Odion, with 1,500 employees in the regions of Zaanstreek, Kennemerland, and Waterland, strives to make each day as pleasant as possible for children and adults with disabilities. Within the organization, the service point serves as the central location where employees can ask questions. The service point has succeeded in resolving recurring questions about the use of software applications much more quickly while also increasing employees' self-sufficiency.
Odion assists 1,750 children and adults with disabilities in making each day as pleasant as possible. The organization operates in the regions of Zaanstreek, Kennemerland, and Waterland, with 63 locations staffed by 1,500 employees and volunteers. A central service point has been established for employees to address all their inquiries. Two key objectives behind the establishment of the service point were to resolve (recurring) employee questions more efficiently and to enhance employees' self-sufficiency.
Odion decided to establish a central service point to provide clarity and simplicity for its employees. With the introduction of the service point, users can ask all their questions in one place instead of trying to figure out which department is responsible. Leonardo Lay, Functional Application Manager at Odion, discusses the situation prior to the service point:
“Employees had to figure out who to approach with a question. In practice, they often didn’t know: should I go to HR, IT, or the Financial Administration? With the service point, that’s a thing of the past.”
Sometimes, input from multiple departments is needed to adequately answer a question. Since inquiries have been directed to the service point, coordination between departments has become smoother, and employees receive more complete answers to their questions.
The significant added value of the service point for the organization was twofold: to resolve (recurring) questions more efficiently and to increase employee self-sufficiency. An important condition for achieving this was ensuring that knowledge was retained. Leonardo Lay explains that SelfGuide came into the picture:
“We wanted to secure our knowledge regarding the use of software applications so that we could provide ready-made answers (such as ‘reset password’) to employees. Additionally, we wanted employees to be able to search for available knowledge by topic.”
SelfGuide provided Odion with the opportunity to both capture knowledge about the use of software applications 50% faster in software instructions and to present this knowledge in a user-friendly format to employees.
At Odion, the implementation was reportedly quick and smooth. After a mini-training session, employees were able to independently create and update instructions. The same applied to the administrators responsible for user management and configuration choices. Leonardo Lay shares his own experiences:
“No technical knowledge is required to use the SelfGuide product. The functionalities are to-the-point, making it easy to use. The technical components (such as a single sign-on integration) were successfully addressed in collaboration with the SelfGuide consultants.”
The only adjustment some instruction managers had to make was realizing that to create an instruction, they needed to fully conceptualize the process (as the instruction recorder automatically captures the various steps). They quickly saw the advantage of this, as it simplified post-editing and improved the quality of the instructions.
In the past, employees at Odion created instructions in their own way, but that is a thing of the past thanks to SelfGuide. Leonardo Lay explains the benefits SelfGuide brings:
“The strength of SelfGuide lies in its simplicity. You can quickly create a short, complete, and clear instruction. We hear this feedback from users as well. Additionally, different instructions can be easily combined into a coherent user guide. We save a lot of time in resolving user inquiries and see that employees are becoming more self-sufficient.”
Employees, both users and administrators of SelfGuide, encourage each other to use the product. As a result, the value of SelfGuide for Odion is growing organically, in addition to its use in projects related to implementations, updates, and migrations.
Odion has several projects and themes planned to incorporate SelfGuide, such as the onboarding process. This initiative aims to expand the number of instructions and user guides to ensure a comprehensive offering that meets the needs of all employees. Nonetheless, Leonardo Lay expresses his satisfaction with the current implementation:
“I am very pleased at the moment, but I feel we are not yet getting the most out of it. This is primarily because we have not yet engaged the entire organization; certain departments could derive a lot of value from it, in my opinion. I am confident that this will happen in the future.”
Another interesting feature Odion intends to utilize in the future is guest access, which allows instructions to be made available to individuals outside the organization. For Odion, this could include clients and their families.
