Peter Williams from Deloitte Digital talked about two different wikis with two very different uses.

The first was a externally hosted wiki to allow a group of individuals within Deloitte Digital to collaboratively build a business case rather than sending documents over email.

They key benefit was that it removed the need for one person to have to fight with Word’s track changes and comments feature to compile, edit and bring the final document together.  Collaboration was much faster, and the business case was produced more quickly and with less friction than if it had been done over email.

The second wiki was more of a general ‘intranet’ style wiki.  It was kicked off by a few wiki ‘zealots’ (I prefer “Champions”!) and was found to have more and more uses as it grew.  Whereas it started being used as a knowledge repository and a place to find information it has now effectively become a CRM system as well!

Let’s look at how these wikis fit into our principles of wiki adoption:

• Targeted.  The business case wiki was very targeted.  Not only that, it was used by a small group of people, initially 3 which grew eventually to 11.  This made a great point, that you don’t need to belong to a large group or large organisation to benefit from wikis.  Deloitte saw value in just 3!  The ‘general’ wiki did not appear to be so targeted, Peter didn’t go into too much detail as to the initial purpose of that wiki, but it would be interesting to find out how it started and whether it had an initial focus, or it was always conceived as something more general
• Sponsorship.  Peter came up with a great term for dealing with a problem with sponsorship “CIO bypass“.  Peter is fortunate enough to be in a senior position so he is able to bring some sponsorship to the table, but part of the benefit of an externally hosted wiki for the business case was that he could get it up and running quickly without needing sign-off from the CIO.  An official ‘knoweldge management collaboration strategy’ is still 18 months in the making!
• Marketing/Communications.  As with RMC Vanguard - the fact that important information was on the wikis drove people to use it.  If the information to do your job was on the wiki, you had to use it!
• Champions.  Peter is a clear champion, and the strength of his personality was key in overcoming issues around sponsorship.
• Support.  Peter spent time showing people how the wiki could be used, and how it made their jobs easier.
• Accessible.  A key reason for using a hosted wiki for the business case was that it could be accessed (securely) by those outside the Deloitte firewall whose contributions were needed
• Enforcement.  The business case wiki demanded that people use the wiki.  To be involved, people weren’t going to tolerate the pain of wading through 15 different copies of the same document in order to try and find “the final version”.
• Get rid of the old.  For the business case wiki, there was no ‘old’ to get rid of.  Peter didn’t go into detail as to whether old sources of information were removed once they were placed on the general wiki.  They certainly seemed to have stopped using a dedicated CRM application and had moved to the wiki for this.
• Measure.  Peter didn’t really spend much time worrying about measuring.  “People vote with their mouse” he said, and as long as he could see a stream of page views and page updates he was happy.

The biggest key to Peter’s success here is the strength of personality of the champion.  Going with an externally hosted option and by-passing the CIO has obviously been successful, but you need confidence that it is not going to be a career-ending move depending on the political situation within your organisation!

Deloitte certainly followed the “try it at low cost and build examples from there” business case rather than an all-encompassing high level one, not only because it was easier but going down the “official” route would have taken over 18 months where he had an immediate need.

Certainly a very engaging and thought-provoking webinar/case study!

The webinar went very smoothly. This is not to be underestimated, I’ve lost count of the number of webinars where there are problems with sound/video but this was great. Slides/screenshare and question submission was handled by GoToMeeting - and I was very happy to find out I could stream the audio via Ustream rather than have to pay for a 60 minute international call to the States. Video was snappy, and audio was crystal clear, made the experience much more enjoyable.

The case study was RMC Vanguard, a mortgage company in the States which is experiencing the slowdown of the US mortgage market. The benefits they obtained from the wiki were as follows:

• Time saving – wiki pages with frequently asked questions, links to important websites (with usernames and passwords where appropriate) were all included on the wiki
• Productivity – with four underwriters serving fifty loan officers, and a habit of loan officers to keep asking a question until they got the answer they wanted, having a place where underwriters could post information rather than having it asked of them constantly made both the loan officers and the underwriters vastly more productive, which resulted in more time spent with clients which ended up with increased sales
• Retention – there is a strong attrition rate in the loan officer role. Many role officers worked from home and struggled to remember the details to access internal systems once they returned to their home office, and felt isolated. How-to’s on the wiki increased their productivity when they first joined, which meant they earned more, which meant they were happier, which meant they didn’t leave
• Improved customer experience – in a down market you need to retain customers. By providing loan officers with a single point of reference where they could obtain information in a fast changing market meant that they could answer clients’ and potential clients’ questions on the phone there and then. This led to a significantly improved customer experience and increased customer retention, which is essential in a down market.

What was really interesting is that this successful wiki implementation hit nearly all of our principles of wiki adoption:

• Targeted – there were clear reasons for the wiki – internet passwords, How-To’s for working from home and market information. There were also clear audiences who would use it slightly differently, underwriters (generally content contributors) and loan officers (generally content seekers). The motivations of each were addressed differently – for the underwriters posting wiki content stopped them being asked the same questions several times a day. For the Loan Officers using the wiki as a first point of call allowed them to provide an improved customer experience and therefore sell more.
• Sponsorship – the wiki manager worked for the President of the company. Interestingly, he commented that during a ‘down’ period was actually a good time to introduce new technology, as people actually had some time to get used to it!
• Marketing/communcations – a lot of company communications were pushed out on the wiki. A catchphrase developed in the office when people asked “where is…?” with the response “it’s on the wiki!”
• Champions – there was a clear champion for the wiki who spent a great deal of time educating and working with users to ensure that the adoption was successful
• Support – a lot of support was provided. Effort went into ensuring that templates were available so that people were not presented with a blank page when creating new content. Effort was put into ensuring the wiki was searchable so that people could find what they needed quickly. The wiki champion spent time one-on-one with staff to ensure they knew how to use it
• Accessible – the wiki could be accessed by those who worked from home, which was key to driving adoption with the loan officers
• Enforcement – people started to say “it’s on the wiki” when asked a question rather than providing the answer
• Get rid of the old – the wiki champion slowly started to take away the old sources of information. After one week of information being posted into the wiki and one on one training showing the users how to find it, it was removed from its original source
• Measure – this is the one principle not followed. Any measurement was word of mouth and anecdotal. Given adoption was so high, however, I can see why this was not a priority.

When asked what the number one benefit that provided growth in a down market, the strong response was that it was the improved customer experience. RMC Vanguard won best customer experience award for mortgage providers in the US – and the wiki is seen to be key to this, and allowing them to cope with the downturn in the US mortgage market.

Many thanks to both PBwiki and RMC Vanguard - it was a great webinar!

Sherif Mansour has posted a great blog post about his experience of wiki adoption in his organisation. What was exciting for me was he saw 90-9-1 hold initially, but with internal adoption it’s more like 60-20-20. This is great news for enterprise wiki adoption. I think I’ll stick to 90-9-1 for now to set expectations, and if they end up with 60-20-20 they will be pleasantly surprised!