The information systems department at VINCI Energies: empowering their IT Support Team with the right knowledge management platform
VINCI Energies, a pivotal division within VINCI, develops multi-technical, tailor-made solutions and services for energy, transport, and communications infrastructures, as well as buildings, plants, and information systems.
The company is globally recognised for its commitment to implementing cutting-edge technological solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of its clients.
Engaged in a spectrum of projects, VINCI Energies contributes significantly to the construction and maintenance of advanced energy and information technology systems on a global scale.
Industry
Energy & Utilities
Solution
Customer-Facing Knowledge Management
Employees
97 000
Country
61 countries
The challenge
The information systems department at VINCI Energies is the orchestrator of IT, communication, and management tools for the VINCI Energies group.
With 1000 employees, the information systems department at VINCI Energies ensures a dynamic and secure infrastructure and supports the group’s growth by adopting new, creative, innovative, and ambitious solutions. On a daily basis, the IT support teams respond to requests from end-users to provide them with an optimal user experience.
Despite their dedicated efforts, they encountered challenges due to the decentralised nature of their knowledge management. The IT support team had developed numerous procedures to address various scenarios, but these were documented using different tools such as Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Additionally, the procedures were scattered across various channels like SharePoint, Teams, and Outlook.
The primary challenge lay in the difficulty of locating the right information at the right time. The existing documentation suffered from issues such as outdated content, and there was a lack of clear reporting on the usage of procedures and critical information.
The Solution
The overarching goal of the IT support teams was to address these challenges by homogenizing existing knowledge, ensuring its quick accessibility, and establishing a permanent and efficient system for information dissemination.
For this purpose, their team was looking for a versatile knowledge management solution that would enable them to achieve two goals:
- centralise the totality of all IT knowledge in one central place
- facilitate the act of knowledge sharing of IT resources with the rest of the team
The plans were ambitious: Elium was supposed to host all IT knowledge, be used by 500+ users, host more than 1000 articles, split inside 100+ spaces. It all started with a mass migration of existent documents, and a clear positioning of Elium inside the company
Why Elium?
Expiration Dates Attached to Docs
In this context, it is crucial for support teams to consistently guarantee the validity and reliability of the knowledge they access and utilise.
Elium facilitates this process by empowering content creators to affix validity and expiration dates to knowledge.
This dynamic feature ensures that when updates are due, content creators receive timely notifications. This systematic approach not only streamlines the updating process but also guarantees that the knowledge base stays impeccably up-to-date at all times.
The information systems department at VINCI Energies Works With Teams All Around The World
In this context, access to information in the right language, at the right time, was essential.
Elium allows content creators to share knowledge in several languages, and even enables automatic translation at just the click of a button.
This speeds up access to information, and ensures that everyone has access to the right knowledge, at the right time.
Logical arborescence and access rights
With a diverse team and varied needs, the information systems department at VINCI Energies sought a solution that could offer a systematic framework for organizing crucial information.
Elium proved to be the ideal tool, allowing it to structure knowledge seamlessly within designated spaces that align with the company’s organisational chart.
The team particularly valued Elium’s capability to effortlessly manage access rights for each space, ensuring the flexibility to keep certain spaces private or even secret.
Experienced Knowledge Management Tool and Team with Global Footprint
With over a decade of experience, Elium has successfully collaborated with global enterprises such as L’Oréal, Savencia, and BNP Paribas, earning their trust in facilitating knowledge-sharing initiatives. The information systems department at VINCI Energies, drew confidence from our extensive track record, recognizing that years of experience and overcoming challenges have bolstered our capabilities for executing successful knowledge management projects. Their trust in us proved well-placed.
The success of a knowledge base depends mainly on the involvement of the staff, who have to write, correct and update articles on a very regular basis. So we needed a tool that was dynamic, user-friendly and easy to use. Elium meets these criteria perfectly!
Emma HURTEAUX – Digitalisation & Service Quality team lead
How did we make it a success?
The implementation process of Elium for Knowledge Management included several different steps.
Identifying and clarifying the needs of the IT support teams
Analysing 11 potential software solutions
Testing 2 runner-up solutions, including Elium
Selecting Elium as the tool of choice
Mass migrating all the relevant documents of the support department
Going live with a selected group of users
After the 4th phase, during which Elium was selected, the project team ensured the active involvement of the platform’s future users in demonstrations of the tool and its functionalities.
They also provided a detailed explanation of the project timeline. Equally, the team organized workshops to better understand needs and potential usages, in addition to coordinating several test sessions.
Only after this thorough preparation period did the team launch the tool, making it available to users. This approach was instrumental in ensuring widespread platform adoption, and Elium was proactive in supporting these efforts
The results
When it comes to the results noticed, the team reports some great usage metrics, and overall enhancement of the performance and satisfaction of the support team.
500+ users connected and active
Little by little, the platform gathered more than 500 users, which now interract daily with the content on the platform so as to effectively perform their support task.
4.000+ articles published
More than 4.000 articles have been published to date, showing how this platform manages to effectively centralise key knowledge needed by the IT team.
110 spaces created for each key topic
Over 100 spaces have been created so as to store the knowledge in the right space. Elium made this easy as creating and managing new spaces if fast and reliable.
Increased team efficiency
Overall, after several years of using the new tool, the team reported increased efficiency, and the confidence that they are able to deliver excellent support.
Their platform
The Platform of the information systems department at VINCI Energies was crafted to optimally meet the IT support team’s requirements, empowering them in their daily endeavors to deliver swift and precise assistance to the team.
One team - one space. One manager - one group of spaces.
Each team has its own space. And for the teams who share the same manager, spaces are grouped in Groups of Spaces. This makes knowledge retrieval easier and faster.
Usage rights are personalised by space
Usage rights are easily defined for each space. In their space, users are at least contributors and create content, while in others, they are just readers, digesting existent knowledge shared by others. This ensures that when new knowledge is shared it is done in a way that keeps the platform’s content trustworthy.
Personalised Tags are used to create Smart Tabs
Each team defines dedicated tags and templates. This then helps administrators to automatically configure Smart Tabs – intelligent widgets that group and display knowledge related to a specific topic.
Elium Community - a space to learn about the platform
In order to ensure a good adoption of the platform, and support teams in their usage of Elium, the information systems department at VINCI Energies created a dedicated space that now serves as a sharing and learning community for all users.
Conclusions and what is next.
In conclusion, the information systems department at VINCI Energies is successfully using Elium to deliver best-in-class IT support.
The team is now actively striving for enhancement and a deeper comprehension of user needs. Through a series of workshops conducted with our team, they are strategically positioning Elium within their existing ecosystem. A comprehensive satisfaction survey involving all users has also been conducted, revealing valuable insights and pointing towards various avenues for further tool development.
Overall, the team continues to strive for improvement of user satisfaction, by empowering them with the right solutions inside Elium.
