Category Archives: Knowledge Base

For those of us in the US, Memorial Day weekend launches the beginning of the summer season. Up through Labor Day many workers take vacations with their families and friends.  Many businesses have to slow down production as workers fill gaps to cover for one another, or tasks may get postponed altogether.  This can wreak havoc on businesses that may already be short staffed.

Why not use your knowledge base software to help fill in those gaps? You can use your knowledge base to:

• Keep a clear calendar of who is out of the office and when so that departments are adequately staffed at all times.
• House resource manuals, how-to’s, and FAQ’s for other departments to access to find important information while you are out.
• Populate your website with self help answers so customers can find answers for themselves, reducing call volume.
• Easily and effectively share any information that is worth sharing!

Here at Novo Solutions we find that most people purchase a knowledge base software solution to fill a certain need.  What many do not realize is that their software can do so much more.

Give us a call today for a free evaluation of how the Novo Knowledge Base can take you through the seasons.
http://www.knowledge-base-software/

When we came out with our first knowledge base software over ten years ago we had no idea where it would go.  Initially it seemed like a good idea to help people find a low cost,  easy way to centralize their organizational knowledge.   Before long we realized that all kinds of knowledge, from internal documentation to customer facing web support could be managed in a single, powerful application.  Since that time the Novo Knowledge Base continues to be one of our best selling solutions in multiple organizations and across multiple departments.

Today most organizations realize the importance of having a company knowledge base, but did you realize just how important effective knowledge management is to the success of your company?  According to Forbes, “Three key reasons why actively managing knowledge is important to a company’s success are: 1.) Facilitates decision-making capabilities, 2.) Builds learning organizations by making learning routine, and, 3.) Stimulates cultural change and innovation.”

Here is a short article speaking to “Why Knowledge Management Is Important To The Success Of Your Company” .  We hope you’ll enjoy yhe read and if you have any questions about the Novo Knowledge Base please contact us.

http://www.novosolutions.com/knowledge-base-software

Last week we talked about the benefit of providing self support to customers with a self help knowledge base.  This week we will talk more about how a knowledge base is an essential tool for supporting agents with the information they need to quickly answer questions and resolve issues.

Most of us have had the unpleasant experience of having to make multiple telephone calls to a call center.  It is frustrating to be on hold and repeat your story, but what is worse is when you get a different answer from different representatives.  This often happens because the agents are not all gathering information from the same source.

If you are using shared folders, emails, or a home grown data base solution for storing company knowledge there is a better solution!  A central knowledge base repository is perfect for storing information that agents need when speaking to customers. This ensures that everyone is referencing the same information, and because it is simple to update, information is easily kept current.  Best practices and approved answers can be at agent’s fingertips so customers are told the right answer every time.

A cloud hosted knowledge base solution allows companies to step into a robust solution at an affordable price, and when priced per user, you only pay for what you need on a monthly basis.

Predictable answers.  Predictable fees.  The Novo Knowledge Base.

Contact us for a free trial of the Novo Knowledge base.
http://www.novosolutions.com/knowledge-base-software/

I am writing this post as I am on hold at a customer support center.  I really hope this will be a short post, but I am afraid it may not.  The music is nice, but this is my second call to the center where I have already spent over an hour trying to get reward points straightened out.  I am forced to tell my story again with hopes I can get to the next tier level of support.  We have all been there – you know the feeling!

Agent abuse is no laughing matter but it is understandable that by the time an agent gets to a call the caller is already frustrated.  Minimizing frustration by getting issues resolved is a win/win situation.

Providing self help so a customer doesn’t have to call is an ideal scenario.  This allows customers to get the information they need on demand, and saves call centers money by reducing call volume.  This also frees up agents to get to other calls even faster.  A self help knowledge base is an ideal tool to provide 24/7 answers to frequently asked questions.  Accessible from your company website, customers can go there to quickly find answers to their problems.

