AUMA: a secure knowledge base for field technicians.
AUMA make the electric actuators that automate industrial valves. Their partners are the UK's major water companies, and their technicians need technical documentation while standing next to the valve. We built the portal on HubSpot's Knowledge Base.
AUMA Actuators Limited is the UK arm of the AUMA Group, one of the leading manufacturers of electric actuators for automating industrial valves. The group employs more than 2,800 people worldwide.
The UK business is B2B, and it runs on long-term framework partnerships with the major water companies.
They already had a customer portal for sharing documents, reached from their website. It did very little, and it reported nothing at all.
AUMA needed somewhere secure that their framework partners would actually use.
Technical documents, instructional videos, supporting material. All of it reachable by a technician standing somewhere remote, on a phone, who needs the answer now rather than after a phone call and a callback.
The second half of the problem was invisible. Nobody could see what people were looking for, so the content team was guessing at what to write next.
“It is over a decade since our existing website was introduced, and much has changed in the online world. This new site forms part of our sophisticated, integrated digital ecosystem, which includes the website, our Knowledge Base, our Content Management System and Customer Relationship Management platform.”
AUMA went to HubSpot for one reason: website, CRM, CMS, customer portal and marketing in one place instead of five.
Phase one was the portal itself, built on HubSpot's Knowledge Base. Help articles, technical documentation and instructional videos, sorted into a category structure that holds up as it grows.
The AUMA team update it themselves. No developer, no ticket, no waiting on us.
The reporting dashboard is what fixes the second problem. The team can see what gets read, what gets searched for, and what comes back empty. Then they write to that instead of to a hunch.
There are now several customer portals inside the Knowledge Base, each with its own branded, secure login. Customers get an automated email invitation to register, so only the right people reach the right content.
Four steps, mostly about editorial rather than software.
Define the categories
AUMA already knew what their customers asked for, because sales reps and customer service had been fielding those questions for years. That knowledge just wasn't written down anywhere.
We helped turn it into a structure that stays consistent across several portals, and advised on categorisation and navigation.
Gather the material
The documentation and media were spread across a lot of places. We advised on how to pull it together, what was worth keeping, and where the gaps were before anyone started writing.
Consolidate and curate
Duplicates and out-of-date material came out. What remained was laid out to be searched rather than browsed, because that's how a technician in a hurry actually uses a knowledge base.
Keep it alive
A knowledge base nobody maintains is a knowledge base that quietly stops being true.
We helped set up a way for internal teams to contribute what they know, and for customer feedback to point at what's missing.
Three phases.
