Enterprise Knowledge Portal: Are You Doing Enough to Promote Knowledge Sharing?
A knowledge management system (KMS) plays a prominent role when it comes to automated support. It’s the simplest way to:
- Connect users to relevant information such as policy changes and company news
- Enable employees to access personalized information, including high-priority tasks and important system updates
- Maintain a centralized knowledge distribution process that controls what information employees use to perform their work
In addition to providing easy access to essential information, a business knowledge portal is designed to provide your organization with a competitive edge by:
- Fostering collaboration
- Improving task effectiveness
- Increasing productivity
It also engages employees while accelerating innovation and reducing information access costs.
Knowledge Management System Challenges
Knowledge is the foundation of modern enterprise. Unfortunately, too many companies still suffer from “data silos,” with important information locked away across multiple content management systems. The result?
- Crucial knowledge resides with some employees, but not others.
- Duplicate content creation wastes precious time and other resources.
- Knowledge sharing is stymied.
- Multiple, non-identical versions of a document may exist, causing employee confusion.
A KMS overcomes these challenges. An enterprise portal solution combines powerful data management controls with the functionality your employees need to better collaborate.
Next-Generation Enterprise Knowledge Portal
Knowledge portals aren’t new. They were all the rage back in the early ’90s when they promised an easy way for organizations to make sense of diverse information. But cost and complexity problems made implementation difficult.
Today’s digital landscape with its cloud services, mobile apps, smart devices, chatbots, and more – all with their own data and information – has brought the idea of enterprise knowledge portals full circle. With so much data dispersed across an enterprise ecosystem, it’s become more difficult than ever to access the critical information needed to quickly complete tasks.
As businesses realize they must capitalize on the latest technologies, integrate multiple systems, and deliver the digital experience users expect, an enterprise knowledge portal becomes the solution they didn’t know they were looking for. It’s expected the adoption of enterprise portals will expand in the future, particularly in the area of self-service portals.
With an enterprise knowledge portal, employees have access to information from one uniform source such as employee manuals, standard operating procedures, collaboration tools, training and continuing education, products and services information, and more. They spend much less time searching for answers. This increases engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.
Knowledge Portal Software
One of the biggest issues organizations had with early portal software was the difficulty in curating and organizing collected data. The result? Easier access, but bad data. Current software offers a number of advances for ready access to structured data, experts, collaborative content, and media-like images and video.
We’ve become a society of seekers. Need a bit of information? “Google it.” The same easy access is now expected in the workplace, too. New search-based KM portals allow users to find and retrieve information to support their objectives. When they don’t exactly know what they’re looking for, let them browse to discover the needed information.
Build on the Past, Look to the Future
Machine learning, AI, and social collaboration are expected to have a big impact on knowledge-sharing. But the goal remains the same: give people the data and information they need to work autonomously, make better decisions, and deliver their best results.
It pays to remember technology can be a huge game changer but, as V. Mary Abraham notes, it’s almost never a silver bullet. The Academic Director, M.S. in Information & Knowledge Strategy at Columbia University in New York strongly believes “The future of work becomes reality when people, machines, and data are part of an integrated solution.”
As digital needs change, KM portals will continue to evolve but it’s a safe bet they’re here to stay. They may even be the key you’ve been looking for to open your digital transformation door.
