Smart use of crowdsourcing replaces dry work instructions with live knowledge

1. www.ictmagazine.nl
In two previous articles in ICT/Magazine we gave a
thorough account of how the old style of knowledge
management has now turned into today’s knowledge-
based working. Following on from the theory and
the technique, we can now look at the practice. On
a site visit to an ABN AMRO office in Enschede,
two bank managers told us about their journey to
better customer excellence.
Wildly complicated
ABNAMRO focuses heavily on Customer Excellence
(CE). In 2011, for example, offices were challenged
as part of the CE project to think about their own
business processes and associated work instructions,
also known as standard operating procedures (SOP).
This initiative took on a life of its own,which is why
the CE experts called on program manager Herman
Mansveld for help. “People were developing their
own SOPs in various parts of the organization,” he
says.“In a sense,they were reinventing the wheel,over
and over again.CE also called me in because writing
good instructions is wildly complicated. This is
particularly so when you’re dealing with complex
processes featuring a lot of if-then situations. If we
were going to make a really usable SOP which people
could understand, immediately implement, and
which was easy to set up, we needed other tools.”
A third problem that the CE project came up
against was the fact that various processes are
components of long chains: mortgages, capital ac-
cumulation,credit etc.The business process owner
is responsible for the quality of his process or chain.
“They risked losing control over processes in their
chains,” explains Mansveld.“This was because there
was no approval step between process managers and
the staff working with their self-written procedures.”
Knowledge based
With these three issues in mind,Mansveld came up
with two paths towards a solution. “Through a
supplier, Knowledge Values, we were already in a
position to model knowledge in the form of pro-
cesses, for example. Knowledge is nothing more
than knowing the shortest route to your objective.
Whenwe’djuststartedwithMatch–thedriverbehind
the interactive instructions – we used the following
situation as a test:‘A close corporation in formation
wishes to become a full-fledged close corporation.’
We first collected all the information in our Infor-
mation Bank which referred to such a situation.
Printing that out left us with a huge pile of paper.
The eventual interactive instructions we produced
with Match were reduced to nine questions. That’s
the difference between traditional knowledge
management and knowledge-based modeling.
Match instantly turns those models into working
applications.Those applications are comparable to
the tax return application for income tax. In the
past we completed our tax return on a paper form,
referring to a thick tax almanac published by Elsevier
or Kluwer. You then had to check for yourself
whether a particular question was relevant to you,
and whether you should take into account all the
variables and exceptions to the endless rules, and
if so, how. Today’s income tax application is partly
knowledge-based.It’s partly so because it’s still being
programmed in software code, which is no longer
necessary with Match. The application monitors
what you enter to determine the next relevant
question in the process. So with Match we’d built
up experience in using knowledge-based modeling
of complex processes to create interactive and
practical, user-friendly instructions. But that wasn’t
the end of the story.”
The crowd
The other path to a solution related to the question:
how do we ensure that we effectively bundle the
knowledge within our organization,so that people
– the crowd – can supply and further develop their
knowledge in a centralized location? An extension
of this question was:How do we ensure that business
process owners regain control over their processes?
“Then the second idea came along,”says Mansveld.
“An appstore, but in our own jargon: the SOP
Store.We used one of our suppliers,InfoSupport,for
this. They had developed the KnowNow platform,
a type of collective memory, for their internal use.
InfoSupport’s developers were using this system to
share knowledge among themselves.We wanted to
link both platforms – Match and KnowNow – so we’d
have the Knowledge Values technology in an app-
store environment. The thinking behind this is for
everyone to be able to find and use approved SOPs
in that SOP Store.People can also submit proposals
themselves for new SOPs. The business process
owner serves as the initial editor, because he is re-
sponsible for ensuring that a SOP complies with
all laws and regulations. If the process owner sees
potential, the SOP is developed by those who are
skilled in knowledge modeling, and then the
whole crowdsourcing game can begin. Staff using
the SOP discover areas for improvement or any
missing elements.It’s people within the organization
who therefore ensure continuous improvement.
Their feedback guarantees the quality and com-
prehensiveness of the SOP.”
Mansveld got started on these two solution path-
ways in 2012, working with the project leader for
Standard Operating Procedures, Reita Kolman, a
handful of early believers among office staff, and
CE Program Manager Jeroen Pruim.
