Emmanuel Esquieu looks back on 20 years of Knowmore
Our ambition was to place the employee at the heart of the successful digital transformation of companies and organizations. Emmanuel Esquieu. Co-founder and CEO
Knowmore celebrates its 20th anniversary!
This is an opportunity to look back at the major stages in the company's development. Emmanuel Esquieu, Knowmore CEO, granted us an exclusive interview.
How did you come up with the idea of creating Knowmore? How did the company come about?
Emmanuel Esquieu (E.E): Initially, my business was the deployment of IT applications and the training, support and coaching of users of large-scale Information Systems. At the time, 20 years ago, we used to train on school bases or training environments, to enable future users to practice before working on the real application. However, when we trained users, we wrote course materials that sometimes had to be sent out to 10,000 people. These documents are hardly ever read and are difficult to update, even if they are made available on an intranet.
It was time-consuming, complex and costly. The idea soon arose to create computer application simulators.
As soon as Knowmore was founded in 2001, we began developing our first solution, K-STUDIO. K-STUDIO, also known as the authoring tool, enables you to clone the screens, data and behaviors of an application to create interactive training content to help tens of thousands of users, now millions, learn complex and expensive computer applications. Of course, the training messages had to be integrated directly into the simulator.
The flexibility of the solution, its adaptability to the agendas of the people being trained and its availability at all times make it an ideal tool for continuous training, consolidating and securing the transformation. N.M. Deputy General Manager, in charge of transformation projects for the ANRU Agency
We quickly realized that we could and should go even further to support users on their workstations, once the training had been completed. The operating procedures proposed in the applications' online help, when they exist, are not always easy to transpose. Users often have to search for a business rule or document in order to enter the right information in their application. Users need to be alerted when they perform a business action.... The ambition was to have all this information available in real time, directly on the application and for everyone.
In fact, with hindsight, our ambition was to place the employee at the center of the successful digital transformation of companies and organizations. Today, we call this the user centric.
Knowmore then embarked on the development of a second K-NOW solution, offering dynamic help and operating modes superimposed on business applications, so that the user has access to information and guidance in real time, as and when required. The idea of "application GPS" was born. We began experimenting with it at France Télécom. At the time, we called this solution digital coaching. In 2019, 18 years later, Gartner designated this market DAP: Digital Adoption Platform. It works on the same principle as GPS in a car: K-NOW guides the user, like a colleague training and guiding him step by step through the application. Knowmore is arguably the forerunner of DAP solutions, and certainly the first Editor to have created and marketed a GPS application.
When was Knowmore founded?
E.E: Knowmore was created in May 2001.
What have been the milestones in Knowmore's growth?
E.E: After initiating the K-NOW experiment in 2001 at France Telecom, in 2003 and 2004 a second customer, a major international bank, entrusted us with the task of supporting them in what is certainly the biggest banking project to date in France. With K-STUDIO, we delivered 250 interactive training contents to train the 15,000 users on their new workstations. It was a real success, and earned us our first prize: the CEGOS Awards for the 1st E-Learning project in the Deployment category.
On the strength of this success, we have won the confidence of several major banking and insurance companies. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our customers who are still with us today.
In fact, as projects and demands have grown, we've had to structure our Knowmore teams. We have recruited new developers to ensure we are always at the cutting edge of innovation, and strengthened our technical team to meet the ever-increasing demands of our key account customers' business and IT teams. Knowmore has worked on over 200 different applications and collaborative tools. I'm proud to have succeeded in retaining and developing, in particular, the employees who have been with us from the start, and who, having been through all the changes in IT over the last 20 years, are now able to advise the IT teams of the biggest groups. I'm also delighted to have welcomed Knowmore employees from a variety of backgrounds over the years, who contribute on a daily basis to listening to and serving our customers ever better.
This wealth of skills, combined with new demands from our customers and the market, has enabled us to enhance our solutions on a regular basis.
In 2007, Knowmore acquired a company specializing in knowledge management, to create synergies with our solutions.
In 2014, we won further innovation awards, such as the Orange Digital Awards, or the change management trophies with Michelin and Oracle.
In 2019, in co-innovation with a major player in the aeronautics industry, inspired by Lean Management we developed our3rd solution K-VALUE. K-VALUE provides dashboards and KPIs onuser experience, user paths and adoption rates, giving you the keys to optimizing application usage.
This wealth of skills, combined with new demands from our customers and the market, has enabled us to enhance our solutions on a regular basis.
