Knowledge ManagementMy journey

Lyn MurnaneKnowledge Manager

Topics

1. The journey so far– What is a Knowledge Manager?– What is Knowledge– Some data– Where to start with a KM strategy

2. An overview of Medibank’s change3. Intranet Infrastructure – a quick how to

My journey so far

Quick CV • IT Trainer• FastTrack Software: Product Consultant,

Support Desk Team Leader• Medibank Private: Knowledge Management

Business Consultant• FastTrack – Knowledge Manager

• Telstra – Manager Knowledge Management– Manager of KnowHow – website supporting

14,000 customer service staff

What is a Knowledge Manager?

• From www.stevedenning.comThe main function of the knowledge sharing

position is to help champion organization-wide knowledge sharing, so that the organization's know-how, information and experience is shared inside and (as appropriate) outside the organization with clients, partners, and stakeholders.

Skills Required•Leadership•Communications•Customer / User Orientation•Facilitate sharing & collaboration•Teamwork•Learning and knowledge sharing•Analytical Thinking and Decisive Judgment

Knowledge Transfer

“I hear and I forget.I see and I remember.I do and I understand.”Confuscius

Knowledge is...

• Thomas Davenport defines knowledge as what happens at the moment in time when information becomes valuable to the individual seeking it.

• In call centres, help desks, and other support environments, that individual is either the support agent seeking information to help a customer, or a customer (product user, employee, partner, or vendor) seeking answers in a web-based self-help environment.

• Thomas Davenport, the author of several works on the subject including, Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment and Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know.

Some distractions

• Social Media 2011 - http://youtu.be/3SuNx0UrnEo

• Using KM - http://youtu.be/97i-JAyx1zY• Discover what you know – 2006

http://youtu.be/f_x78XLBBVM

Some data

• 56% of knowledge workers' time is spent either searching for information or gathering information. Only 25% is spent on the actual analysis.

• Organisations have focused on 'knowledge management' (KM) systems as the answer.

Where to start?

Let’s think about the types of people who participate in knowledge sharing

Participation - Australia

A Knowledge Strategy• What do we need to consider when trying to

define a Knowledge Strategy?

http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2007/12/the-post-method.html

How about we start by looking at a social media strategy?

POST1. People. Start by understanding what employees actually use and need today.

Don’t guess and don’t rely on anecdotal interviews. Instead, start with a quantitative assessment.

2. Objectives. With that baseline of understanding in place, next decide what your business goals are. You will need to build a decision council that includes IT and business to help you do this.

3. Strategy. The strategy part of this planning process means mapping the business goals to specific collaboration scenarios that you can actually improve — no tools yet.

4. Technology. The last step is to figure out which technologies improve your most important collaboration scenarios. Choose cloud services if they make sense; on-premises if not.

Sites & Tools that might help

• http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/• http://www.knowledge-management-

online.com/ (understand other company’s stories)

• http://www.systems-thinking.org/kmgmt/kmgmt.htm

• Working Knowledge – Thomas Davenport http://www.amazon.com/Working-Knowledge-Thomas-H-Davenport/dp/1578513014/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Telstra• KnowHow – an intranet based process and sales

information that supports 14,000 users – onshore , offshore and industry partners.

• KnowHow’s supports consumer customers • Including support for Telstra Business (Small

Business)• Telstra has at least 10 ‘official’ KM systems• 100’s of unofficial tools including spreadsheets,

personalised web pages, databases etc• My focus is on KnowHow

KnowHow

• Observations – content / information is verbose and not user friendly

• NO collaboration• Feedback loop is sporadic and not transparent• NO Governance, archiving or expiry of content

unless requested

Changes

• User Feedback forums– What does KnowHow sound like /

its character– Understanding what works and

what doesn’t– What’s missing?– Suggestions for inclusions– Getting engagement / buy-in

Processes

• Governance model• Audit process• Expiry process• Writing style guide• Publishing style• New content management system should

automate some of these processes

Telstra Bigger picture

• Project to create a company wide KM strategy• Aims to create a single source of truth • High level governance model• Has leadership support and cross business

unit endorsement• Project currently being scoped and mapped• Identifying measures of success

Suggested KM Strategy

<TELSTRA DOCUMENT ID> 21`

Pause for breath

• Any questions?

