Continental AG has found an answer to this difficult question – tt performance suite. When it comes to managing the constant change of business processes and applications, large corporations tend to be highly dependent on business-critical know-how, which is held by subject matter experts and is neither documented nor maintained in a systematic way and is often enough hardly accessible by the frontline user. As a result, costly IT applications remain underleveraged, user adoption is low, support and training costs quickly get out of control. Continental AG has been using the documentation and authoring component of tt performance suite – the tt knowledge force – since 2007 in the Automotive division, initially for an SAP implementation project. In 2014, tt knowledge force became the standard tool and now delivers content to over 50,000 employees worldwide.
More than anything else, users appreciate the fact that QuickAccess provides information in an unstructured format while nevertheless allowing them to call up exactly what they need when they need it.
Support in the “moment of need”
Based on how well tt knowledge force worked for supporting SAP applications, Jens Bertram wondered how he could use it for other IT applications and make it accessible to a larger number of users.
He initiated a smart internal marketing campaign with banners, infopoints and short links to the internal social network. “Usually I do not advertise IT projects,“ adds Bertram. Anyway, ignoring this “rule” paid off – he acquired a whole network of key users with his approach. Today, over 14,000 documents have been created and updated by more than 800 eLearning authors – typically the subject matter experts, who now have a very useful home for their knowledge and innovative ideas. Authors create content simply by recording the steps it takes to complete a process. The time-saving recording technology allowed Continental to create 10 times the content compared to the time before tt knowledge force had been introduced. Also, it allows for transferring expertise into digital content without additional headcount.
The combined efficiency and usability of tt performance suite spread like wildfire. Bertram confirms, “there is no other tool that distributes knowledge as fast and focused as QuickAccess – the super easy access and reach are without any competition.” Soon the project gained top management attention, which made it easy to implement solid application support structures.
With more and more employees knowing about tt performance suite, innovative ideas came in big time e.g. What about integrating links into QuickAccess that allow direct access to the Continental internal wiki, the chatbot and other sources of learning, support and knowledge? Why not implement a direct connection to the ticketing system through QuickAccess? As a result, a whole string of innovations supporting the notion of a “single source of truth” were realized within the project at Continental.
The solutions from tts have proven successful across the board at Continental. I hope I can pass on my enthusiasm for the products from tts, particularly to new customers.
Performance support for ERP rollouts and suppliers
By now, QuickAccess is part of the standard desktop installation package at Continental, and more projects managers are asking for their project to join the performance support platform. For upcoming ERP rollouts, the company plans to provide training for the local key user only. All other employees will get their support exclusively through the orange on their task bar. They just need to hover over the orange to get immediate access to information whenever they are stuck in the work process.
Continental has even implemented an interface to connect its customers to learning content produced by tt performance suite. The next step will be to give suppliers direct access to the performance support portal. They will then be able to pick and choose what they want or need to know about Continental’s supply chain processes.
Continental AG facts & figures
- 235,473 employees across 554 locations in 61 countries
- Tire division with 53,881 employees at 75 locations in 47 countries
- Turnover in 2017: 44 billion €
- Turnover of Tire division in 2017: 11.3 billion €
- Increase in numbers of subject matter experts authoring content up from 230 to over 800 in less than a year
- Increase in numbers of documents from 900 to 14,000 in less than 2 years
