For ten years, Siemens Com had successfully used empolis technology with ViTAC, the Virtual Technical Assistance Center. ViTAC is a web based self-support system for technical problem solving processes. Response times of incoming requests were reduced and the reuse of knowledge consisting of 30,000 documents stored in ViTAC, as well as customer satisfaction, increased significantly.
As Siemens Com and Nokia Networks merged to become Nokia Siemens Networks, it became necessary to agree upon a single knowledge management system to be used in their service center. Several systems were evaluated.
The objectives were clear: the system was to be fail-proof and available around the world at all times. User access rights also needed to be considered. Fast and precise access to a large number of documents had to be ensured since merging the two companies had resulted in a much larger volume of information. Besides the documents managed in Livelink, the number of products also increased. The service center therefore faced new challenges.
Nokia Siemens Networks again chose empolis software to create a new system, tailored to their requirements. ASSIST - the new name for the solution - will replace ViTAC and will be the central Knowledge Re-Use System for NSN Care. ASSIST was realised with the empolis:Service Lifecycle Suite.
Knowledge managers can maintain the knowledge model decentralised from anywhere in the world. Access to the data base is possible, not just via the search, but also via navigation. An additional advantage is the smooth integration in the existing infrastructure: a large amount of documents created at NSN is managed with Livelink. These documents in their various formats (e.g. Word, PDF, HTML) are converted into XML via an interface and indexed by empolis. A weekly full index, as well as regular incremental updates, are planned. Access rights defined in Livelink are considered in ASSIST's search and navigation.
In the Livelink system, documents with sometimes more than 1,000 pages are managed. To make the search process more user-friendly, not necessarily the whole document is shown as hit. Rather, only the relevant pages of the document are shown in a separate list.
Service desk staff are located all over the globe and have 24/7 access to the system. Inaddition, ASSIST is connected to a Remedy solution, which is used for the creation of trouble tickets and can be directly accessed from there. The respective search parameters are transferred from Remedy. This ensures efficient use of existing solution know-how already in a very early phase of the problem solving process.
The portal technology used in connection with ASSIST allows for easy adaptation of content and layout. The extranet, for example, can look differently to the intranet or it's possible to create an individual layout for an NSN customer.
All of the data from the Nokia system was transferred to ASSIST and the system is to go live shortly. The intelligent search technology, which is based on a knowledge model, will enable both service center agents, as well as customers (in the future), quick and precise access to all service documents available.
For further information about the empolis:Service Lifecycle Suite please write to info[aet]empolis.com.
