Knowledge-based working boosts customer excellence
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www.ictmagazine.nl In two previous articles in ICT/Magazine we gave a thorough account of how the old style of knowledge management has now turned into today’s knowledge- based working. Following on from the theory and the technique, we can now look at the practice. On a site visit to an ABN AMRO office in Enschede, two bank managers told us about their journey to better customer excellence. Wildly complicated ABN AMRO focuses heavily on Customer Excellence (CE). In 2011, for example, offices were challenged as part of the CE project to think about their own business processes and associated work instructions, also known as standard operating procedures (SOP). is initiative took on a life of its own, which is why the CE experts called on program manager Herman Mansveld for help. “People were developing their own SOPs in various parts of the organization,” he says. “In a sense, they were reinventing the wheel, over and over again. CE also called me in because writing good instructions is wildly complicated. is is particularly so when you’re dealing with complex processes featuring a lot of if-then situations. If we were going to make a really usable SOP which people could understand, immediately implement, and which was easy to set up, we needed other tools.” A third problem that the CE project came up against was the fact that various processes are components of long chains: mortgages, capital ac- cumulation, credit etc. e business process owner is responsible for the quality of his process or chain. “ey risked losing control over processes in their chains,” explains Mansveld. “is was because there was no approval step between process managers and the staff working with their self-written procedures.” Knowledge based With these three issues in mind, Mansveld came up with two paths towards a solution. “rough a supplier, Knowledge Values, we were already in a position to model knowledge in the form of pro- cesses, for example. Knowledge is nothing more than knowing the shortest route to your objective. When we’d just started with Match – the driver behind the interactive instructions – we used the following situation as a test: ‘A close corporation in formation wishes to become a full-fledged close corporation.’ We first collected all the information in our Infor- mation Bank which referred to such a situation. Printing that out leſt us with a huge pile of paper. e eventual interactive instructions we produced with Match were reduced to nine questions. at’s the difference between traditional knowledge management and knowledge-based modeling. Match instantly turns those models into working applications. ose applications are comparable to the tax return application for income tax. In the past we completed our tax return on a paper form, referring to a thick tax almanac published by Elsevier or Kluwer. You then had to check for yourself whether a particular question was relevant to you, and whether you should take into account all the variables and exceptions to the endless rules, and if so, how. Today’s income tax application is partly knowledge-based. It’s partly so because it’s still being programmed in soſtware code, which is no longer necessary with Match. e application monitors what you enter to determine the next relevant question in the process. So with Match we’d built up experience in using knowledge-based modeling of complex processes to create interactive and practical, user-friendly instructions. But that wasn’t the end of the story.” The crowd e other path to a solution related to the question: how do we ensure that we effectively bundle the knowledge within our organization, so that people – the crowd – can supply and further develop their knowledge in a centralized location? An extension of this question was: How do we ensure that business process owners regain control over their processes? “en the second idea came along,” says Mansveld. “An appstore, but in our own jargon: the SOP Store. We used one of our suppliers, InfoSupport, for this. ey had developed the KnowNow platform, a type of collective memory, for their internal use. InfoSupport’s developers were using this system to share knowledge among themselves. We wanted to link both platforms – Match and KnowNow – so we’d have the Knowledge Values technology in an app- store environment. e thinking behind this is for everyone to be able to find and use approved SOPs in that SOP Store. People can also submit proposals themselves for new SOPs. e business process owner serves as the initial editor, because he is re- sponsible for ensuring that a SOP complies with all laws and regulations. If the process owner sees potential, the SOP is developed by those who are skilled in knowledge modeling, and then the whole crowdsourcing game can begin. Staff using the SOP discover areas for improvement or any missing elements. It’s people within the organization who therefore ensure continuous improvement. eir feedback guarantees the quality and com- prehensiveness of the SOP.” Mansveld got started on these two solution path- ways in 2012, working with the project leader for Standard Operating Procedures, Reita Kolman, a handful of early believers among office staff, and CE Program Manager Jeroen Pruim. Showing it works Setting up any new ICT is not an easy job, and ABN AMRO is no exception. Procedures need to be followed and bids written, which takes up a lot of time. But Mansveld and Kolman did not have the time. “And that’s why we prepared the first steering group meeting very thoroughly,” says Mansveld, gleefully. Some of those present at that meeting were quick to grumble that they had bet- ter things to do with their time. ey had not even been sent any documents to prepare themselves. At this point, one of our team members asked if he could use someone’s iPad to show something. He opened up an interactive SOP on the device and said: ‘Look, this is the first version, already live.’ ey had gone live with the KnowNow platform and put a few working SOPs on it. is was a way to demonstrate to the organization just how pow- erful this approach is. Just show you can get some- thing up and running with very few resources.” Experience it It was important to maintain momentum by quickly expanding the functionality within the SOP Store. “We wanted to experiment with 120 staff members as early adopters,” Mansveld explains. “Because if an interactive SOP is fundamentally strong, you might as well release it as quickly as possible. But expanding it required sponsorship. A colleague then said to me: ‘Maybe budget owners just need to experience what this means.’ We then engaged two retail bank directors in a role play. ey stood behind a desk and a man and his girlfriend approached with a question. ey were moving in together and the man wanted to give his girlfriend access to his investment portfolio. Of course we’d made an interactive SOP for this. One of the directors was allowed to help the couple in the traditional way, and the other director could use the SOP. e latter had helped the couple in no time at all, while the director who had to do it in the traditional way is, I believe, still working on it.” An inventive and successful way of organizing a budget. e first 120 people were able to start us- ing it and the functionality could be expanded. e system was hosted externally and it went live within three months of its initial launch among the early adopters. Shared leadership Any organization considering setting up a SOP Store needs to be acquainted with LEAN working. People need to be accus- tomed to giving input into ideas. If there’s no sense of shared leadership, people won’t want to give their input, or they won’t dare to, and the project won’t take off. The working process of a SOP encourages people to keep thinking and participating. Knowledge-based working boosts customer excellence Smart use of crowdsourcing replaces dry work instructions with live knowledge by: Ed Lute Following on from the consumerization of IT, we are now seeing the consumerization of knowledge. As part of that, knowledge is no longer being hidden in thick manuals and in bloated, unwieldy content systems. Instead, all kinds of knowledge – even bafflingly complex material – is becoming easily and effectively available, and constantly updated. A vision of the future? At ABN AMRO, it is already happening. Reita Kolman, Project Leader Standard Operating Procedures Simone Kruizinga, Advisor Personal Banking and Timothy Bergsma, Deputy Director
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Transcript of Knowledge-based working boosts customer excellence
www.ictmagazine.nl
In two previous articles in ICT/Magazine we gave a thorough account of how the old style of knowledge management has now turned into today’s knowledge-based working. Following on from the theory and the technique, we can now look at the practice. On a site visit to an ABN AMRO office in Enschede, two bank managers told us about their journey to better customer excellence.
Wildly complicatedABN AMRO focuses heavily on Customer Excellence (CE). In 2011, for example, offices were challenged as part of the CE project to think about their own business processes and associated work instructions, also known as standard operating procedures (SOP). This initiative took on a life of its own, which is why the CE experts called on program manager Herman Mansveld for help. “People were developing their own SOPs in various parts of the organization,” he says. “In a sense, they were reinventing the wheel, over and over again. CE also called me in because writing good instructions is wildly complicated. This is particularly so when you’re dealing with complex processes featuring a lot of if-then situations. If we were going to make a really usable SOP which people could understand, immediately implement, and which was easy to set up, we needed other tools.”
A third problem that the CE project came up against was the fact that various processes are components of long chains: mortgages, capital ac-cumulation, credit etc. The business process owner is responsible for the quality of his process or chain. “They risked losing control over processes in their chains,” explains Mansveld. “This was because there was no approval step between process managers and the staff working with their self-written procedures.”
Knowledge basedWith these three issues in mind, Mansveld came up with two paths towards a solution. “Through a supplier, Knowledge Values, we were already in a position to model knowledge in the form of pro-cesses, for example. Knowledge is nothing more than knowing the shortest route to your objective. When we’d just started with Match – the driver behind the interactive instructions – we used the following situation as a test: ‘A close corporation in formation wishes to become a full-fledged close corporation.’ We first collected all the information in our Infor-mation Bank which referred to such a situation. Printing that out left us with a huge pile of paper. The eventual interactive instructions we produced with Match were reduced to nine questions. That’s the difference between traditional knowledge
management and knowledge-based modeling. Match instantly turns those models into working applications. Those applications are comparable to the tax return application for income tax. In the past we completed our tax return on a paper form, referring to a thick tax almanac published by Elsevier or Kluwer. You then had to check for yourself whether a particular question was relevant to you, and whether you should take into account all the variables and exceptions to the endless rules, and if so, how. Today’s income tax application is partly knowledge-based. It’s partly so because it’s still being programmed in software code, which is no longer necessary with Match. The application monitors what you enter to determine the next relevant question in the process. So with Match we’d built up experience in using knowledge-based modeling of complex processes to create interactive and practical, user-friendly instructions. But that wasn’t the end of the story.”
