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Global Knowledge Sharing has arrived for Citect Corporation

Citect Corporation, an Australian-owned developer of industrial automation process control software, has recently implemented an intranet that allows customer support team members to access a centralized technical knowledge base from all their offices around the world.

Citect has been in business for over twenty years and the company has grown from their offices in Sydney to incorporate two US offices as well as bases in Europe and China. Citect develops Supervisory Control And Data Accuracy (SCADA) software, called Citect. The software is developed in Australia, but the problems encountered by customers are alike all over the world.

When you are working with the automation of large plant equipment, from Aluminum to Automotive, Coal, Dairy or Building Management, you need a customer support team that can solve problems as quickly and simply as possible. Every moment that a plant is down or not operating at maximum efficiency is extremely expensive. So the software company decided to create an intranet environment where accumulated knowledge could be shared.

Citect have been ISYS users for years and it was therefore a natural progression for them to choose ISYS:web search technology for their intranet site. Putting the site together was easy, according to Tom Purcell, Client Support Manager. "Loading up ISYS was really quite simple. There were no major difficulties and everything is running smoothly," he said. ISYS:web provided Citect with flexible, unstructured searching for their various customer support databases and the ability to set up the intranet without having to convert all their files to HTML. ISYS:web converts legacy data on the fly, removing the need to convert documents into HTML before they can be loaded onto the intranet server.

There are five databases currently being indexed by ISYS:web. All of them are related to technical support, from previous customer problems, issues and resolutions, technical articles, tips, information, products that Citect interfaces with and related topics, to customer correspondence and specifications for Citect software. These are in the form of Word Processing documents, SQL databases and other proprietary formats.

The advantage of this intranet is that it can be accessed by all the Citect technical support staff right around the world. The major benefits are time saving and customer satisfaction. As the international offices have access to this information, it gives them greater independence from their head office. This benefits everyone. Head office technical support staff are no longer spending time assisting with overseas technical difficulties, so they have time to concentrate on their own customers. Those offices in America, Europe and China can appear more professional, are more resourceful and able to answer their customers’ queries and problems a lot faster.

The independence of the regional offices is good for the personal morale of those involved and, importantly, no one in the company has to reinvent a solution. If something has been confronted and solved previously, then it can be reused. When, in the near future, the overseas offices get access to contributing their experiences and information as well, the entire network of company technical support will benefit via the shared knowledge.

Time saving is also achieved through the ISYS search engine. ISYS simultaneously searches five separate databases on the Citect site and generates results in seconds. This puts the communal knowledge at the fingertips of every team member and minimizes support staff frustration. There’s nothing worse than when you know you’ve seen an answer somewhere and can't find it. ISYS eliminates this problem.

At this stage, the intranet is primarily for the company's technical support groups but the ultimate plan is to roll out a system that can be of benefit to the entire company. Citect wants to put its filing on line, as well as all customer correspondence, technical manuals, queries, quotes, and after-sales information. The company's intranet will become a truly global one-stop shop for information and interaction.