Benefits

• Knowledge remains even when employees go
• Clear instructions help mentor new hires
• System support continues through the turmoil of a merger
• Documented procedures remove the anxiety of guesswork
• Repeatable conversion processes keep data error-free

Challenge

A local insurance company was going through a merger, consolidating its data center with another company’s operation. Many key employees were departing as a result, with up to 170 of the original 200 IT employees leaving in the first three months alone. A wealth of accrued experience was literally walking out the door.

In addition, the need to merge data from the two companies’ legacy systems presented a daunting conversion task. And the data resided on multiple platforms – AS400, DEC, and VSAM – flowing into no fewer than 34 support systems.

Stratagem's Solution

Stratagem quickly formed a team to debrief employee experts and capture their knowledge before they departed. They blended information from the interviews with existing documentation and organized it into a five-volume support library geared to the needs of the new data center. The entire breadth of the departing employees’ knowledge was captured, not just documentation for individual system or procedures.

While conducting interviews, the team also began putting together instructions for the data-conversion process. This included pre-conversion data-prep instructions, conversion and verification procedures, and post-conversion cleanup and archiving steps. They formatted the material in Microsoft Word so that the client could maintain it in the future and included hyperlinks so readers could quickly find the instructions they needed.

Result

During a period when employee turnover was high, Stratagem helped the insurance company capture expertise and pass it on before it was too late. This effectively boosted the experience level of the new hires and protected the organization’s knowledge assets.

Data-conversion documentation also worked to ensure error-free data handling so the new data center could run smoothly, with no fear of lost or damaged account information.