Business Wiki

Typical Resource Sucking Questions

• "Where are the contract templates?"
• "The phone system has a problem.... who should I call?"
• "When do we need to get approval for an expense? Over 2,000 yen? More?"
• "Who is keeping tracking of the account information for our biggest client?"
• "How do I dial overseas?"
• "I always forget the garbage days - who has the schedule?"
• "When do we get paid overtime?"
• "How do I use the bank PC to transfer payments?"

Do these constant stream of questions sound similar to you?

In any business, there are hundreds of similar questions that are asked over, and over again when new people join the company, or when people just forget.

If you're not using new technology to store regularly asked questions in a database, you're losing money every time the same question is asked and answered manually over, and over again.

Case Study - New Employee

A new employee starts at your company, Tanaka-san.

Tanaka-san is eager to work, but he's still getting used to the way things are done at your company. Within 3 hours, he's come up with 3 questions about the company.

"What is company policy on mobile phones?"
"In what circumstances can I apply for overtime?"
"This was in my contract, but I forgot. How many days of holiday can I get in a year?"

The Old Way
Tanaka-san looks at the admin staff, but she appears to be busy.

Tanaka-san waits around for 10 minutes for the admin lady to finish a phone call, and an email.

Eventually, he walks over, and says hello. They spend a few minutes discussing his last job, and the interview process.

He shares a story about his weekend, and she does the same. The phone rings. She looks at Tanaka-san apologetically.

Tanaka-san waves it off, and she answers the phone.

A couple of minutes later, Tanaka-san gets to his questions. 

Tanaka-san explains the way things used to work at his previous company, and inquires how things work at this company.  The admin staff explains in detail. Tanaka-san walks off, satisfied.

Summary - The Old Way

Time spent on Tanaka-san's questions 1 hour 30 minutes

Tanaka-san 11:10am to 12:00pm - 50 minutes

Admin-staff 11:20am to 12:00pm - 40 minutes.

The Wiki Way

On the same day he starts, Tanaka-san receives an email at 9:15am with the login details to his company's Wiki system. He logs in out of curiousity.

He clicks on a link called "Admin", and learns all about :

• company expense policy,
• how to apply to have your phone bill reimbursed,
• when overtime is payable, and
• information only relating to Tanaka-san, such as paid leave and salary, which only Tanaka-san, the administration staff and his manager can view.

Total time spent 20 minutes of Tanaka-san's time to answer all of his questions and more.

Later that night at Tanaka-san's welcome party, he ended up talking for 3 hours with the very same admin staff. They start dating, and begin a great working and personal relationship.

The purpose of that anecdote is this : an information tool like a Wiki system is not designed to eliminate human contact. It's actually the opposite.

It's designed to increase the quality of human contact within the business.

When people get together to talk or collaborate, they're spending they're time doing billable work, discussing how to improve service, coming up with new ideas. Not how to file an expense.

In summary, this kind of system is designed to :

• eliminate wasted time and repetition
• increase efficiency of finding useful information.
• increase cohesiveness for large groups of people.

All of which directly translates into time saved, and money saved.  Convinced yet?

What if I told you this : The particular system that we use, recommend and install, which has the power to eliminate redundancy in your business and save all of your staff countless hours of time is free.

Completely free. Not only is it free, it's stable and secure.

How is this possible? The Wiki system that we use and recommend is open source. This means that the code is completely open, and free to download, install and use.

Too good to be true? Well, yes it is.

Webnet IT is an IT services company - we still need to charge for our time to set it up for you.

We're also available to setup a sample structure, and train your staff on how to use it.

This kind of system is much more affordable and easy to use than you might think.

We might even be able to set it up on your existing server.

Call us for a free quote, or to see how we use similar systems inside Webnet IT.  Or drop us an email. Let us make your business more efficient and profitable.