You are the CEO of a big company about to lose half its staff to retirement in just a few years. What’s your biggest concern? Hiring new employees is your top priority. Right?
Well, there’s that, but also something else you probably haven’t considered.
The older employees will retire with decades’ worth of valuable knowledge about your company, from getting the kitchen’s coffeemaker to brew a good cup of joe to running everyday mission-critical operations. Such a high employee turnover will erode a wealth of information from the workplace — information the new recruits will need to get started.
If only there were a way to preserve all that knowledge. Or better yet, a way for the outgoing staff to mentor the newcomers without having to set up costly and time-consuming training programs (that nobody really likes anyway).
That exact situation is what drove the CEO of a prominent utility company in Quebec to SIA Innovations in search of answers. Here’s the story of how SIA Innovations helped the company preserve and pass down its workplace knowledge while saving costs and time:
A Utility Company with an Information Problem
The utility company had over 20,000 employees, decades of experience in the industry, and a reputation to protect by continuously delivering high-quality services and exceptional customer support. The company’s CEO saw the need to preserve information in order to perpetuate the work culture that makes the brand great.
Over 50% of the company’s employees were eligible for retirement, meaning they’d soon leave with vital know-how about the ins and outs of the workplace. The company was looking for a way to transfer knowledge from the older employees to their incoming replacements. Given the company’s size, manually training each new employee was out of the question.
The CEO knew that AI could be a promising solution to this problem. So, they turned to SIA Innovations to develop an AI-powered system to secure the existing information and re-distribute it to all employees.
Why SIA Innovations?
SIA Innovations is more than just an IT services provider. We build strategic business partnerships with each of our clients based on mutual trust and fruitful collaborations. At SIA Innovations, we believe in the power of promoting growth through technological innovations such as mobile applications, ERP systems, AI-powered automation, cloud systems, and more.
It’s our vision and commitment to deliver tangible results to our IBM customers that really resonated with the utility company’s CEO. At that moment, we could provide the ‘gift of time,’ which is precisely what the company sought.
The company was in a bit of a time crunch. With more than half its staff leaving the workplace, it needed a quick formula to capture as much knowledge as possible from the outgoing crew. Moreover, the utility company required a solution that could instantly disperse the knowledge gathered on demand.
Our team’s first-hand expertise and vast experience with IBM’s robust AI systems (IBM Watson Assistant, Discovery, etc.) came in handy in developing a fitting solution for the client.
Given how well the project worked out, the utility company made the right choice coming to SIA Innovations with their unique problem. Plus, we already had a solid rapport with the company, so they were confident SIA Innovations would deliver. And deliver we did.
Jumping Into Action
After much deliberation, we decided to develop an automated and readily accessible information base for the utility company. We used Watson Discovery to gather and organize data from multiple sources, in this case, over 1.5 million documents and records. Then, we layered Watson Assistant on top of the information base. Watson Assistant is an AI-driven cognitive search engine capable of understanding natural language and presenting relevant answers based on search queries.
The Obstacles We Overcame
We faced quite a few challenges with this approach. But the important thing is that we conquered them all and reached our goals. These are the main issues that kept our experts up at night:
Maintaining Data Security and Privacy
Data privacy was extremely important in the utility company. We needed to ensure that each of the company’s thousands of employees would only access information relevant to them and their roles. This also had to account for workplace dynamics, such as new hires and employees changing positions. It took sophisticated information and user privilege filtering techniques to bring the system up to the required security and privacy standards.
Teaching Watson the Company’s Lingo
We had to ensure that the cognitive search engine understood the business terms or the specific vocabulary used in the utility company. Our team had to train the AI on the sort of language to expect before it ingested the 1.5 million data sources. To solve this problem, we used a technique called Pre-enrichment, where we parsed each data source with the business context around it.
Orchestrating Company-Wide Implementation
The third challenge was integrating the solution into the company’s infrastructure. We knew that the search engine would have a massive impact on the company’s way of doing things. So, we took an agile approach, working closely with managers to define new information-sharing procedures. And to ensure the methodology stayed on track, we deployed bits and pieces of the system to small user subgroups. The feedback from these test runs proved valuable in preparing the final product for company-wide release.
Keeping the Data Updated
The company had over 1.5 million documents of source material. Company documents are quite volatile — they can be edited or erased at any time. Obviously, the search engine results needed to reflect such changes. But instead of having the system crawl through the entire repository in search of updates, which would take about a week, we developed a clever daily data refresh algorithm.
The Results
After about 12 months of fine-tuning and iteration, the solution was finally ready for large-scale deployment. At the end of the day, the utility company got a powerful cognitive search engine that seamlessly transfers company knowledge to new and existing employees. More than that, we delivered a means to enhance information sharing, minimize time wastage in the workplace, speed up employee onboarding, and boost overall productivity.
Today, the utility company’s CEO and staff are thrilled with the new system. They say it’s much easier and faster now to access information. For instance, tasks that would normally take hours are now dealt with in minutes. And that’s what we like to see — positive change through innovation, but most of all, a problem solved and another satisfied customer.
Start Telling Your Success Story with SIA Innovations
This success story, and many more like it, demonstrate SIA Innovation’s commitment to customer satisfaction. And you can tell your own business success story by partnering with us. Let’s discuss how we can solve your thorniest pain points through digital transformation.
