This is the first blog post in a series of conversations with Knosys staff and users. Don’t let the perceived isolation around COVID-19 stop you from talking to your colleagues, your customers and those around you. We might not be in proximity but we can still learn from each other.
To celebrate Knosys’ Business Development Manager Paul Hopkins’ one-year anniversary, we thought we would pick his brain in the true spirit of knowledge sharing.
Go grab a slice of cake from the kitchen or your local store (you know you want to) and take a minute out of your day to learn a little about Paul and his work as a sharer of knowledge.
Meet Paul
Paul Hopkins is Knosys’ Business Development Manager based out of our Sydney office, and now of course, his home.
Paul is an experienced financial services and technology sales professional who started out in the banking and financial markets arena and moved on to work at Bloomberg for 10 years before diverting to other software and information management vendors, including Knosys.
When not working at Knosys, Paul likes to keep fit, spend time with family and friends and has a keen interest in sport, including all forms of motorsport both as a spectator and participant. If you’ve attended Knosys sponsored CX and Knowledge Management events over the last 12 months you may well have spoken to Paul and if not, you’re about to find out a little about him anyway.
Who are you sharing your office with right now Paul?
My wife Alex and daughter Claudia, who is at Uni.
What has it been like for you working at home during the last few months of upheaval – have you found it challenging? –
Overall, it’s been OK. I need to have a 10-minute break from time to time to stretch and get some fresh air but there’s always a tea or coffee on offer and someone to talk to when I need to reboot.
Working in a small team in Sydney it’s fairly similar but it’s certainly worth considering what it must be like for frontline employees in the industries we service – the transition for people in those roles is huge.
How important is it in your opinion to have the means of communication and collaboration with your colleagues during this time?
Very important, the phone, Slack and email work well. It’s certainly a challenge to update product training when you don’t have the opportunity for face to face interaction. Conference call software is obviously a real help but there’s nothing quite like the real thing.
I need to continue my own KIQ product training and learning feature updates and I always enjoy the human interaction so I’m hoping to update my training in a face to face environment and am looking forward to getting back into the office when it’s safe to do so.
What sorts of things have you learned about the idea of knowledge management over the last 12 months that has impacted the way you work or think about work within in an organisation where internal communication and customer support are both so important?
Knowledge management has really emphasised the importance of maintaining and building relationships so that you work more effectively across your organisation. Access to multiple stakeholders is access to both product and industry knowledge which is an invaluable resource so that we can provide a much better product.
How have your conversations around knowledge management and the Knosys platform, KIQ Cloud changed since the pandemic began?
Some organisations we had been engaged with decided to delay further conversations until later in the month or toward the next quarter to assess the impact but many have been more pro-active and acknowledged the challenges they’re facing now, the impact on their teams and operational risks and the fact they need the ability to access relevant content quickly and easily. Features of our platform such as alerts and notifications have become really important too so it’s made engaging and discussing these benefits more relevant and applicable and we hope to help many more clients overcome this and other challenges they might face with our unique solution.
What is the most important reason for choosing to make knowledge management part of your company’s road map for success?
Efficiently searching for content or process guides is key, if organisations are unable to do this in a stressful environment will expose them to further inefficiencies costing time and money.
Do you think it’s a good time to for industries f all types and companies of all sizes to be giving their staff and in particular, customer support teams, access to knowledge and more efficient ways to find what they need?
One organisation has already shared that facilitating customer service teams working from home is proving difficult and have highlighted that their current platforms as inefficient and outdated.
A few of our clients have spoken about the importance of providing correct content and information to adhere to legal guidelines and ensure best practice.
Sometimes it does take a proverbial spanner in the works for to realise that the tools you have just can’t perform in the way you need them do to sustain your business, so it’s great to see these businesses opening up and chatting to us about how KIQ Cloud can help.
Why should readers invest in a knowledge management solution now?
Knowledge Management enables you to harness significant time gains for training new and existing staff, reducing the loss and transfer of intellectual property and risk if a key person leaves the business. Given the current circumstances there has never been a better, or more important time to make it part of your business continuity plan.
If you’d like to speak to Paul or one of our BD team about how Knosys KIQ Cloud could assist you then simply request a demo and we’ll be in touch! Alternatively you can phone us on: 1800 977 827
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