Competitive Advantage for All
Strategic Knowledge Management for
All Industries and All Sizes

Information is power, and harnessing that power is critical in today’s fast-paced, global business environment. Workers need to use vital content in strategic, efficient ways to create and support best practices that help companies operate effectively.

A wide variety of companies from the FORTUNE 500 to small and mid-sized businesses utilize knowledge management tools to share and protect their knowledge banks in secure, digital repositories. And many are realizing remarkable results. As they enhance best practices and performance, they can also create significant efficiencies that dramatically improve their bottom lines.

How KM Transforms Businesses
Healthcare: Hospital administrative, nursing and doctor teams can access the most up-to-date policy and procedural information 24/7, which ensures compliance and reduces the time staff members take to find the information they need. Pharmaceutical companies can easily meet their compliance requirements by capturing and managing versions of clinical trial documentation.

Education: Universities and school districts must manage a wide variety of information from administrators, faculty, parents, outside professors and students that originates in both paper and digital formats. They are now using content management software to ensure that they follow best practices in teaching curriculum and other educational practices. When school districts and universities transfer their paper-based documents into an electronic content and knowledge management system, they improve accuracy and standardize processes, in addition to saving tremendous amounts of time and money.

Government: State and local organizations have developed best practices in managing huge volumes of documents and procedures electronically. Providing best practices in "online self service" has enabled community members to access information and forms so they can file for permits, licenses and certificates. This has saved the constituents and the government workers substantial amounts of time and money and has also ensured consistency and accuracy.

Retail: Corporate offices can easily and efficiently share policies and plans including new merchandise lines, new store floor plans, hiring and training processes so that everything is consistent in each store location. The corporate offices can share customer feedback so that each store manager has specific objectives and guidelines about how to ensure a positive shopping experience. Providing secure access for store managers to corporate best practices helps maintain quality and customer loyalty.

Manufacturing: Many thousands of technical product documents, specifications, procedures and parts listings can easily be managed and updated, then shared with many thousands of distributed workers around the globe. Important new product information can be immediately accessed and shared by the sales teams in any location.

Entertainment: Film, television and other entertainment companies can easily build best practices into their content-development process so that story lines, scripts and screenplays are submitted, routed, reviewed and stored accurately and consistently. As an example, a feature film studio can potentially route and store 20-plus drafts of a screenplay, along with documents from research, writers, producers, actors, and legal teams. Using content management tools that have "drag and drop" features for emails and attachments has transformed the way studios can organize, use and manage their intellectual assets so that processes are standardized and streamlined.

In addition to business improvements and efficiencies, knowledge management systems have created another welcome benefit by helping companies reduce their carbon footprints—sometimes quite dramatically—by decreasing paper and energy consumption and greenhouse gases. One state government organization saved literally tons of paper and automobile emissions by transferring their paper-based documents and processes into a digital content management system so they no longer handled or mailed paper documents that were a critical part of their day-to-day processes.

It’s exciting that now companies can quantify the benefits of reducing the environmental impact of doing business. This is particularly important for the growing number of government agencies, educational institutions, and businesses that have "green" and "sustainability" initiatives built into their corporate or organizational goals.

The 21st century has presented us with a complex network of information—from emails, blogs and attachments of all types to large databases and huge volumes of varying documents and files. Companies of all sizes, in all industries, must build best practices into a knowledge management system in order to compete and thrive.

Today there is a rich array of software and tools to help people transform their businesses into highly productive environments where they can create, manage, use and re-use critical knowledge assets effectively. Planning, implementing and populating a knowledge management system requires an investment that might seem daunting, however both large and small companies can choose content management tools that are easy to use so they can get started quickly. Within just a few months many organizations realize rapid ROI, so the planning time is well worth the investment. And the best news of all is that there are some very affordable, flexible, yet robust solutions that enable companies to derive strategic value from information, leverage their knowledge banks across the organization, and standardize and automate processes to support their core business functions. Even small company leaders are realizing the need for strategic knowledge management to support efficient growth and adaptability. Knowledge management is finally perceived as a mainstream business requirement for long term success.

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Xerox DocuShare is a proven, award-winning, affordable content management software platform known for delivering value in knowledge management and process automation. Used by thousands of companies to capture, share and protect critical business information, it significantly decreases the time it takes to make informed decisions, standardize processes, meet compliance and gain efficiencies throughout the organization. DocuShare provides trademark ease of use and superior paper-to-digital content management capabilities at an affordable price.

Companies using Xerox DocuShare have realized dramatic benefits, including:

• Up to 80% reduction in the amount of time it takes to find needed information;
• Fail-safe, disaster-recovery repositories so information and intellectual assets are always protected and accessible;
• Accurate compliance with comprehensive audit trails;
• Improved standardization and accuracy;
• As much as 25 % or more savings in operational spending;
• Carbon footprint reduction and significant ROI resulting from less paper, energy and shipping consumption;
• Minimal impact on IT resources and systems; and
• Excellent ease of use and rapid adoption.

For more information, visit docushare.xerox.com or call 800-735-7749