KM with Google: Real World Cases
Seek and Deploy: Mobile Access Becomes Reality
The Business:
Circle-E provides clients such as Wal-Mart, The Home Depot and Jack in the Box with indoor and outdoor preventive and reactive maintenance. The Texas company employs 25 mobile workers and at least as many contractors with specialized skills. The organization makes it a top priority to use leading-edge technology to manage client information and provide superior service.
The Challenge:
Every facility serviced by Circle-E’s field maintenance professionals is unique. As they prepare for a job, the company’s workers have to account for lots of data—from air conditioning filters to kitchen measurements. An unprepared field rep, obviously, can’t be as efficient as one who is “in the know.” In years past, information about individual facilities was either locked away on paper-based work orders or stored in field professionals’ heads.
This informal way of sharing information—reps picking each other’s brains—was costing Circle-E time and money. The company wanted to differentiate its services, improve efficiency and reduce costs by creating a centralized, searchable repository of information about customer facilities that field personnel could access using their mobile devices.
The Solution:
With a search appliance, Circle-E can help its workers find the information they need. It addresses all forms of content in the company’s SQL Server database, and makes the information there easily accessible to employees even from the field. There was minimal need for training. Circle-E employees simply integrated search into their daily process, getting the information they needed before they headed out to work with clients. In addition to easy searching, field service professionals can add useful information into the database while on the go.
With the new solution, internally called “KNOWN,” Circle-E field maintenance staff members receive emails on their mobile devices with work orders, and log into KNOWN remotely for all pertinent information, detailed specifications and photos, about the job site.
The Results:
Circle-E clients have noticed the enhanced preparedness and professionalism that reps now bring to the job. Field reps notice the benefits, too. Some say that when building an estimate, if there’s a part or description of labor that they don’t understand, they can now search KNOWN and figure it out. Or, if there’s an estimate that needs specific part codes, that information is handy.
Reps are willing to collaborate as never before, making sure they input the information in KNOWN, so when another rep looks up his customer, it’s clear how to work best with that specific client. “No matter where anyone is, they can add, edit and search the database,” says Circle-E vice president Seann Slosson, who manages the company’s IT.
The benefits don’t stop in the field. Circle E’s office workers are also putting search to good use. In the human resources department, for example, the advantages have led to greater efficiency and cost savings. Because employees can now find pertinent part numbers, paint codes, etc., on their own, the administrative support staff has been reduced by two slots, saving $80,000 a year.
The central office staff has also been reduced from nine positions to four, as the company has significantly upgraded HR functions such as recruiting and new employee orientation. Orientation is now done online by searching the keyword “orientation” rather than in a class setting. HR can search for new candidates by skill, zip code and prior interview notes. Consequently, the overload of technicians that they once had to sift through is quickly narrowed to the relevant candidates.
All in all, Circle-E has reaped tangible results. Better prepared field reps and automated find-and-collaborate capabilities have led to a noticeable difference in both top and bottom lines.
While over 3 million businesses use Google Enterprise tools, this paper highlights two businesses—one large (Genentech) and one small (Circle-E). Each presents a unique use case for knowledge management.
The Changing Workplace
The business world has changed over the past decade. The competitive landscape has become global. The workforce has skewed much younger. And technology has evolved. It has moved from the desktop to the Web, and from the desktop to the cloud.
Enterprise solutions, such as Google’s, fit neatly into this new world. The executives mentioned in this article have found that access to information is critical to business users.
Yet the real power of such enterprise solutions, as evidenced from the anecdotes here, is their transformative nature. The tools are familiar to the growing youth base of today’s companies, making adoption swift and enthusiastic. More importantly, their usability breeds employee engagement. Users become more involved and productive. Innovation increases, teamwork and collaboration grow as well.
Companies can now cite culture shifts as the rank-and-file break norms with ideas that flow upward and solve business problems. Enterprise solutions are not so much the purview of the IT department, but rather that of the C-suite as top executives look at ways to lead their organizations to the next level.
1 Feldman, Susan. “Hidden Costs of Information Work.” IDC, 2009.
2 Info-Tech Research Group. “ROI Guide for Document Management.” www.infotech.com, 2008.
3 Crim, Dan and Gerard H. Sejits. “What Engages Employees the Most or, The Ten C’s of Employee Engagement.” Ivey Business Journal, 2006.
4 Lockwood, Nancy R. “Leveraging Employee Engagement for Competitive Advantage.” SHRM Research Quarterly, 2007.