What were the main difficulties encountered by Knowmore?
E.E: We have been through 3 major crises:
When Knowmore was launched in 2001, we were in the midst of the dot-com bust. It wasn't the best time to start a company! We had to be nimble and innovative to survive this initial difficulty.
We had to deal with the subprime crisis of 2008-2009. Over 50% of our customers were banks. Once again, we had to be creative and find new sources of growth. In addition to this external acquisition, we turned our attention to new business sectors.
And then, like many others, we've been faced with the health crisis since 2020. Nevertheless, thanks to the measures we've taken and our loyal customers, our strategy is paying off, and we've seen our digital adoption grow by over 200% in 3 years.
It's true, however, that for almost 15 years Knowmore has been working hard to evangelize the market. Large companies fully understood the benefits of K-STUDIO. Academies and Training Departments had difficulty in seeing K-NOW as a solution for continuing to upgrade users' skills in business applications or collaborative tools throughout their professional lives in the company. Our market started to mature about 5 years ago. We're seeing growing interest in all sectors of activity, from major accounts, small and medium-sized businesses and the public sector, to software publishers and consulting and integration firms.
Who are the Knowmore customers who adopt your solutions and why?
E.E: From the outset, Knowmore has worked with major accounts. Today, we support 40% of CAC40 companies, as well as public services such as the Ministries of Education and the Armed Forces.... The majority of our customers are organizations in all sectors of activity, with tens of thousands of users. We support over 1.2 million users, both employees and partners of our customers, in France and abroad.
All companies and organizations are faced with the same problem: how to make a lasting success of their digital transformation. Whatever their sector of activity or size, organizations face a complex equation. How do they cope with: the multiplication of CRM and ERP applications, the low adoption of these applications and the incessantly challenged user engagement, the need to quickly onboard employees whether they are new or following a change of position, the different expectations of different generations in terms of digital support.... Not to mention the advent of SaaS solutions, which generate regular application upgrades, forcing users to constantly challenge themselves to carry out their business actions.
Our solutions provide an innovative and proven response to this problem. On the one hand, we help organizations to prepare their users, through practice and training, to apprehend these application evolutions. Secondly, once in a real working situation, we make it easier for users to accomplish their business tasks. Finally, as part of a continuous improvement process, project teams or product managers are able to measure the actual use of their applications, and take corrective action to optimize digital adoption. The savings generated and the user commitment observed by our customers are highly significant. Some of our customers even act as our spokespersons within their organizations to present the benefits of our tools.
Our long-standing customer has deployed our GPS application on over 110 different applications.
We have reached the 110th application at the end of the Year 2020! We'd like to thank the Knowmore team for all their hard work and support. Without you, we'd never have reached such a large number of applications! Orange. Direction Métier
Which departments are driving digital adoption projects?
E.E: This varies from company to company and from organization to organization. Nevertheless, most of the time, these projects are driven by Digital Transformation Departments, Change Management Departments or IT Departments. More recently, we're also seeing them piloted by Training Academies or Training Departments.
Do you see a change in your market before and after the health crisis?
E.E: The health crisis caused by telecommuting has reinforced the use of our solutions, particularly our GPS application. Our solutions are seen as a new communications medium. Indeed, our GPS can communicate to any user in the world the information they are looking for. Our simulator can also be used remotely, regardless of bandwidth problems.
How do you see Knowmore in 3 years' time?
E.E: Great!
Our ambition is to consolidate our position as number 1 in France and become the European leader in learning and digital adoption.
All the indicators are green. By 2025, 70% of companies worldwide will adopt a solution like ours (source: Gartner).
The facts bear out our vision.
Knowmore's major challenge is to increase our visibility in the market, commensurate with our product expertise and customer portfolio.
We continue to invest, devoting 15% of our annual budget to R&D. Our credo is innovation at the service of our customers. We are also completely open to co-innovation, which we already practice with some of our customers.
We are consolidating our partnerships with major consulting and integration firms, who now include our tools as standard in their responses to calls for tender. And over the past 12 months, we have been responding to the growing demand from software and business application publishers.
For our 20th anniversary, I wanted to organize a major festive event to thank our customers, partners and employees - in short, all those who have placed their trust in us, and without whom we would never have come this far.
But the health crisis has decided otherwise... It's only a postponement!
We've got a lot of work in progress! And we can't wait to present them to you.
Many thanks to Emmanuel Esquieu for this interview. We look forward to seeing you soon for a new article.