Themes
Service Quality: Aims to improve service excellence by enhancing knowledge sharing and problem-solving across branches, leading to better customer service and satisfaction.
Innovation Leadership: Fosters a culture of innovation by sharing best practices and developing new products and services based on collective insights and experiences.
Overview
The Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) Thailand, established in 1966, supports farmers, associations, and cooperatives. With a workforce of 20,190 employees serving 7.8 million farm households, BAAC faces operation delays and internal misunderstandings. The main challenge is the loss of tacit and explicit knowledge due to staff rotations, outdated knowledge from changing customer behaviors, and structural changes leading to process misunderstandings. To address these, BAAC initiated the Community of Practice (CoPs) to foster knowledge-sharing and problem-solving among staff. This approach, in line with the thematic area of citizen-centered services, has significantly improved service quality, process efficiency, and overall customer satisfaction.
Challenge
The primary challenge addressed by BAAC’s Knowledge Management (KM) Community of Practices (CoPs) involves managing the significant operational inefficiencies stemming from staff rotation, evolving customer behaviors, and structural changes. Frequent staff rotations result in the loss of tacit and explicit knowledge crucial for current tasks. Changes in customer behavior demand continuous updates to the knowledge base for effective customer support and service. Structural changes within BAAC lead to misunderstandings or gaps in know-how among the workforce, hindering their ability to adapt to new processes. These challenges collectively contribute to delays in operations, internal miscommunications, and reduced service quality, underscoring the need for a robust knowledge management solution. Recognizing the value of face-to-face interactions, there is a need of using knowledge management to guarantee smooth operations and provide the best possible customer service.
Solution/s
To address the challenges, BAAC KM CoPs implement features to collectively help mitigate the loss of knowledge due to staff rotation, keep the workforce updated with changing customer behaviors, and ensure smooth adaptation to structural changes.
Decentralized Problem Identification: Each BAAC branch identifies local problems by listening to customer voices and daily operations. Solutions are tailored to ensure the effective resolution of region-specific issues.
Learning Repository (LR): An online platform providing 24/7 access to categorized knowledge resources that enable quick retrieval and application of relevant information. It also facilitates widespread dissemination of successful practices, promoting organization-wide learning.
Regular CoPs Activities: Best practices from individual branches are shared at provincial, regional, and national levels, encouraging a culture of continuous improvement and mutual learning.
Non-Performing Loans (NPL) Management System: integrates processes like debtor analysis, payment capability assessment, monitoring, overdue warnings, and loan agreements into a comprehensive electronic “End to End Process”.
These innovative practices help BAAC mitigate knowledge loss, adapt to changing customer behaviors, and smoothly implement structural changes, ultimately enhancing operational efficiency and service quality.
Productivity Gains, Outcomes, and Impact
One of the most notable achievements of the CoPs initiative is the enhancement of managing non-performing loans (NPLs). By implementing an electronic “end-to-end process,” BAAC could integrate debtor analysis, payment capability assessment, monitoring, overdue warning, and loan agreement processes. This system shortened the NPL process from 131 minutes to 53 minutes. Consequently, the NPL rate decreased significantly from 14% at the beginning of 2023 to 5.5% by the end of the year.
The Learning Repository (LR), an online platform for knowledge management, saw a substantial increase in usage. The number of knowledge entries in the LR system grew from 1,090 in 2019 to 1,182 in 2022, and the number of uses increased from 21,583 to 25,482 during the same period. This facilitated continuous learning and improvement among staff.
Overall, BAAC’s CoPs have strengthened citizen-centered services by addressing customer pain points, improving service quality, and enabling staff to perform tasks effectively. The initiative also fostered innovation, leading to new products, services, and streamlined processes, ultimately enhancing the bank’s productivity and positively impacting its beneficiaries.
Lessons Learned/Challenges in Implementing the Intervention
The implementation of the CoPs at BAAC provided valuable lessons, such as the importance of addressing staff rotation, which led to the loss of tacit and explicit knowledge. By facilitating knowledge sharing across branches, CoPs helped mitigate this issue, though ongoing efforts are needed to institutionalize knowledge transfer practices. Another lesson learned was the need to continuously update staff skills and knowledge in response to changing customer behaviors and structural changes within the bank. CoPs provided a platform for sharing best practices and innovations, but ensuring timely updates and relevant training remains challenging.
Despite these successes, there were challenges in fully integrating CoPs into the organizational culture. Engaging all staff levels and ensuring consistent participation across branches were significant hurdles. Moreover, while the Learning Repository (LR) facilitated access to knowledge, increasing its utilization and ensuring the quality and relevance of the content are areas for improvement. Lastly, aligning CoPs activities with strategic goals and measuring their impact on productivity and customer satisfaction requires further refinement. Continuous monitoring, feedback, and adaptation of CoPs processes will be essential to sustain and enhance their effectiveness in improving BAAC’s productivity and service delivery.