management as a missing link in their operations.

The survey asked how respondents would rate their company’s culture regarding knowledge sharing on a 10-point scale, from one being share any knowledge and others will take credit to 10 being leaders set the example and reward knowledge sharing. A high “5” was the average, but field service had the highest culture score of any group we surveyed.

 

I spoke with a lot of companies about this finding that said sharing is a part of the culture of field service organizations. Technicians walk into a location to fix something and may see a piece of equipment they didn’t know existed. Collaboration is key. It’s natural for field service people to ask their peers for help, whether through Chatter, email or a phone call.

WHAT’S THE LINK BETWEEN COMPANY CULTURE AND SUCCESSFUL KNOWLEDGE SHARING?  

A lot of service leaders I spoke with at Technology Services World 2014 wanted to talk about culture, specifically how culture is a top-down initiative. If the company doesn’t have a sharing culture, or if there isn’t executive support for the movement, how can managers change the culture of their departments?

Others were curious about the differences between older and younger workers. It’s never safe to make generalizations, but the older workers (baby boomers, like me) tend to hoard knowledge. We’ve spent our entire careers being rewarded for knowing something no one else did. Younger workers, meanwhile, grew up in a very collaborative age, and they don’t think they should have to learn anything someone else knows. They want to share all their knowledge and post it out there for the world to see.

 

We’re seeing a culture shift occurring within companies and even departments. It’s great for knowledge management because the new folks are much more willing to share. They don’t want to hoard their knowledge. They want to post it out there for everyone to see.

HOW DO COMPANIES ENCOURAGE MORE SHARING? 

When I talk to companies that are on their third, fourth or fifth knowledge implementation, culture is very often at stake. If executives don’t value knowledge sharing, they won’t give the service leaders the necessary budget or staff to build or maintain the knowledge base. If the executive team isn’t setting a good example, managers will have to work harder than ever to overcome that challenge.

I’ve spoken with companies who admit to rewarding people for hoarding their knowledge, but they’re trying to change that culture. One step is to hire people who want to share knowledge and to stress its importance during orientation — and to reinforce that. If the only way people will get a raise or a promotion is to become an incredible knowledge sharer, they’ll likely do it — even if executives don’t send a warm, fuzzy message about sharing knowledge.

 

 

ANY BIG SURPRISES ABOUT HOW COMPANIES HANDLE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT?

In the survey, I asked respondents about mobility. Interesting, we found that 50 percent of companies haven’t made updates to their knowledge management system to support mobile. That stat is very telling because you know how horrible it is to consume an old-fashioned webpage on a smartphone. There are helpful knowledge management features, such as index trees and dynamic FAQ lists. But these features often don’t work on a mobile device. I was surprised that so few companies have created an app or rewritten a site in HTML5 to optimise for mobile browsing.

 

We’ve put a lot of emphasis on field service tools and technology, but we haven’t gone back and looked at the knowledge base and other content repositories that technicians access in the field. Some of those are barely accessible on a mobile device. The industry clearly needs more investment in the actual infrastructure to make knowledge more accessible.

This feature first appeared on Smartvan.com and is republished here with kind permission

 

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