Showing it works
Setting up any new ICT is not an easy job, and
ABN AMRO is no exception. Procedures need to
be followed and bids written, which takes up a lot
of time. But Mansveld and Kolman did not have
the time. “And that’s why we prepared the first
steering group meeting very thoroughly,” says
Mansveld, gleefully. Some of those present at that
meeting were quick to grumble that they had bet-
ter things to do with their time. They had not even
been sent any documents to prepare themselves.
At this point,one of our team members asked if he
could use someone’s iPad to show something. He
opened up an interactive SOP on the device and
said: ‘Look, this is the first version, already live.’
They had gone live with the KnowNow platform
and put a few working SOPs on it. This was a way
to demonstrate to the organization just how pow-
erful this approach is. Just show you can get some-
thing up and running with very few resources.”
Experience it
It was important to maintain momentum by quickly
expanding the functionality within the SOP Store.
“We wanted to experiment with 120 staff members
as early adopters,”Mansveld explains.“Because if an
interactive SOP is fundamentally strong,you might
as well release it as quickly as possible.But expanding
it required sponsorship.A colleague then said to me:
‘Maybe budget owners just need to experience what
this means.’We then engaged two retail bank directors
in a role play. They stood behind a desk and a man
and his girlfriend approached with a question.
They were moving in together and the man wanted
togivehisgirlfriendaccesstohisinvestmentportfolio.
Of course we’d made an interactive SOP for this.
One of the directors was allowed to help the couple
in the traditional way,and the other director could
use the SOP.The latter had helped the couple in no
time at all, while the director who had to do it in
the traditional way is,I believe,still working on it.”
An inventive and successful way of organizing a
budget. The first 120 people were able to start us-
ing it and the functionality could be expanded.
The system was hosted externally and it went live
within three months of its initial launch among
the early adopters.
Shared leadership
Any organization considering setting up a
SOP Store needs to be acquainted with
LEAN working. People need to be accus-
tomed to giving input into ideas.
If there’s no sense of shared leadership,
people won’t want to give their input, or
they won’t dare to, and the project won’t
take off. The working process of a SOP
encourages people to keep thinking and
participating.
Knowledge-based working boosts
customer excellence
Smart use of crowdsourcing replaces
dry work instructions with live knowledge
by: Ed Lute
Following on from the consumerization of IT, we are now seeing the consumerization of
knowledge. As part of that, knowledge is no longer being hidden in thick manuals and in
bloated, unwieldy content systems. Instead, all kinds of knowledge – even bafflingly
complex material – is becoming easily and effectively available, and constantly updated.
A vision of the future? At ABN AMRO, it is already happening.
Reita Kolman, Project Leader Standard Operating Procedures
Simone Kruizinga, Advisor Personal Banking and Timothy Bergsma, Deputy Director

2. www.ictmagazine.nl
Just do it
Kolman explains how these 120 early adopters,
spread across the country,were asked to pass on any
problematic cases they experienced.“We then made
interactive work instructions for these cases, which
people could go and experiment with. This is based
on the idea that we’re not going to determine
which SOPs go into the Store. It’s the people who
use them who determine that.We also appointed a
number of ambassadors whom we asked to provide
demonstrations of the SOP Store at daily or weekly
briefings.We started with around 10 SOPs,and now
there are more than 40.Most of them are interactive
work instructions, but we’re now also working on
other forms of content,such as checklists.Those are
very useful and anyone can make them. Or short
films, where you demonstrate a particular process
in PowerPoint for example.But there are also a few
SOPs which are almost advisory applications. For
example,the NetherlandsAuthority for the Financial
Markets is requiring that banks, as of January 1,
better inform their customers about investment
portfolios, with outputs such as investment profiles
and investment reports. That’s really an advisory
process.ICT don’t have time to help us with that,so
we asked someone to model the knowledge-based
process. That’s now an interactive SOP, where after
checking,the overviews,advisory forms or contracts
are automatically printed.Four such SOPs are now
in the Store.”
Kolman is justifiably proud to report that the SOP
Store has helped more than 6,100 users within a year.
“And that’s without us even promoting it ourselves.
It’s literally just on word of mouth.So it’s appropriate
that our motto is: sometimes you should just do it.
