Enhancing IT Support with Knowledge Management

WHITE PAPER: ENHANCING IT SUPPORT WITH KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Enhancing IT Support with
Knowledge Management
DECEMBER 2007
Peter Gilbert, Roger Morse and Monica LeeGOVERNANCE AND SERVICE MANAGEMENTTable of Contents
Executive Summary
SECTION 1 2Knowledge as a Key to Success
SECTION 2 2Knowledge Management 101
SECTION 3 3Making Knowledge Management WorkPeopleProcessTechnologyKnowledge Management Best Practice Methods -How can they help?The Benefits of Knowledge Management
SECTION 4 7Conclusion
SECTION 5 7References
SECTION 6 8About the Authors
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Challenge
Today's support organizations are facing an ever-increasing set of challenges, brought onby growing service demands and an increasingly complex IT environment. Many organi-zations are evaluating forward-looking concepts and technologies - including ones theymay not have fully embraced in the past - in order to meet these needs.
Knowledge Management (KM) is an approach that helps address these challenges andthe potential benefits of knowledge management for IT support and self-service are wellknown. However, the steps that need to be taken are not self-evident: Support organiz a- tions are often unsure how to organize a KM initiative because the decision to embraceknowledge management is predicated on answering a number of vital questions: Whatkinds of processes are needed to create content? How should roles and respon sibilitiesbe assigned? How should content be structured? What is KM "good practice"?
Opportunity
Since the establishment of knowledge management as a discipline, more organizationshave created formalized knowledge management functions within IT Support. Correctlyleveraging people, process, and technology yields a more powerful IT support structurewhich operates at a higher level of efficiency, helping do more with the same resources.
Benefits
The effective use of knowledge management techniques and technology equips theSupport organization to be more responsive to customer needs, optimizing productivityand enriching support.
The potential benefits of knowledge management include:. Decreased costs associated with the "ramp-up" time for new staff. Reduced re-work and repetitious research into common incidents. Increased customer satisfaction through expedited incident resolution
When self-service is introduced, the benefits can extend to:. Lowered cost of interaction by deflecting phone support calls to the web supportchannel. Empowerment of customers with immediate access to answers, 24 hours a day
WHITE PAPER: ENHANCING IT SUPPORT WITH KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 1SECTION 1
Knowledge as a Key to SuccessTo effectively resolve incidents and help end-users remain productive, analysts must quicklydiagnose IT incidents and problems and provide solutions to address customers' needs.Unfortunately, unless knowledge management is a formalized process within support, theknow-how of support personnel is often under utilized. Such deficiency is manifested in anumber of ways: Pockets of expertise among Service Desk staff and clusters of experience ingiven areas may limit the capacity of the support organization to respond rapidly, especially inareas of high demand. The staff may waste time researching a technical challenge which hasalready been solved many times before. Depending on the incident, the solution may beknown but inaccessible or poorly defined. In some cases the solution may not have beendocumented at all.
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