In the Wake of Oracle Acquisitions – Knowledge Management Frankenstein

So Oracle acquires yet another company and the social media goes all abuzz about what this all means. From the RightAnswers perspective, we have seen companies that we compete with be scooped up by Oracle.  The most recent acquisitions, and in rapid succession, of Inquira and RightNow have become part of the Oracle alphabet patchwork, not even mentioning ATG (Primus) acquisition a number of years back. There are a number of strategic reasons for Oracle to have done this – from creating a broad E-commerce to E-Support portfolio to creating a real cloud platform and filling in the product gaps to compete better. 

 
Oracle is painting a picture that can only be recognized when seen from afar. Getting closer one sees lack of cohesiveness and lots of functional overlap. This functional overlap in one specific area is certainly most intriguing to me and that is Knowledge Management. Of the many Oracle acquisitions, the ones mentioned in this article all have historically had their own knowledge management capabilities and approaches. Primus was about managing knowledge, Inquira was about searching knowledge, and RightNow was about delivering knowledge. One of the fallouts out of merging these companies is deciding on a single functional solution for Knowledge Management. It does not make sense to maintain different repositories with different structures in the uber-Oracle platform. 

 
What will be the core of this uber-KM platform? Based on Oracle’s positioning it would appear to be the company formerly-known as Inquira, and this may certainly be a reasonable choice. Primus never developed into an option like many Primus customers were hoping, and many of who are now running for the exit. What will this mean for RightNow customers and the future, especially since RightNow offers its own search engine and requires much more structured knowledge designed for support-specific requirements than Inquira? Time will tell, but one can expect a fair degree of ambiguity and uncertainty. The Oracle Knowledge Management Frankenstein is a story that is being written, and unfortunately Mary Shelley is not around to ghostwrite it.

The New Search Experience

Over the years, the way users have searched for answers has certainly evolved.  In the past, an individual may have conducted a simple Google search that included a few words/phrases to find an answer to a particular question.  For businesses, perhaps a knowledge base was utilized to find answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).  But now, the consumer search experience is changing the way the enterprise search is being looked at.

The consumer experience is no longer just about entering a lengthy string of words into a search field, or visiting a dedicated page for FAQs.  It is more about drilling down the search term(s) and filtering the information to find the exact answer that you need.  Similar to the idea of “semantic web,” enterprises should start thinking this way for internal support answers.

In the past at RightAnswers, we focused much of our efforts on internal (employee) support.  But now as we expand our focus to external (customer) support, we see how these two worlds collide.  Regardless of whether you are dealing with internal or external support, the basis of providing good service is having easy access to information needed to quickly (and accurately) provide customers answers to their questions.

With a number of access points – Web search engines, self-service portals, virtual agents, etc. – available to end-users, the bottom line still remains that individuals want to quickly find the solutions to their problems.  While some search practices may be new, they should all have the same end-result: improving the customer experience.

RightAnswers Powers Virgin Digital Help

Recently, Virgin announced the launch of Virgin Digital Help – a new service that promises to “fix Britain’s technology problems with a mixture of downloadable tools, call centres, online help and even home visits.”

As part of this launch, Virgin also announced that it has selected Sutherland Global Services to provide a state-of-the-art technology platform for its new Virgin Digital Help service. This technology platform enables Virgin to provide around-the-clock, around-the-world assistance and support for a variety of digital services.

This is where we come in. RightAnswers has partnered with Sutherland to assist them with this consumer service that is focused around providing support for home users. Sutherland is utilizing RightAnswers’ standard content to provide a knowledge environment for its end-users. As users come to the site to access Virgin Digital Help, RightAnswers is providing the back-end search and knowledge functionality.

At RightAnswers, we know that having the “right” solution content in your knowledge base is critical to any knowledge management strategy. That is why Sutherland is also utilizing the RightAnswers Solution Manager – an effective, easy-to-use vehicle to help manage your knowledge base by creating new “company-specific” knowledge articles.

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, says: “At Virgin we’ve made it our mission to always step in when we feel like people are getting a raw deal. Virgin Digital Help will do exactly that with bells on! Digital products are fantastic but the industry, as a whole, has done very little to support consumers when they get back home and try to make it all work.”

Mr. Branson speaks more about the new Virgin Digital Help service here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQEUt1sksC4

We agree with Mr. Branson’s assessment, and we have always believed that customer support is more than a one step process. At RightAnswers, we have seen a convergence of support needs for consumers and workplace users. This is where RightAnswers technology can be leveraged effectively – we focus on the continuous improvement of knowledge and we work with clients to create, manage and support their content on an ongoing basis.

Our partnership with Sutherland is another great application of how knowledge base solutions must be the foundation to ensure productive help desk and self-service operations.