Mentoring
In the first of my KnowTech reports, I am focusing on applications that facilitate formal mentoring programs. What is mentoring? Mentoring is a concept we're all familiar with. We often form a mentor-mentee relationship organically, and it may only be through reflection
A strategic knowledge management model
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't
How to keep your knowledge base up to date
Here's a simple process to help keep your knowledge base in good shape. When it's in good shape, you'll be able to take advantage of customer self-service and automated chat. Click on the infographic to see it in full-size.
KM for strategic advantage
Original photo by Flowizm It's easy to see the benefits of knowledge management when its applied to a support function. Problems are solved more quickly, customers are happier, analysts are less stressed. It's almost a no-brainer to look here first for
How active is your directory?
Getting the most out of Confluence's personal spaces If your organisation has been using Confluence for several years, already, chances are it's adoption has happened gradually—organically, even—as one team started using it for documentation, and then another, and then another. Your organisation's
5 steps to better search with RightNow Answers
I've been working on an interesting project with a higher education institution. They have Oracle Service Cloud Enterprise, which ships Knowledge Foundation as standard. Knowledge Foundation is what used to be known as RightNow Answers. They came to me with
Support: the wild west of documentation
Earlier this year, I was listening in on the Twitter stream for #writethedocs—a conference for technical writers—when one of the  speakers mentioned turning documentation from passive to dynamic. Support: the wild west of documentation. -- @gkoberger Fantastic #writethedocs talk. https://t.co/ZQc11NH3ad — Aprill Allen
An open letter to software vendors
Dear Vendor, I saw a tweet today and it made me think of you. Profound @landesk customer review: "You need the headspace and time as an organisation to fully exploit it.” http://t.co/cLwcXZ9h75 #itsm — Martin Thompson (@itammartin) July 1, 2015 We could say this
ITIL as Dr Seuss: A challenge
One of our biggest challenges in service management is explaining what it is and why it's useful. The ITIL definition is dry and completely unsellable. A set of specialised organisational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services. It's
The Return of Service
You know, it's funny. In this app economy we're working in, you can buy just about anything as-a-service. And yet we—the makers, the designers, the writers, the product marketers, etc—are trying out all kinds of different marketing and pricing recipes