As stated in the immediately prior post, our belief is that communicating information and organizing content is more effective when it is done in context. The correct context from our perspective is the process people are trying to undertake.
One such example where this can apply is in the organization and delivery of customer service and support information. In the January/February edition of Credit Union Business - a leading journal for CU management, David Austin of Contextware is featured in an article that addresses the opportunity for credit unions to customize content for their small business customers. On the surface, providing customer specific content makes perfect sense as the needs of a small business customer are very different from the needs of an individual or family. The challenge for credit unions is two-fold: identifying the content to provide, and organizing that content in a way that it is useful.
In this credit union example, if web content is developed to focus on what a small business is trying to accomplish (the how-tos of a small business vs. a menu of services offered by the how-tos of the credit union) then the credit union will provide greater value to their members and develop greater affinity and loyalty with them.
By asking what their customers can benefit from, the conversation now quickly moves beyond just basic financial services and to the broader question of what can the CU provide to help their memberships' businesses grow?
The CU now becomes a truster provider of information and partner of the small business rather than simply a provider of financial services. As a trusted partner, the CU now has differentiated itself from the dozens of other banks and financial institutions that the customer could move their business to.
What type of how-to content do your customers need?
(click here to access a pdf version of the publication - the story is found on page 43 of the journal - page 45 as seen through the Acrobat viewer)
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Business Processes: Communication vs. Automation
Business process technology capabilities (BPM, BPA) are overwhelmingly weighted toward automating the processes that they've attempted to capture. There's nothing wrong with this, and in fact, the 'language' of process provides modelers with a common platform for defining process flow, impacts and related systems -- regardless of the proprietary technology in use. You get the value of streamlining the exchange and delivery of data, errors are reduced, quality improves and transactions are speeded along their way. However, automation is just the tip of the iceberg.
The overwhelming majority of business processes performed in the workplace cannot be automated. Most processes being performed are a series of human interactions, with a high degree of subjectivity, and with technology and systems used to assist in the completion of a granular task, but not to perform the process in its entirety. Yet, if these 'human-centric' processes as Forrester likes to refer to them could become more repeatable, predictable and defined, the business would benefit. This is where BPM and its cousins fall on their collective faces. These technologies are utterly incapable of communicating "how-to" perform any of the things that they were designed to capture. They were designed to automate, not to communicate, and therefore they have no ability to easily translate a process for consumption by a large audience.
Most human centric processes are communicated through training/learning, experience and word-of-mouth. Technologies helping along the way (to communicate) include learning management systems, collaboration tools, content management and search. The challenge with these technologies (in general) are their fundamental lack of structure e.g. a content management system can be organized in a variety of hierarchical structures but once created, they are quite brittle to change; a learning management system is simply a delivery mechanism only as good as the curriculum and classes that are developed for delivery; search brings back too many results.
Contextware set out early on to solve the problem of communicating processes more effectively. And core to our belief is using process as a means to capturing and then also organizing the information that needs to be communicated i.e. the business process IS the context. The next few blog posts will highlight some interesting examples of how our core belief can be applied.
The overwhelming majority of business processes performed in the workplace cannot be automated. Most processes being performed are a series of human interactions, with a high degree of subjectivity, and with technology and systems used to assist in the completion of a granular task, but not to perform the process in its entirety. Yet, if these 'human-centric' processes as Forrester likes to refer to them could become more repeatable, predictable and defined, the business would benefit. This is where BPM and its cousins fall on their collective faces. These technologies are utterly incapable of communicating "how-to" perform any of the things that they were designed to capture. They were designed to automate, not to communicate, and therefore they have no ability to easily translate a process for consumption by a large audience.
Most human centric processes are communicated through training/learning, experience and word-of-mouth. Technologies helping along the way (to communicate) include learning management systems, collaboration tools, content management and search. The challenge with these technologies (in general) are their fundamental lack of structure e.g. a content management system can be organized in a variety of hierarchical structures but once created, they are quite brittle to change; a learning management system is simply a delivery mechanism only as good as the curriculum and classes that are developed for delivery; search brings back too many results.
Contextware set out early on to solve the problem of communicating processes more effectively. And core to our belief is using process as a means to capturing and then also organizing the information that needs to be communicated i.e. the business process IS the context. The next few blog posts will highlight some interesting examples of how our core belief can be applied.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Happy New Year and Thank You
It's that time of year for a heart felt thank you to our clients, colleagues, friends and business partners for making 2009 a good year for Contextware. Truth be told, we're constantly thankful to the people we work with because they are the key ingredient to enjoying what we do and to our success.
A lot of folks talk about putting 2009 'behind them' but more powerful is the notion of understanding how we got here in the first place, making appropriate changes to our businesses and then growing. Maybe that's too simplistic but those are the marching orders for 2010.
Happy New Year!
A lot of folks talk about putting 2009 'behind them' but more powerful is the notion of understanding how we got here in the first place, making appropriate changes to our businesses and then growing. Maybe that's too simplistic but those are the marching orders for 2010.
Happy New Year!
