SPIE ICS absorbs 540,000 support requests a year with 140 agents and one knowledge base

A knowledge base for every client, and no owner

SPIE ICS runs IT service desks under contract for other companies, and each of those companies supplied the knowledge base.

• The tooling came with the contract. SPIE's clients each provided the knowledge base their service desk had to use, so the toolset was decided outside SPIE.
• An audit found everything. Sticky notes, OneNote, SharePoint, Confluence, and the knowledge modules inside GLPI, EasyVista and ServiceNow, each with its own login and its own structure.
• Technicians switched context every few minutes. A new caller every five to ten minutes could mean a different client, and a different place to look.
• And the same answer was written many times over. Standard desktop questions do not change from one client to the next, but the procedure did, and nobody could retire the stale copies.

We measured how long it took to reach the right knowledge in the old tools. It was a minute to a minute and a half. With Elium it is 15 to 20 seconds.

One base, two templates, owned by SPIE

SPIE hired a dedicated knowledge manager before it chose the tool, and shortlisted only knowledge management specialists.

• Specialists only, by design. The requirement went out to knowledge management vendors alone, not to suites with a knowledge module attached, so the depth would match the job.
• One base across every client contract. Standard knowledge is written once and served to whichever desk needs it, instead of being duplicated per client and ageing separately.
• Two templates, and only two. One for incidents and requests, with steps, prerequisites and escalation. One for the reference material behind the work. Other contracts ran a dozen.
• Everything has an owner and an expiry. Review dates route to the person accountable, so a procedure that has stopped being true surfaces before somebody acts on it.
• Agents raise problems where they find them. Annotations and comments let whoever hits a wrong step flag it in place, and the procedure's owner decides on the change.

Two of our own clients now use Elium with us. We manage the knowledge hand in hand, keeping it alive and creating new material together. Those perimeters work well.

Where it goes next

Fewer agents leave than before, so expertise stays in the building, which enriches the base, which shortens the ramp for whoever arrives next. Each step feeds the next.

What began on the central service desk has spread to the regional teams, and SPIE is now pointing Hub IA, its own AI platform, at Elium content where the material is stable.

To put AI in place in a way that actually works, the data has to be clean and verified. The source of truth has to come from a knowledge management tool.

SPIE started with twenty knowledge bases it did not own. It now has one it does, and both its agents and its AI answer from it.