Knowledge base software tied to your existing request tracking software is also a huge time saver.  Agents can use it to quickly find answers and best practice resolutions.  It can easily be kept up-to-date advising agents of new/shift notices as well as solutions to recent and timely issues that may be “need to know’ that day.

Contact Novo Solutions for a free trial of the Novo Knowledge Base.

PS – still on hold….I hope they have a quick answer for my question….sigh!

http://www.novosolutions.com/knowledge-base-software/

Knowledge Base software has been around for awhile now, but if you have not jumped on board yet this is the time.  A knowledge base is a great tool for managing internal and external information.  Businesses large and small benefit from having a centralized place to store important data.

Internally you can store important company documentation essential to managing your business.  Company policies, employee training manuals, best practices and other important information can be stored for easy retrieval. 

Externally you can incorporate the knowledge base into your website so visitors can search for their own answers.  Customizable permission settings allow you to set security settings so you determine ‘who’ can see ‘what’ information.

So how are you storing information now?  In a file cabinet?  In employees heads?  A knowledge base is an affordable solution that is easy to use and will grow as your needs grow.

Contact us to learn more about the Novo Knowledge base and request your free trial!

Beginning tonight at midnight Wikipedia will be closing down its US site for twenty four hours to protest the federal anti-privacy legislation known as SOPA, warning it is a threat to free speech.

Whether you agree with or oppose the proposed legislation this action raises a lot of issues.  Free speech governance concerns aside, an intended consequence is that many who rely on wikipedia for information are going to be disappointed when they cannot get to what they are looking for.  Instead visitors will be directed to contact their congressmen to oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) legislation.

Knowledge management and ownership is a serious issue that must be addressed.  But this kind of action also raises the question “What would happen if you could not get to needed company information”?  It brings to light our vulnerability to how we access important ‘knowledge’.

Many times companies and organizations do not think about the value of company knowledge unless it is compromised.  A fire or physical disaster can destroy paper documentation or even local PC’s and servers, not to mention undocumented knowledge that is dependent on a person.

A web-based knowledge base is an essential tool for storing valuable knowledge.  With the proper credentials it can be retrieved anywhere, anytime.  This can make your everyday operations smoother and even save your company in a crisis.

We will have to see what happens with SOPA and PIPA.  By all means if you have an opinion please tell your legislators.  In the meantime YOU have control over your data.  Guard it well!

For information on the Novo Knowledge Base or for a free trial see: http://www.novosolutions.com/knowledge-base-software/

You spoke….we listened!  We are pleased to deliver version 4.8 with many feature enhancements our clients have been asking for!

Here’s what’s new!

Company News: Central area that can be a Home Page +Search hub for your Knowledge Base
Article Comments: Blog style in line comments beneath selected articles so visitors can interact with each other on article content
Enhanced Article Feedback: Article Feedback and Voting enhancement that allows you to better track how well your support documentation is serving your customers
RSS Capability: RSS feeds allow customers to stay informed with the latest article posts. 

Other Enhancements:

Core/General:

• Ability to Disable Admin Users
• Ability to reorder Custom Rules
• Ability to run custom timer rules on Date & Date/Time UDF’s

Knowledge Base:

• AJAX style auto complete search field on Home Page and Advanced search pages
• Normalize Cute default font and default.css content styles
• Ability to display Author &/or Editor
• Ability to change Authorship of an article
• Ability to enable a Captcha feature on Article Comments, Feedback and Questions
• Various Custom Rules Enhancements
• New Mailto Variables (Author; Editor; Group; etc.)
• Run Rules based on Editors

Help Desk:

• Memorized Ticket Scheduling Enhancement
• Ability to export viewcase.asp to excel
• Enhanced Assign Due Date and UDF action for custom rules
• Enhanced Ticket Search Enhancement
• Ability to Enable/Disable Automatic New Ticket Notifications

Assets:

• Add Asset UDF setting display on asset search
• Related Articles section on Add/Edit Asset.asp
• Status ordering for Assets
• View Paths for Locations (reports)

Reports:

• Ability to create a Report that shows all users that are subscribed to a particular article
• Ability to create a customer report that includes subscriptions
• Ability to report on Assets with related Articles and Visa-Versa
• Report on Included Articles
• View Paths for Categories and Asset Locations

Contact us for a free trial!

