Conversing with Ian Moyse on Cloud-Based Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is undoubtedly helping companies to scale up their business today, but there are still many companies that are unaware of how online knowledge management can benefit them. 

For those, looking for some valuable insights on knowledge management, we have something worthwhile for you. Read our latest interview with Ian Moyse, who is the Director of Natterbox Limited. He is an eminent keynote speaker on Cloud technology and social selling and has significant experience in providing marketing consultancy to firms. 

Given his deep expertise, we asked Ian Moyse a few key questions on cloud-based knowledge management and how it can help businesses in today’s day and age:

#Q1 Is Cloud-Based Knowledge Management the Need of the Hour?

‘Knowledge is power’ is an age-old mantra and in today’s information-rich and fast-paced demanding world, I would suggest this be changed to ‘fast and smart use of the right knowledge is power’.  The danger today is that the volume of information is vast. It is believed that in the last 2 years, 90% of the world’s data has been created. The speed of data creation is accelerated, hence the challenge is how do you turn data into information and onwards into knowledge. 

Challenges to the old-world approach include where to store the large amounts of data effectively, how to correlate and data mine it to use and how to access and digest it in a human-interpretable form. Greater computer storage and power are required for this. Further, new tech approaches such as Big Data and AI are being utilized to overcome human limitations regarding vastness and bring to the front so as to make more informed decisions.

#Q2 Does a Knowledge Base Platform Help Businesses Market Their Products and Services?

Knowledge extracted from enough data points can be invaluable in directing business to make smart decisions that result in strong business outcomes, be they cost savings, increased revenue, greater customer experience, faster time to market, etc., they also allow firms to bring the right products and services to the right market. In today’s competitive environment, marginal mistakes can become chasms of cost and pain, making smart informed decisions in business is more important than ever before.

#Q3 Does Knowledge Management Have a Role to Play in Boosting the Productivity of a Sales Team?

There is no golden key for boosting the success of a sales team. The improvement typically comes from a multitude of marginal gains, all compounding to a better outcome. To achieve these outcomes, you first need to understand that baseline you are working from, to have knowledge on the status quo, why it is, how it got there and what restricts it from changing. 

With the right knowledge from business data, you can then extrapolate what triggers can be pulled and what dials can be turned to gain small step improvements and in what metrics these are needed. For example, by reducing time to close, increasing average order values, reducing discount levels, increasing close ratios all in small ways, the compounded effect can be considerable.

#Q4 Can Managing Business Knowledge Drive Overall Business Growth?

Contributors to growth can come from many areas, but a key one for rapid growth is to make it as frictionless as possible for your clients and your staff. Growth is often stagnated by bad processes and inefficiencies that hamper scaling. Making things repeatable, self-serve where possible and frictionless are key contributors to rapid continued growth.  

To enable this, businesses need to be agile, to be able to change quickly when needed and to know when and what to change based on smart knowledge. Changing the course of the ship when it is about to hit the iceberg is too late, you need to have advance knowledge to be able to change direction early enough to have the required effect. The sooner you make the right decision, the sooner the positive benefits start and compound to greater effect. It is crucial to be proactive rather than reactive; be first rather than a follower; these are the keys that disruptors rely on often.

#Q5 How Does Knowledge Management Help in Conversions?

Having data is one thing, turning that into information strengthens your case, but the true power in discussions is knowledge. Having knowledge that something will cause an effect, will deliver a result or will protect against an outcome, makes decision making far more powerful. When we engage with customers, they want answers to their problems and needs, not data or facts.

#Q6 What Do Customers Prefer These Days – Self-Service or Phone and Email Support?

Today’s customer is very different from the ones only a few years ago. We have all been influenced by the likes of Web 2.0, Social Media, Smartphones, the Amazon experience, Apps such as Uber and the Internet of Things. Each omni-channel medium has its place and its acceptance depends on the scenario your customers are in at that time and your capability to deliver effectively on that specific channel. For example, self-service on Amazon supplemented by live chat works as they are so effective and fast to address a customer’s need. However, this takes an immense amount of investment in cash and time to achieve the level of 24*7 speed that Amazon delivers. 

For the average firm, chat, AI and social media can provide new channels of service; focus on those you can do well and do not over-rely upon them. Too often companies remove the phone number from their site, spin up some self serve and AI-chatbot technology and think their customers will be happy. Customers are happy to self serve when it works for them at that time; one glitch they encounter, they will switch channels for a more immediate resolution for their needs.

Take live-chat, when it is not manned and your website order process has just let the client down, they want to speak to someone to quickly ensure the goods are delivered for that urgent birthday gift. So, self-service, email, chat, web, social and phone all have their place depending on the customer need, timing, and urgency.

#Q7 Is Cloud-Based Knowledge Management Helping Firms Go Completely Paperless?

The green mantra seems to have fallen by the wayside among many businesses with recycling being the main noise and print management and paperless getting less voice these days. However, by the nature of information being presented in systems and ways that deliver it up as digestible knowledge, it enables a much lesser amount of printing on paper. Where a system provides intuitively displayed and relative information that aids humans, it becomes far less likely where printing becomes required. Additionally, as cloud-based systems deliver an always up-to-date, enhanced and mobile-easy solution, it becomes easier for us to utilize them in a pure electronic fashion. Moving forward, with the likes of Siri and Alexa coming into the picture, the next question will be, do we even need a screen interface?!

#Q8 How Important Is Knowledge Management for Post-Sales Support?

The more complex the product or service, the more essential knowledge management becomes in post-sales support. Customers want solutions, fix their problems and as quickly as possible. Businesses strive for first call fixes, reducing their overheads while improving customer experience. Knowing how to fix a problem is one thing, being able to re-use that information to others’ benefit is another. 

Often in older systems, tickets are logged and fixes are produced, but they don’t have an onward benefit. Another agent in another business division or region is putting in the same effort to produce a fix, instead of re-using the knowledge already captured in the first place. In today’s highly competitive world, with more fickle customers and a need to be fast, accurate and as frictionless as possible, effective cloud-based knowledge management systems are critical to effective post-sales support and other areas of a business.