About private health insurance:

• Highly government regulated – and the regulations change

• Extremely complicated – for staff as well as customers

• Customers often don’t really understand their cover until they claim

• PHI is a high use compared to other insurances

Medibank Private2009

Market share in private health insurance in Australia

29%

Number of people covered 3.5 million

Number of memberships 1.8 million

Total contribution income $3.4 billion

Total benefits paid $2.9 billion (84.8% of contributions)

Number of customer transactions in Call Centre and Retail

6 million

Number of staff 3000

Medibank’s culture - approach to change

“Empowerment for Ground crew”

• “We don’t need a McKinsey or a Boston Consulting to tell us how to improve the business – we’ve got over 1200 ‘ground crew’ staff who know exactly where the real gaps are to be addressed in the business,” George Savvides – MD.

We embrace change better when we do it ourselves

In 2004 - The problems frontline faced

• Intranet – 1400 files, out of date, inconsistent, poor search, slow

• Many sources of information: Lotus Notes, shared drive (40,000 files), local info, Circulars

• 20,000 internal staff helpdesk calls per month • Communication to frontline staff ineffective – Circulars,

Manuals, Guides, many emails• Inconsistent information given to customers• One size fits all communication – 400 page fund policy

document!• Feedback from exit interviews - staff leaving because not

sufficiently supported to do their jobs effectively

Access to knowledge is confusing, inaccurate and inconsistent.

Opportunity costs > Millions

Opportunity costs and benefit realisation

• Training – new starters – $12.5Keach /30% turnover

• Staff Help Desks – 20,000 calls to 2 helpdesks.

• Call Handling Time – The Pilot Program statistics

demonstrated a reduction of 6.3% in Call Handling Time.

• Ex Gratia Payments – Cost MPL $500,000 in FY03.

Consistent, complete and accurate information in a central repository has the ability to reduce this cost.

• On-going costs 6 staff and support.

• Benefit realisation within three months.

Ongoing savings ~ Millions

Knowledge Management

Process

Technology

People

Content

Medibank’s elements of KM

•databases

•search engines

•intranets

•portals

•building a learning environment

•knowledge sharing

•trust

•support the capture of explicit knowledge

•continual learning and improving

•organisation & meaning

•accuracy

•consistency

•currency

Desired state – Communication to frontline staff

Knowledge Enablers

What worked well…initial project• Team

– Built by staff for staff

• Frontline engagementGet the end users involved…make it a knowledge system

– focus groups (New Starters, Experts, 20+ years service)

– super user group– competitions – pilot– surveys– road shows– video – of staff response to project

• Brand – identity – stickers, soft balls, umbrellas– quick reference

Tool◦ good search◦ no bells and whistles◦ met requirements◦ easy to use

Ongoing support◦ Feedback mechanism was and still

is the most popular feature Content

◦ Write it for the audience◦ Write if for how they think about

it◦ Avoid jargon

What didn’t work well….initial project

• Business experts & Management engagement - resistance

• Approval process – subject matter experts took three times longer than expected

• Training – self-led through a workbook doesn’t work for call centre / retail environment

A quick peek at Max

0

100000

200000

300000

400000

500000

600000

700000

800000

900000

Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

04-05

05-06

06-07

07-08

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Growth

Max / Molly / Intranet

Where are we headed?ahm KM implementation

• Create a Knowledge Management System (KMS) that is the single point of reference for all learning and knowledge materials, updates and alerts so staff are not trawling multiple mediums for information.

• Identify what knowledge is critical to the effectiveness of the Contact Centre and where gaps exist. Work closely with Operations Managers, front line staff and other stakeholders to identify the priorities for inclusion in the KMS.

“We share knowledge with our colleagues to deliver professional excellence.”

“Anyone in the organization who is not directly accountable for making a profit

should be involved in creating and distributing knowledge that the company

can use to make a profit” Sir John Browne – CEO of BP

Interesting article on BP’s knowledge management strugglehttp://www.ikmagazine.com/xq/asp/sid.0/articleid.750C40CD-3510-47CA-9827-5403ADCE1D93/eTitle.Greater_than_the_sum_of_its_parts_Knowledge_Management_in_British_Petroleum/qx/display.htm

Questions?

• Are you still with me?

Time for a break?

