Consolidate to a Single Knowledge Platform:
Simplify Information Access, Maintenance and Operations

Fragmented Knowledge Hampers Service and Support
Customer service and support organizations are awash in knowledge. Case notes. FAQs. Wikis. Release notes. Knowledgebase articles. Documentation. Policy guides. Share drives. E-mail folders. The list goes on and on.

What they generally don’t have is a great way to manage that knowledge to create great experiences for customers who call, write, or visit the web site. Often, each knowledge source is managed in a separate repository. Going from tool to tool, one search box after the next, users suspect the knowledge they need is somewhere, but they struggle to find it.

Worse still, knowledge in disparate repositories often goes stale or languishes in review queues. Duplicate information flourishes, and updating a document in one repository doesn’t help if five other repositories have the same information, just in a slightly different form. And, of course, each knowledge platform requires its own license fee, support contact, IT resources, and administration.

Implementing a Unified Information Strategy
Consona Knowledge Management enables support organizations to adopt a more rational strategy for managing knowledge:

• The knowledgebase built into Consona Knowledge Management becomes the primary repository for service and support information, such as problem resolution documents, how-to documents, and critical updates.
• Other valuable resources for customers can be easily spidered (indexed) and delivered through Consona Self-Service.
• Along with the knowledgebase and customer-facing resources, Consona Knowledge Central can spider dynamic repositories with internal-only information to provide service and support agents a single view of all relevant knowledge.

As part of the strategy, some legacy repositories may be discontinued or, over time, folded into the knowledgebase. Other repositories will continue. The Knowledge Source Manager provides a flexible capability for spidering content in many forms and places, hiding the complexity of distributed knowledge maintenance, keeping things simple for the agent and customer.

Getting Started
The first step in moving to a single knowledge platform is to understand what knowledge sources are currently being used. Having completed this knowledge audit, knowledge managers are in an ideal position to start planning what to do with the various repositories.

Service and support organizations are often surprised at how many different “shadow” knowledgebases exist. They’re also surprised at the efficiency and goodwill they gain when users no longer have to move from search box to search box, but instead can ask their questions once and get their answer in a single screen, wherever it resides.