The crowdThe other path to a solution related to the question: how do we ensure that we effectively bundle the knowledge within our organization, so that people – the crowd – can supply and further develop their knowledge in a centralized location? An extension of this question was: How do we ensure that business process owners regain control over their processes? “Then the second idea came along,” says Mansveld. “An appstore, but in our own jargon: the SOP Store. We used one of our suppliers, InfoSupport, for this. They had developed the KnowNow platform, a type of collective memory, for their internal use. InfoSupport’s developers were using this system to share knowledge among themselves. We wanted to link both platforms – Match and KnowNow – so we’d have the Knowledge Values technology in an app-store environment. The thinking behind this is for everyone to be able to find and use approved SOPs in that SOP Store. People can also submit proposals themselves for new SOPs. The business process owner serves as the initial editor, because he is re-sponsible for ensuring that a SOP complies with all laws and regulations. If the process owner sees potential, the SOP is developed by those who are skilled in knowledge modeling, and then the whole crowdsourcing game can begin. Staff using the SOP discover areas for improvement or any missing elements. It’s people within the organization who therefore ensure continuous improvement. Their feedback guarantees the quality and com-prehensiveness of the SOP.”Mansveld got started on these two solution path-ways in 2012, working with the project leader for
Standard Operating Procedures, Reita Kolman, a handful of early believers among office staff, and CE Program Manager Jeroen Pruim.
Showing it worksSetting up any new ICT is not an easy job, and ABN AMRO is no exception. Procedures need to be followed and bids written, which takes up a lot of time. But Mansveld and Kolman did not have the time. “And that’s why we prepared the first steering group meeting very thoroughly,” says Mansveld, gleefully. Some of those present at that meeting were quick to grumble that they had bet-ter things to do with their time. They had not even been sent any documents to prepare themselves. At this point, one of our team members asked if he could use someone’s iPad to show something. He opened up an interactive SOP on the device and said: ‘Look, this is the first version, already live.’ They had gone live with the KnowNow platform and put a few working SOPs on it. This was a way to demonstrate to the organization just how pow-erful this approach is. Just show you can get some-thing up and running with very few resources.”
Experience it It was important to maintain momentum by quickly expanding the functionality within the SOP Store. “We wanted to experiment with 120 staff members as early adopters,” Mansveld explains. “Because if an interactive SOP is fundamentally strong, you might as well release it as quickly as possible. But expanding it required sponsorship. A colleague then said to me: ‘Maybe budget owners just need to experience what this means.’ We then engaged two retail bank directors in a role play. They stood behind a desk and a man and his girlfriend approached with a question. They were moving in together and the man wanted to give his girlfriend access to his investment portfolio. Of course we’d made an interactive SOP for this. One of the directors was allowed to help the couple in the traditional way, and the other director could use the SOP. The latter had helped the couple in no
time at all, while the director who had to do it in the traditional way is, I believe, still working on it.” An inventive and successful way of organizing a budget. The first 120 people were able to start us-ing it and the functionality could be expanded. The system was hosted externally and it went live within three months of its initial launch among the early adopters.
Shared leadershipAny organization considering setting up a SOP Store needs to be acquainted with LEAN working. People need to be accus-tomed to giving input into ideas. If there’s no sense of shared leadership, people won’t want to give their input, or they won’t dare to, and the project won’t take off. The working process of a SOP encourages people to keep thinking and participating.
Knowledge-based working boosts customer excellenceSmart use of crowdsourcing replaces dry work instructions with live knowledge
by: Ed Lute
Following on from the consumerization of IT, we are now seeing the consumerization of knowledge. As part of that, knowledge is no longer being hidden in thick manuals and in bloated, unwieldy content systems. Instead, all kinds of knowledge – even bafflingly complex material – is becoming easily and effectively available, and constantly updated. A vision of the future? At ABN AMRO, it is already happening.
Reita Kolman, Project Leader Standard Operating Procedures
Simone Kruizinga, Advisor Personal Banking and Timothy Bergsma, Deputy Director
www.ictmagazine.nl
Just do itKolman explains how these 120 early adopters, spread across the country, were asked to pass on any problematic cases they experienced. “We then made interactive work instructions for these cases, which people could go and experiment with. Th is is based on the idea that we’re not going to determine which SOPs go into the Store. It’s the people who use them who determine that. We also appointed a number of ambassadors whom we asked to provide demonstrations of the SOP Store at daily or weekly briefi ngs. We started with around 10 SOPs, and now there are more than 40. Most of them are interactive work instructions, but we’re now also working on other forms of content, such as checklists. Th ose are
very useful and anyone can make them. Or short fi lms, where you demonstrate a particular process in PowerPoint for example. But there are also a few SOPs which are almost advisory applications. For example, the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets is requiring that banks, as of January 1, better inform their customers about investment portfolios, with outputs such as investment profi les and investment reports. Th at’s really an advisory process. ICT don’t have time to help us with that, so we asked someone to model the knowledge-based process. Th at’s now an interactive SOP, where aft er checking, the overviews, advisory forms or contracts are automatically printed. Four such SOPs are now in the Store.”
