Let the users help themselves

If you are in a mid to large size organization that has implemented either Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, targeted Human Capital Management (HCM) applications, or really any enterprise-wide IT solution it will not have taken long to realize shortly after implementation you were faced with a rash of questions, issues, and problems that were discovered by the end users of your applications.Flickr - Jaydot

I know, you prepared detailed end-user instruction manuals, or even video tutorials.  You held numerous forums, demonstrations, and hands-on training sessions.  Maybe you even anticipated and posted a 'Frequently asked Questions' section on the company intranet.

You thought you had all the possible scenarios covered in your rigorous system and user acceptance testing.

But of course, once the system was subject to more widespread use, beyond the project team, conference room pilot, and the pilot department or division, you started running into issues, questions, bugs, and use cases that you had not anticipated, nor tested for prior to go-live.

And so, like in almost every major enterprise implementation before yours, you feverishly spent the first few days/weeks/months getting patches, updating user procedures, adding more and more items the the FAQ list, and generally fighting fires to keep the system running, and close the books/pay the employees/send the files to the bank, etc.  Honestly, even the very best implementations that I have worked on have to go through this insane stage, where the hours are long, the list of issues is enormous, and the light at the end of the tunnel seems very distant.

But eventually, the issues die down, the urgent problems are resolved, and soon, you as the implementor arrive at that place where you are sort of in limbo, kind of on standby. Not implementing anything new, because the organization is still trying to digest all the changes from the go-live, and still dealing with issues and questions from the user community as they arise.

After a while the questions and end user feedback starts to morph from 'This does not work' type questions, to 'Can the system do this' or 'I wish we had the ability to do that' type inquiries.  And typically as the system gets rolled out to more and more users and locations, and members of the project 'core team' either leave (in the case of consultants), or move on to other projects, the connection between HR or IT and the end user community tends to weaken, and at some point the questions, problems and issues start to increase.  Attrition, job rotation, and normal turnover all conspire against you, the 'super' users you could rely on may no longer be there, and soon you find your user guides, FAQs, and tutorials are not enough to keep up with the increased number of questions and issues.

And if you are like most organizations that I have been around, you respond by updating the manuals, FAQs, and tutorials. Maybe you hold more training sessions for the new users. You address the help desk calls one at a time, until you feel like you have stabilized the system once more. 

But what if instead of repeating the same pattern over and over again, of users finding issues, and asking questions of the project team or IT, you give them the platform and opportunity to help each other?

Instead of each individual question or problem  flowing from the user  to the central help desk, or support analyst, and back again to the user, usually via e-mail, what if you had the users enter all the questions in a shared question and answer forum, or even a wiki?

Larger organizations have hundreds, if not thousands of users, the chances are pretty good that most specific issues have been previously encountered by someone else in the user community.  Creating user forums with different sections for the various components of the application (Payroll, HRIS, Self-Service, etc.), that are accessible to all users, searchable, and monitored by the support team can be a great way to reduce time to resolution, lower support costs, and build a stronger, shareable body of organizational knowledge that potentially will also ease the transition of new users of the system. Additionally, you can include specific sections for enhancement requests, or for desired changes to the system or the underlying business processes.

This 'users supporting users' model has had quite a bit of success and publicity in the consumer spaces, most typically with tech goods and services like computers, home electronics, and popular consumer software.  Why not leverage the concepts with your internal enterprise users?

Have you deployed end user support forums for your community of users yet?  I would love to hear some case studies.

Comments

[Michael Krupa]

Great idea. I agree that the users supporting users model has been very successful in the consumer space. In fact, I use that model to solve most of my consumer tech issues. At my company we have knowledge base that is accessible to everyone inside the firewall that contains FAQ and troubleshooting information. Unfortunately only designated knowledge base authors are allowed to add or update the information. Wiki's are on the wish list but have not bubbled up to the top of priority list yet.

[Steve]

Michael, thanks for the comments. It is funny to me that since the consumer tech support model is now so prevalent, that it does not seem to have gained much traction inside the firewall with enterprise systems users. You guys seem to be half way there, if you could just open up the knowledge base a bit more to allow some user content creation I bet it would work out well.