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Our Approach
The Common Pitfalls
Conventional knowledge capture initiatives suffer from complexity, low efficiency and high maintenance, because multiple documentation and capture platforms are used, often by independent individuals. For example; • Process flow diagrams are typically captured in drawing tools such as MS-Visio, • Written documents (for example, procedures) are captured separately in MS-Word documents, • On-line reference content is provided separately via the existing Intranet architecture or via an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS). With the wrong tools, it’s impossible to ensure accuracy, speed and maintain a current ‘version of the truth’. Worse than that, after the initial initiative has concluded, the organisation is left with a mass of unmaintainable documentation. This is costly, error-prone, lengthy and ultimately a waste. Hardly the best start to Performance Support.
Avoiding this Expensive Mess
What’s needed is a way of providing users with fingertip electronic access to all the relevant information and resources about the process, at the specific point in the process that they are working with at that moment. The best way to provide them with this is via a modelling tool (as opposed to process mapping tools and documentation tools) which provides many advantages; • Provides an Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS) – integrate organisational policies, process flows, procedure / work instruction documents, movie clips, templates, forms etc. into one browser-based, 3D navigable reference model, depicting the relationship between policy, people, process and technology, for daily use by all staff, accessible from their desktops. • Maintains a ’single source of the truth’ – capture re-usable process-related information in one place. Capture detailed work instructions ‘inside’ the process map, change the map, the work instructions change in synch. • Reduces the cost of initial and ongoing knowledge maintenance – wasteful, risky single-use tools such as MS-Visio, Word and Excel can be avoided completely.
Why not just use SharePoint?
MS-SharePoint by itself is simply a competent, repository application, also offering user collaboration and version control. But like so many others, it is still only a CONTENT management system. What’s needed is a CONTEXT management system. It presents the content (which can easily come from SharePoint itself, or a simple network location) but presented in context so that the user; • Gets intuitive, easy access to it, • Does not have to recall how they got to it last time (its searchable in a variety of ways), • Understands where and why it is applied.
The CONTEXT Management System
Our approach to Performance Support creates an electronic reference model, allowing the user to access underlying information in context to the task they are undertaking at the specific time, and supporting navigation from multiple entry points. This last point is critical; people seek, access and remember pathways to knowledge in different ways. Some relate to diagrams and charts, some don’t and prefer to view structured lists, coming from a ‘don’t care what process it belongs to – just give me the information on the screen’ perspective. It’s vital that the model supports this user diversity, presenting the same underlying information made accessible via a choice of starting points.
The Bottom Line?
Provide your employees with fingertip electronic access to all the relevant information and resources about their process, at the specific point in the process that they are working with at that moment, to support employee performance; • Intuitive, fast and accurate user access, • Single version of the truth, • Electronic versions of Policies, Processes, Procedures, Work Instructions, Forms and Templates, Reference guides, all interlinked and located in one place, • Ease of maintenance.