Developing the right information architecture

for Medibank’s Intranet

Topics for discussion – Medibank’s Intranet

About Medibank, KM and the old Intranet

About the process we have used to design our new Intranet

– Streamlining the information flow to meet diverse user needs

– Catering for intuitive user search and navigation

– Collaborating with customers for user satisfaction and efficiency

– Techniques and online tools for information architecture

About Knowledge Management:

• Established in 2004

• Team of 6 including:

– Manager

– KM Consultant

– Senior Technical Writer

– 3 KM analysts

• Manage the Intranet and 2 knowledge bases

– Intranet – all staff

– Max - 1200 member-serving staff (Retail, Call centre, processing)

– Molly – all staff policies, processes, forms etc.

About Medibank

Overview – new Intranet project

The Old Intranet:• Intranet seen as static and not valued • Technology last upgraded in 2000• Unsupported by vendor• No development environment • Missing standard features (eg functional search, forums, surveys, staff polls)

• No ability to segment content for different users• Authoring is limited to those trained in HTML coding• Most of the valued information lies in a separate knowledge base

(called Molly) that is not seamlessly integrated• Feedback from staff – “the tools are hard to use and confusing”

Aims for the new Intranet:

• People will be able to find people (drill down by division, location, or search)

• Will showcase company events, jobs, and encourage employee collaboration and networking

• Content – the top 20% of information 80% of employees need to know

• Brand new design and architecture - user-centric

Aims

A look at the existing high level taxonomy – Intranet

Classifying and presenting content in a logical way

Start by mapping what we know:• Map what is in scope (existing content) for Molly and

Intranet

Streamlining the information flow to meet diverse user needs

Techniques• Determine current use (heat map)• Determine what people are looking for (search log analysis)• Listen to and capture your users opinions (Affinity diagram)• Create persona’s• Determine what can go (ROT analysis – Redundant, out of date,

trivial)• Determine what is missing (Gap analysis)• Work with the content owners to convince them of a user centric

design

• KM Employee satisfaction surveys

• KM Strategy staff interviews

Streamlining the information flow to meet diverse user needs

Defining your users and their needsDefine the different user segments

BoardGESETManagersCorporate staffRetailCall CentreClaimsMember Liaison

TechniquesDetermine what they need – interviews

What they needWhat they use

Set tasks and observe useHow they use itHow they search and find

Get them to draw their ideal IntranetCrayonsButchers PaperColoured Pens

Segment, profile and interview our users

Affinity diagrams

Catering for intuitive user search and navigation

• Observations• Card sorting

• Search log analysis• Search database mapping and rationalisation

• Look at Best practice navigation designs• Provide multiple ways to search/navigate

Created cards from the top used content

• Create cards from the top content used (heat map)

• Performed card sorting exercises on different segments

– Open and closed

Analyse how they think – Open card sorting

•Take the top content and get staff to openly verbalise what they would name it, how they would categorise it

•Do this for multiple staff segments and notice the language used, and common trends

Search log analysis - MollyMolly

Intranet

Determine the new site structure (high level)

Start to build your new structure

Design multiple ways to search/navigate

Wireframes

Collaborating with customers for user satisfaction and efficiency

• Created Wireframes – conceptualise the outcomes we wish to achieve in next three years

• Engaged all major stakeholders – 1:1 interviews from Frontline staff to MD

• Published samples on the Intranet• Road showed wireframes at all corporate inductions• Road showed at senior executive offsites• Recorded feedback – modified designs

Refine your designs

• Narrow down the designs – 1st phase (of 3)– Tested these designs with stakeholders

• Road show the new designs with staff – senior managers to frontline, new inductions

• Take in feedback and modify the designs• Create functional specification• Receive more feedback from the project team• What happened (Aug 2009)

– Project was delayed due to financial concerns– Decided to upgrade the intranet based on all this work with

current systems– Built using html and then copying that into the CMS

Change Management• The writing / design / card sort process commenced early

2008

We notified of impending change in early March via Intranet bulletin board.

Removed all content apart from home page and intranet bulletin board at 31 March

Completed all content pages on 8 June 2009

Notified of change for 3 weeks prior to launch including an email with instructions on how to navigate

Launched 15 June 2009

Summary - Techniques used to create new design

New design & architecture

Affinity diagram ROT analysis

Heat map use

Open Cardsorting

Closed cardsorting

Map in scopecontent

Observations

Search log analysis

Questions?