Today Knovel launches a new subject area, Industrial Engineering and Operations Management.
As one of my colleagues who trained as an industrial engineer recently told me, “Industrial engineers don’t make things, they make things better.” This content collection is built to support engineers and engineering management’s efforts to make things better.
During the content planning, we had the chance to speak with our customers about their internal systems for improving processes, reducing risk, and ensuring quality through programmatic changes. We thank all of the customers that provided input on content planning. Your opinions are important to us. In response to customer feedback, we added reference works about major areas in industrial engineering, systems engineering and operations management. In conversations we heard that people want to keep up-to-date on new strategies and to learn best practices for their work. So we added titles that included case studies and covered best practices in areas such as supply chain management, logistics and project management.
The new collection will launch with five subtopics: Human Engineering and Ergonomics, Supply Chain Management and Logistics, Project Management, Six sigma, Lean and Quality Management and Industrial Engineering and Operations Management.
This new collection will feature titles from new content partners Technology Perspectives, AMACOM, and DesTech. Knovel welcomes our new content partners on board.
We invite Knovel users to visit http://pages.knovel.com/IndustrialEngineering.html to learn more about the new subject area.
Meagan Cooke
Director of Content Strategy
I am excited to write about being “On the Road” with our customers and partners. The Knovel team is spending more time today “on the road” than at any time in our history. I will be spending 4 out of 5 days this week with customers and partners who serve our customers. Being an on-line business means it is even more important to meet face to face with our customers. Face to face contact is critical if we are to establish relationships, listen to what customers are saying, show that we really care and demonstrate that we can act on what they tell us. I’ve found that I learn something new from every customer call, so I want to use this “On the Road” series to highlight some of this learning.
I recently visited with CP Kelco who makes hydrocolloids, which in simple terms are substances added to products to improve their performance in everything from foods, pharmaceuticals, and oral care through, paper coatings and even oil field drilling applications. CP Kelco is a subsidiary of J.M. Huber Corporation a company that also helps other companies make better products such as: toothpaste that makes teeth whiter, paper for newspapers and magazines, the paint that brightens homes and the building materials that make them safe and sound.”
I am most impressed with the company’s focus on its mission and standards, established by their founder, as we at Knovel strongly believe that focus on success and respect for others are core values that drive our business. As we get to better know CP Kelco and J.M. Huber I am sure we at Knovel will learn from their example of success.
CP Kelco found our service through a referral and subscribed (lucky us!). That meant we didn’t go through the “getting to know you” process we go through with most of our new clients. Having made a trip, I now understand that CP Kelco uses Knovel to get fast access to detailed chemical data required in their work each day and this will help to guide choices we make around adding content to our data rich environment.
After our visit to CP Kelco and as a result of solving an issue I received a note saying “You are fortunate to have such qualified and diligent people working for your organization.” This is satisfying and a precursor of good things to come for both our organizations.
Chris Forbes
CEO
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a huge business segment with over $10 billion spent annually on PLM software systems alone. Every Fortune 500 company that has a manufacturing or process component to their business has a PLM strategy. When organizations put together their PLM strategies, they focus on the productivity improvements that can be gained through process improvements, organizational design and enabling technologies. The technologies considered normally include solutions for digital design, digital product data management and coordinating engineering work across departments and geographies, etc.
Knovel is a solution that enhances engineering productivity by providing external reference information as part of the engineering workflow. PLM relies heavily upon accessibility, management and flow of engineering data.
A few months back, Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity approached me with an idea on doing a research project to determine the role of engineering reference information in a PLM strategy. Since it’s a question Knovel has wrestled with, I was happy to give Jim support and agreed to sponsor the project. Tech-Clarity has just released its findings in: Tech-Clarity Insight: Engineering Reference Information in a PLM Strategy.
At risk of oversimplifying, the report concludes that electronic reference is important in a PLM strategy and makes recommendations about how engineering businesses can look at its role. I wouldn’t be doing the paper justice to attempt to summarize it here, but I pulled out a few quotes from engineering leaders Jim Brown spoke with that I found engaging. After reading them, perhaps you’ll consider downloading the report.
You can download the paper: Tech-Clarity Insight: Engineering Reference Information in a PLM Strategy for free at the Knovel website (registration is required).
You can read more of Jim’s thoughts on the electronic reference on his blog over at Manufacturing Business Technology http://www.mbtmag.com.
Today our Director of Product Management and I are going to call on an important customer. I expect Knovel will lose this customer because several months ago we broke their trust. We have enjoyed a growing relationship with this customer where they felt they were receiving fair value for their investment. During that time we provided all the customer asked for but we did not invest in understanding our customer’s needs and process; we did not invest in building a “trust bank” with our customer. Based on our own value metrics and without having established a personal relationship and understanding of Knovel’s value with the person making the decision we asked for an exceptionally large price increase. Our proposal was a shock to the customer. The moment the proposal landed the customer lost trust in us. We had not invested in understanding them, their process, and Knovel’s value to the user community they serve. Faced with similar circumstances I am sure I would have asked “what are these people from Knovel thinking.” Shame on us!
Mistakes happen and Knovel will learn from this one. It will be difficult for us to recover with this customer because we have not built a balance in the trust bank. We will lay out our best case and see what happens. This experience (no matter the outcome) is both galling and humbling for an organization that prides itself on customer service. We pride ourselves on a 94%+ renewal rate with our customers, yet over the last 3 years I have seen Knovel lose 3 customers for similar reasons. Each loss diminishes value for that customer and for Knovel; we must both go through cycles to find alternatives, re-establish trust...
My relentless pursuit to growing this business combined with our service and account management processes contribute to this failure. We will look closely at the balance between the customer’s perceived value and the investment we are asking customers to make. We will also scrutinize our processes for communicating and working with customers.
While we will mistakes in the future, we can improve our customer service and take every step possible to make sure we do not destroy value through breaking trust. To that end it is my intention to personally listen to and talk with each of our customers in 2009. I will follow with details in January.
I look forward to speaking with you in the New Year and wish you all Happy Holidays!
Best wishes,
Chris
Chris Forbes
CEO
Knovel