Who would have thought we would be speaking words in the workplace such as “tweet’, ‘wiki’, ‘blog’, and ‘google’?  Technology sure does wear a face of humor doesn’t it?  I guess they are really no different than words of the past such as ‘Xerox’ and ‘Kleenex’, but they do have silly rings to them.

Take google for example.  This company name has become a verb.  How often have you heard (or said), “have you tried googling that”?  Around here we say that a lot.

Imagine our delight when our customers tell us that they ‘novo’ at their workplaces.  When they need to retrieve knowledge they will ask, ‘did you novo that’?  That has become the term for looking for something in their Novo Knowledge Base.

Now we are not google, but we are happy that our software has become the mainstay of getting quick information for many organizations.  This is what we have dreamed of since we developed our foundation knowledge base application.

So the question is, “have you novo-ed today”?  If not please contact us and we will set you up with a free trial so you can try it out for yourself.

http://www.novosolutions.com/knowledge-base-software/

All of us know the value of accessible, stored knowledge.   Not that long ago few of us used words like wiki or knowledge base, now they have become common words in our workplaces and in everyday life.

Many of us have learned the hard way that with knowledge comes responsibility.  In order to be effective one has to build & maintain organizational knowledge to its end goal to be accurate, easy to access, &helpful.  Organizing knowledge does not happen by itself – it has to be regularly managed.

Consider the wiki.  Someone had the great idea that assembling knowledge could be a shared effort.  Why not let people who may be experts contribute their knowledge so it can be shared with others?  This would allow experts to play a part, and take the burden off management to be required to compose all of the desired information. 

For many a wiki is a good solution, but it is not without its Problems.
Wiki submissions:

• Must be reviewed and/or approved for accuracy
• Must  be reviewed and/or approved when edits are made
• May be subjective to the writer’s motivation
• May not provide a thorough answer

So for those who are counting on a wiki to be a big timesaver you may need to think again.  There is still a significant time investment to manage a wiki.

For many organizations a knowledge base is still the best solution.  Today’s new features, such as workflow automation makes article management easier than ever.  Workflow automation:

• Offers the capability of defining workflows with various completion or approval paths.
• Empowers administrators to easily view pending task status, assignments, predecessor relationships &  deadlines

• Email notifications can be automatically sent to the appropriate person or group when tasks are completed or rejected.

This flexibility allows management the ability to manage article creation through administrators’ and others as needed.

For information on the Novo Knowledge Base see http://www.novosolutions.com/knowledge-base-software/.

Whether it is the beginning of your fiscal year or you are approaching year end, now is a great time to work towards managing your business goals.  Organizing company-wide goals into a searchable, central knowledge repository is a great way to categorize and keep track of essential business data. 

Beginning of year:  Now is the time to layout goals for the year.  From mission and vision statements to business plans to policies and procedures, having important information in an easy to access tool is vital.  With a knowledge base you are able to easily add, edit and remove content; workflows allow you to automate reviews and approvals so correct information is always at hand.

End of Year:  Managing  company knowledge in to a single area is a great way to not only organize data so that everyone can see it, but also allows you bring everyone on board with goals of what needs to be done to finish well.  You can review goals to see where you are, set end of year goals, and have valuable data on hand to set goals for next year.  Automated review reminders will notify you to clean up outdated content to ensure company data is current and accurate.

Here are some examples of information that can be managed in a knowledge base:

• Mission/vision statements
• Company policies
• Human resource documents
• Business plans
• Security reviews
• Safety regulations
• Images, rss feeds, videos
• Searchable attachments: MS Word, Excel, pdf’s,  etc.

For more information on the Novo Knowledge Base see: www.novosolutions.com/knowledge-base-software/