The success speaks for itself,and does the work.The
entire retail bank and the customer contact center
now use the SOP Store and a growing number of
business units are indicating that they want to join in.”
For and by staff members
Rapidly growing demand for interactive SOPs is
putting immense pressure on the three people working
full-time at Match to model old-fashioned written
work instructions into an interactive SOP.“Eventually
we want process owners themselves to learn how
to make a SOP and maintain it,” says Mansveld.
“For content such as checklists and short films that’s
certainly achievable.That’s why the pay-off for this
platform is: ‘For and by staff members.’ Local spe-
cialists can launch their own ideas themselves in
the SOP Store.But actually creating the interactive
SOP is still a specific job in its own right.You need to
be able to think in an analytical and outcome-
focused way, and you have to do lots of it. We’d
particularly love to bring in a few processologists
to head office for the SOP Store,but it’s still difficult
to persuade them. There are around 250 people in
the organization who work on processes, with
ARIS schedules, PowerPoints etc. The SOP Store,
and the whole idea it’s built upon, disturbs their
traditionalworkingmethodof sketchingoutandthen
writing out instructions for processes. They are
exceptionally well qualified for modeling their
processes and knowledge. Not in the traditional
way usingARIS or comparable tools,but in Knowl-
edge Values’Match. For now it’s hard to get them out
of their traditional framework and to modeling in
a knowledge-based and outcome-focused way.”
Incubator
The crowd’s capacity to make improvements means
that a SOP doesn’t need to be complete. Mansveld:
“There can’t be errors in it, but from the moment
the instruction is available in the Store,experts start
to respond. They’ll provide input for improvement,
and the very next day it’s processed into the SOP.
In a way you’re working on perfect requirements,
in case a particular instruction ever needs to be
turned into software. That may happen if a SOP
gets too big to stay in the Store, for example with
extensive advisory processes. So in that sense the
SOP Store acts as a kind of incubator,helping us to
very quickly put new products on the market.”
Asked how many people secretly still have a folder
full of information in their desk drawer, Kolman
replies bluntly: “Everyone! Look, for us it’s about
making the work of the end-user as pleasant and
easy as possible. If having a folder in their desk
drawer makes them happy, they should keep using
it. What we do is create best practices, show that
they work, and then we rely on the natural process
that follows.And of course we hope that this system
will have wide enough appeal to motivate staff to
share all their knowledge with us.”
No more waste
Office director Anita van der Molen says that
thanks to the SOP Store, people now really feel
that they are listened to. “Not only are we
now listening to people who know a lot, but
they can also see that their knowledge is
reflected in usable tools. These people
maintain their status as experts, and the SOP
just confirms it.The wonderful thing is that
it’s those people who have now become the
ambassadors for the SOP Store. And you need them, because it’s not easy changing people
who are stuck in their old ways of working. If an expert in a particular area now gets a call
asking for information, they can say: ‘If you go to the SOP store, it’ll be a lot quicker than me
explaining it to you now.’ And that’s why it’s also extremely important for the Store to be very
user friendly.”
Van der Molen has seen how a lot of work is being done more efficiently, thanks to the SOP
Store. “The waste is being picked out. Processes held in the SOP Store are found much more
quickly than when people use the old knowledge bank. If you enter the term divorce into the
SOP Store, for example, you immediately see a number of SOPs relevant to that. Using the
interactive instruction, checklists and short films saves us on average 10 to 15 minutes each
time. It’s also very beneficial to the induction of new staff members.The supply of information
to the back office has also become less prone to error. And above all, we waste less of the
customer’s time.There are fewer cash-on-delivery charges, fewer rejections and customers
are less likely to have to come back because of something we’ve forgotten.”
The suppliers
Knowledge Values believes in the value of
knowledge. Drawing on its scientific roots,
KnowledgeValues makes knowledge-based
working achievable for companies who
understand that knowledge is the critical
factor in high performance.
InfoSupport, a family business, is a full-
fledged IT service provider aiming for
long-term relationships with its customers
and staff.The company helps IT departments
with ongoing professionalization.
If you would like to participate in a site
visit to the ABN AMRO SOP Store,
please register at: contact@sopstore.nl
www.knowledge-values.com
www.infosupport.com
Herman Mansveld, Program Manager