Ross Mayfield relates a Q&A session with Shai Agassi of SAP wherein Shai describes a wiki-based SDN (Software Developer Network) that is a Help Desk/Support approach for SAP developers. The net effect of the approach is:
- Faster turn around time for answers
- A larger community of knowledgeable contributors for providing better quality answers
- A permanent, growing body of knowledge for easy acccess
- An efficient means to provide training content
Some selected quotes by Shai Agassi lifted from Ross' post...
- 500,000 visitors per month.
- (it is) slashdot for SAP.
- System Integrators in India are hiring 500 people at a time and saying for their first three months they are supposed to participate in SDN.
- Aggregation and knowledge and self-categorization has created an environment where you know the guy who is giving advice [has] a lot of knowledge.
- We [SAP] are [only] contributing perhaps 20% of the content.
- Average time from Q&A is less than 30 minutes
Ross' closing thought...
For Q&A through formal channels [as opposed to the FREE environment described here] it's a day and a half, and probably at a cost for $85 to $245 per incident). Step back and think about it for a moment. It's the value proposition of a public community interface to an enterprise. In this case, it is for software developers. But what would happen if community was broadened to the whole ecosystem?
I guess I gave away the punchline in the title but this really does describe a scenario where a simple Help Desk solution can be highly leveraged into a de facto FAQ, KM, and training solution.
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