Blog Assignment #1

One thing that an individual can never have to much of is knowledge. Continuing to gain knowledge and training can go a long way in the workforce. An effective knowledge management system can be very helpful.. An effective knowledge management system is first only a thought or an idea in someone's head. In this blog I will inform you of how Xerox took their idea and turned it into reality



Problem (Why):
The issue that Xerox had was that they did not have efficient solution for their customer service representatives. This is an issue because of the knowledge base that the employees have. They are not able to effectively assist end users with issues due to the fact that they are not knowledgeable about the solutions that should be implemented as well as having invaluable solutions.

Solution (What and How):

To solve this issue Xerox implemented a new knowledge management system called Eureka. Eureka was knowledge management application developed so that engineers could log into the system and now easily document newly created solutions using various templates through their office laptops.

Benefits:

The major benefit that I believe came along with Eureka is they could access it from their laptop. This process is best because if the engineer is on site and handling an issue they can document that issue directly after coming up with the solution opposed to having to both write up the solution and submit it or wait to submit the solution.

Difficulties:

The biggest difficulty was just getting people to use the system. You have this great knowledge system but no one is really in a rush to put more work on themselves. A engineer is just looking at that as more writing and more work that they have to do opposed to the actually end goal which is helping out others. I believe in order to be more efficient with this system would be to introduce it to the engineers first and get their opinions, what they like what they don’t like, how it would be more efficient for them, etc. If they buy into the system first it will be easier to implement, because it’s something they believe in.

Lessons Learned:

There are many lessons that can be learned from this case, but I believe the most important is "The Customer is always right". As cliché as may sound, this case was developed to assist in Customer Service efforts and the customer is what is important at the end of the day. Another valuable lesson that I learned is never settle for less. There were some solutions in the Xerox knowledge base but they weren’t all efficient, and they weren’t all correct. They strived for excellence in this matter and that's the only thing that they would accept. They wanted to best solutions and real life solutions and that's what the new knowledge management system did for them.