IT SOLUTIONS 

 

Nestlé misses in one simple tools that can provide it big benefits. It needs a relatively small investment in the beginning and it should became a great source of new data, a way to face the customers complains and an interesting challenge to promote the brand. We are talking about the Wiki.

   

The initial costs of a corporate wiki can be covered in a few considering the opportunities of economize, which it provides. Nestlé could cut consistently the E-mail answering and the technical support calls. If customers have a specific and trustworthy place on the web where they can find the information they are looking for, they will be happy to avoid sending an E-mail or making a phone call, which costs them more effort.

    

A well structured wiki can also became an opportunity for employees of the Nestlé: well structured information, hierarchical data can be found in an easier way, just through a few click on the corporate wiki than after an inside searching, mainly where there is no obvious department which employees can refer to.The benefits to the image of the brand are a consequence not so instantaneous but incredibly bigger. A corporate wiki really helps in building consensus around a company: people are looking for information, and they find it; the information they found is correct and complete: “this company is quite trustable”. And that’s the top.

  

From the view of knowledge manager, a corporate wiki does not provide only the possibility to structure better the information. It is a big chance to gather a continuous flow of data. Surfing the web the customers feel free: free to ask whatever they want. There are some question that everybody will feel shame in asking face to face or by phone. Shame is a relative concept on the web. What cares the knowledge management about that? The fact is that when people use internet, they leave marks: analyzing the data that a wiki can give (how many people read this article, how much time they spend on this article, what articles are clicked after this article, from where has the user arrived) can provide critical information. 

  

   

 

     

A little bit further than wiki there are communities of practice. This (that is between an IT and a human relation tool), is actually a little bit dangerous for company like Nestlé which has a strong movement that fights against it. Support, also economically, the creation of group, became a sort of small social network, can have the meaning of giving enemies the power to fight against itself. But in this sense a community of Nestlé workers (better if from the south of the world) can improve the image of the company. On the other hand the community might be very easy accused of partiality. It’s very difficult to do in the right way, because freedom is the basic part of a community. And it is a little bit dangerous too. But it is not impossible. And it can be a safe space for sane customers complain.