Siemens did an experiment in their forum for their industrial automation from 8th April to 5th May.(https://www.automation.siemens.com/WW/forum/guests/conferences.aspx?language=en) .I too participated in it and also managed to come within the most active 30 members. The most active 30 members is a special because Siemens had promised a gift for these members. The forum was good example on how support services can be extended by a company by bringing in together all the experts. Industrial Automation is one place where such a forum is very essential. The problem faced by most programmers and engineers in this field is that the upgradation of both hardware and software products is nearly continues. Everyday you have a new product , update or service pack or hot fix or new firmware coming up. A typical programmer in this field has to be well versed with atleast some of these products and this should be a dedicated followup. Following up all items is impossible. But then when a programmer is at a plant site he is expected to solve all the problems then and there and causing no production loss to the customer. it is then such a support forum helps. The siemens forum has been functioning already since 3 years. I have used it a number of times and also provided support through this forum wherever I could. But the biggest change i saw I when this Siemens announced this campaign with gifts. All of a sudden you could see so many engineers and programmers eager to reply to every question. Even “I did not know that” comments were quite often used, clearly to get to the top of the list. Many problems posted were getting solved immediately and sometimes even before I had finished typing I found few posts already up.
This shows how much a small encouragement could motivate people to participate in such “experience sharing” activities. I am sure Siemens gained a lot of name and reputation out of this campaign. How much this contrasts from the campaign of Rockwell another industrial automation supplier did out of their forum. In 2002 their forum was completely free and accessible to everybody. But since then they have restricted it to contract based and not allowing all to participate on it. But which one makes better business sense? My guess is that Siemens model should win. But for that Siemens should not only publicise these features and facilities. They should also go deep into the forum to understand their clients needs and problems.
