Knowledge is power

Back in January 2007 there were five Business Links within the East Midlands region, which were about to be merged into one — Business Link East Midlands.

BHP completed a comprehensive audit of all business advice and information being used by the advisers and support teams in the five organisations. This audit formed the basis of the regional Knowledge Bank, which BHP created and launched on behalf of East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA) bang on schedule in April that year.

The Knowledge Bank enables the Business Link to capture, store, retrieve and distribute information on a range of business support topics so that it can answer customer enquiries. For the first time, interaction with customers is properly recorded and tracked on a single customer contact system — the Regional Business Support Information System.

John O’Reilly, director of business support at EMDA, explains: “Business Link advisers can search and retrieve the most appropriate information to meet an enquiring customer’s needs. The Knowledge Bank holds national, regional and local information in a variety of formats, but in a consistent way, enabling advisers to handle customer queries efficiently and effectively.

“Analysis of management information from the Knowledge Bank also enables us to see what topics are ‘hot’ with our region’s entrepreneurs and to adapt and improve the Knowledge Bank content accordingly.”

Improve and flourish

BHP stays close to the requirements of the region’s business support community through regular meetings at all levels. In this way, information gaps can be identified and filled and any documents that might be incorrect or out of date are removed and updated. It’s a process of continuous improvement.

The statistics are truly impressive. Taking the three year main contract period from January 2008 to January 2011, performance went from strength to strength. Searches and downloads increased 52% and 67% respectively (to 10,292 and 7,342 per month), as more and more business advisers used the resource as well as the large information team. Meanwhile the rate of ‘zero returns’ (ie searches that brought up no information, including colloquialisms but excluding mis-spellings) fell 90% to a tiny 43 per month. The 12,966 items of content on the Knowledge Bank answered 99.6% of enquiries with a slick seven minute average handling time (from picking up the phone to finding the right information and sending it out to the enquirer).

The most common questions all have extensive pre-prepared answers that are ready to send out; this improvement alone has a significant impact on efficiency and on customer satisfaction. Meanwhile the marketing teams at the RDA and the Business Link are delighted when BHP cleverly integrates marketing messages into items of Knowledge Bank content, so that seminars and events are more fully attended. But best of all, BHP’s updating processes (working closely with the Business Link information team) together with BHP’s detailed knowledge of upcoming changes to UK regulations means that the users of the Knowledge Bank can be confident that the information is always up to date and reliable.

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