Friday, December 4, 2009
Gilbane Boston 2009 Content Management Conference
Spent Wednesday afternoon at the East Coast iteration of the Gilbane content management conference. A lot of activity...a whole lot of vendors. Credit to the Gilbane folks for a crammed exhibit hall. But in talking to many of the technology companies in attendance, there were few potential clients walking the floor...and even fewer buyers. This isn't a surprise so close to the holidays as people are rightfully distracted, only compounded by the economic environment.
Picked up on a couple of major themes, at least as portrayed by the technology companies there.
1. 'Traditional' web-CMS companies are heavily focused on providing services that allow for site personalization...i.e. the ability to customize the site experience based on customer specific preferences. The problem with this...most websites can infer very little from an IP address (at least very little when it comes to customer segmentation). There is still a long way to go to match customer type (prospective customer) with site content but at least the technology is there.
2. The ubiquitous SharePoint. A major strength and problem is flexibility. This has led to legions of consulting firms dead set on implementing solutions. As with most markets that begin to mature, the newest craze is packaged SP solutions and an increasing number of add-on products. One of our issues continues to be the lack of attention to the way in which information is architected from the outset of any SP engagement. The most frequent response to my question: "how do you organize content" is "ahhh...hmm...we usually use the client org chart."
3. Control mechanisms for corporate social collaboration. Control social collaboration? Good luck with that.
Picked up on a couple of major themes, at least as portrayed by the technology companies there.
1. 'Traditional' web-CMS companies are heavily focused on providing services that allow for site personalization...i.e. the ability to customize the site experience based on customer specific preferences. The problem with this...most websites can infer very little from an IP address (at least very little when it comes to customer segmentation). There is still a long way to go to match customer type (prospective customer) with site content but at least the technology is there.
2. The ubiquitous SharePoint. A major strength and problem is flexibility. This has led to legions of consulting firms dead set on implementing solutions. As with most markets that begin to mature, the newest craze is packaged SP solutions and an increasing number of add-on products. One of our issues continues to be the lack of attention to the way in which information is architected from the outset of any SP engagement. The most frequent response to my question: "how do you organize content" is "ahhh...hmm...we usually use the client org chart."
3. Control mechanisms for corporate social collaboration. Control social collaboration? Good luck with that.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Process and Customer Service Content - Part II
In the previous blog on customer service we discuss the benefit of organizing customer service content around the processes and workflows that agents follow. What follows are some specific steps to get started.
1. Determine the most frequent workflows/customer inquiries that your agents are expected to handle.
2. Take each of these workflows and break them down into a series of sub-steps that explain how the workflow should be handled by the agent. Keep it simple.
3. For each step within each workflow, identify the various types of supporting content, tools, information and guidelines that and agent might need in order to address each specific step. This is your inventory.
4. Now the hard part...which depends a lot on the content management system(s) you use to support your agents. Specific content should be filed in a structure that mimics the workflows and steps that you've outlined. This could be a folder and sub-folder structure, it could be a series of web-pages or it could be metadata that you associate with each piece of content.
In concept this seems pretty easy, and makes plenty of sense. In practice, trying to manipulate your content management system can be a bit more challenging depending on the way(s) in which content is organized in that system.
1. Determine the most frequent workflows/customer inquiries that your agents are expected to handle.
2. Take each of these workflows and break them down into a series of sub-steps that explain how the workflow should be handled by the agent. Keep it simple.
3. For each step within each workflow, identify the various types of supporting content, tools, information and guidelines that and agent might need in order to address each specific step. This is your inventory.
4. Now the hard part...which depends a lot on the content management system(s) you use to support your agents. Specific content should be filed in a structure that mimics the workflows and steps that you've outlined. This could be a folder and sub-folder structure, it could be a series of web-pages or it could be metadata that you associate with each piece of content.
In concept this seems pretty easy, and makes plenty of sense. In practice, trying to manipulate your content management system can be a bit more challenging depending on the way(s) in which content is organized in that system.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Corporate Giving: Off topic
Although this blog posting is more than a little off topic, it is timely. Contextware started giving more to non-profit causes the last couple of years for lots of reasons: it’s a good idea, we can afford to, events impacting our own lives compel us to and it there are lots of needs that go unaddressed. In 2008, Americans gave more than $307.65 billion to their favorite causes despite the economy. When adjusted for inflation, giving was down 5.7 percent, the largest drop recorded since it’s been tracked.Corporate giving, tied to corporate profits, decreased 4.5 percent (8 percent when adjusted for inflation) in 2008 to $14.5 billion. So although corporate giving is a smaller percentage of the total, it’s an important and volatile component. And to be fair, that number doesn’t include giving from all of the private (business-like) foundations e.g. the Gates Foundation in the total.
In 2009, it’s likely that giving in total, and corporate giving in particular will be lower. We’re telling as many people that will listen about opportunities to contribute back to the community, sign up for United Way (and other) capital campaigns and donate time to worthy causes. Hope you do the same. It does make a difference.
In 2009, it’s likely that giving in total, and corporate giving in particular will be lower. We’re telling as many people that will listen about opportunities to contribute back to the community, sign up for United Way (and other) capital campaigns and donate time to worthy causes. Hope you do the same. It does make a difference.
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