Kolman is justifi ably proud to report that the SOP Store has helped more than 6,100 users within a year. “And that’s without us even promoting it ourselves. It’s literally just on word of mouth. So it’s appropriate that our motto is: sometimes you should just do it. Th e success speaks for itself, and does the work. Th e entire retail bank and the customer contact center now use the SOP Store and a growing number of business units are indicating that they want to join in.”
For and by staff membersRapidly growing demand for interactive SOPs is putting immense pressure on the three people working full-time at Match to model old-fashioned written work instructions into an interactive SOP. “Eventually we want process owners themselves to learn how to make a SOP and maintain it,” says Mansveld. “For content such as checklists and short fi lms that’s certainly achievable. Th at’s why the pay-off for this platform is: ‘For and by staff members.’ Local spe-cialists can launch their own ideas themselves in the SOP Store. But actually creating the interactive SOP is still a specifi c job in its own right. You need to be able to think in an analytical and outcome- focused way, and you have to do lots of it. We’d particularly love to bring in a few processologists to head offi ce for the SOP Store, but it’s still diffi cult to persuade them. Th ere are around 250 people in the organization who work on processes, with ARIS schedules, PowerPoints etc. Th e SOP Store, and the whole idea it’s built upon, disturbs their traditional working method of sketching out and then writing out instructions for processes. Th ey are exceptionally well qualifi ed for modeling their processes and knowledge. Not in the traditional way using ARIS or comparable tools, but in Knowl-edge Values’ Match. For now it’s hard to get them out of their traditional framework and to modeling in a knowledge-based and outcome-focused way.”
IncubatorTh e crowd’s capacity to make improvements means that a SOP doesn’t need to be complete. Mansveld:
“Th ere can’t be errors in it, but from the moment the instruction is available in the Store, experts start to respond. Th ey’ll provide input for improvement, and the very next day it’s processed into the SOP. In a way you’re working on perfect requirements, in case a particular instruction ever needs to be turned into soft ware. Th at may happen if a SOP gets too big to stay in the Store, for example with extensive advisory processes. So in that sense the SOP Store acts as a kind of incubator, helping us to very quickly put new products on the market.”Asked how many people secretly still have a folder full of information in their desk drawer, Kolman replies bluntly: “Everyone! Look, for us it’s about making the work of the end-user as pleasant and easy as possible. If having a folder in their desk drawer makes them happy, they should keep using it. What we do is create best practices, show that they work, and then we rely on the natural process that follows. And of course we hope that this system will have wide enough appeal to motivate staff to share all their knowledge with us.”
No more wasteOffi ce director Anita van der Molen says that thanks to the SOP Store, people now really feel that they are listened to. “Not only are we now listening to people who know a lot, but they can also see that their knowledge is refl ected in usable tools. These people maintain their status as experts, and the SOP just confi rms it. The wonderful thing is that it’s those people who have now become the
ambassadors for the SOP Store. And you need them, because it’s not easy changing people who are stuck in their old ways of working. If an expert in a particular area now gets a call asking for information, they can say: ‘If you go to the SOP store, it’ll be a lot quicker than me explaining it to you now.’ And that’s why it’s also extremely important for the Store to be very user friendly.”
Van der Molen has seen how a lot of work is being done more effi ciently, thanks to the SOP Store. “The waste is being picked out. Processes held in the SOP Store are found much more quickly than when people use the old knowledge bank. If you enter the term divorce into the SOP Store, for example, you immediately see a number of SOPs relevant to that. Using the interactive instruction, checklists and short fi lms saves us on average 10 to 15 minutes each time. It’s also very benefi cial to the induction of new staff members. The supply of information to the back offi ce has also become less prone to error. And above all, we waste less of the customer’s time. There are fewer cash-on-delivery charges, fewer rejections and customers are less likely to have to come back because of something we’ve forgotten.”
The suppliersKnowledge Values believes in the value of knowledge. Drawing on its scientifi c roots, Knowledge Values makes knowledge-based working achievable for companies who understand that knowledge is the critical factor in high performance.InfoSupport, a family business, is a full-fl edged IT service provider aiming for long-term relationships with its customers and staff. The company helps IT departments with ongoing professionalization. If you would like to participate in a site visit to the ABN AMRO SOP Store, please register at: [email protected]
Herman Mansveld, Program Manager
