Traceability of internal interventions: lost expertise, a strategic consequence

1. Why does so much expertise remain undocumented?

Too many stakeholders, too many channels

An internal intervention no longer involves just one person:

• The field technician

• The product expert

• The quality team

• The engineering department

• The parts supplier

• The local distributor

Each stakeholder communicates through their preferred channel — WhatsApp, phone, or email. The result?

• Scattered information

• No traceability

• Significant time spent documenting

• Knowledge capitalization that is, at best, partial — and at worst, non-existent.

No standard framework

Even when a report is requested, there is:

• No shared, universally understood template across stakeholders

• No standardized structure (incident type, context, solution, parts involved)

• No automatic knowledge capitalization tool

It’s just internal

Many internal interventions are neither tracked nor formally documented because they are not billed or not “visible” to the customer. Yet they mobilize critical expertise to find solutions. They directly impact quality, warranty decisions, product returns, and engineering choices.

2. The consequences of missing traceability in internal interventions

Difficulty documenting interventions

Even when significant time and effort are invested, teams struggle to retrieve and consolidate all key information. Intervention reports are often incomplete — and sometimes incomprehensible to colleagues.

Loss of actionable knowledge

Every incident is an opportunity to learn. But without written records, experience is lost. No continuous improvement loop can exist.

Risk of repetition

Previously encountered issues are analyzed as if they were new. One electronic components manufacturer calculated that 17% of its after-sales returns were already known issues — but never documented. Each case costs between €300 and €800 (excl. VAT).

Disputes with partners

Without a clear report, it becomes difficult to prove responsibility for a defect: supplier issue or mishandling? Customer error or design flaw? Disputes drag on, and commercial relationships deteriorate.

Cascading time loss

Without structure, every new incident takes longer to resolve: teams start from scratch, chase stakeholders, wait for responses, and reassemble the puzzle each time.

3. What a good report should include

A useful report is more than just a written summary. It should:

• Trace the full lifecycle of the case

• Identify all stakeholders involved (technician, warehouse, supplier, etc.)

• Document facts, root causes, and decisions

• Include photos, voice notes, and links to related tickets

• Be easy to share and index

• Feed into an evolving knowledge base

Example report structure:

• Initial issue (ticket ID, photo, date)

• Hypotheses considered (WhatsApp voice notes)

• Supplier interaction (screenshots, decisions)

• Final decision (repair, replacement, return, etc.)

• Attachments (part reference, batch number, manufacturing date)

4. The solution: tracking internal interventions and automatically generating reports

Capture information at the source: WhatsApp, video, and voice interactions

Rather than asking teams to write reports after the fact, tracking internal interventions makes it possible to capture their actions and solutions as the analysis happens:

• WhatsApp messages

• Voice notes

• Annotated photos

• Video meetings

Extract, structure, generate

Natural language processing (NLP) AI enables:

• Automatic transcription of voice messages

• Analysis of conversations

• Generation of structured reports, in the right format and tone (internal, customer-facing, or supplier-facing)

To do this, AI requires raw material: data captured from tracked internal interventions.

Validate, enrich, capitalize

The user remains in control: they can complete, correct, and validate the report. It can then be indexed in a knowledge base, linked to a ticket, used in quality review meetings, or shared with a supplier.

5. Three real-world use cases and their benefits

Example 1 – Agricultural machinery (product returns)

Seed drills were showing anomalies during use. Central after-sales support received feedback via emails, including photos, voice messages, and exchanges with suppliers. All of this information was fragmented and ephemeral.

Corrective action: deployment of an automatic report generator based on WhatsApp interactions.

Results:

• Restored traceability

• Easier quality analysis

• More fluid collaboration with suppliers

Example 2 – HVAC integrator (multi-stakeholder workflows)

An intervention involving three different companies (installer, supplier, and end customer) required a clear and structured report. Critical information was often lost, resulting in numerous exchanges and follow-ups to close the most complex cases.

Solution implemented: automatic report generation based on video-assisted sessions and technical follow-up chat, with a report shared with all three parties in under two hours.

Results:

• Zero disputes

• Enhanced professional credibility

• Three days saved in case resolution time

Example 3 – Electronics manufacturer after-sales service (internal tickets)

Internal teams were handling complex diagnostics without ever documenting their conclusions. The quality team struggled to track recurring issues.

After deploying a field voice assistance tool with automatic report generation:

• 1,200 reports created in 4 months

• 18% of cases identified as recurring

• Two design changes proposed by the engineering team

6. What does a “next-generation” report look like?

• Generated from real data (voice notes, WhatsApp exchanges, video sessions)

• Automatically structured (stakeholder / issue / decision / date / part)

• Exportable as PDF, shareable, and fully traceable

• Customized by audience (customer, supplier, internal teams)

• Linked to tickets, incidents, batches, and historical records

• Built-in search engine by keyword, machine, or symptom

Conclusion: tracking internal interventions to automatically generate detailed reports—without spending hours on documentation.

The systematic internal intervention report is the missing link between day-to-day operations and collective intelligence. It ensures traceability, forms the foundation of quality, and serves as the organization’s memory.

But as long as it relies on isolated individuals, manual tools, or informal practices, it remains fragile, subjective — or simply nonexistent.

With automatic generation based on real interactions, it finally becomes possible to produce reliable, detailed reports tailored to each use case, without adding to teams’ workload.