Increase Return on Knowledge with Higher User Engagement
Collective enterprise knowledge is the asset that differentiates an organization from its competitors. This asset will only generate returns to the extent that it is re-utilized. For it to be reused broadly across an entire organization, existing knowledge needs to be effectively shared and accessed, and the new knowledge created has to find its way back into the collective knowledge pool for it to be reused. Motivating employees to participate in this knowledge management initiative i.e. increasing user engagement, is key.
The Goal of User Engagement
Deloitte Consulting summarized this succinctly1: "The goal should not just be user productivity efficiencies—effectiveness is even more important. That requires a focus on adoption, context, and enabling effective decision and action—allowing stakeholders to make better use of an organization's information assets. It means embracing new working styles and enabling tools—allowing people to interact with the organization on their terms." How can we increase user engagement that meets this goal?
Facilitate Access to Explicit and Tacit Knowledge
Effective sharing of explicit knowledge requires users to increase their adoption of existing systems of record, which exist primarily to capture and store knowledge that can be codified for ease of retrieval. And the ease of finding relevant information is a key determinant. When employees face difficulties finding information they need, they have less incentive to use the system and, in turn, will be less motivated to spend time feeding their knowledge into these systems. (As they justifiably assume the knowledge will be unused by coworkers because it cannot be found.) When this happens, the systems remain underutilized. However, when relevant information can be easily retrieved, employees are encouraged to share their knowledge as they know that coworkers can access and engage it, making the effort to code their knowledge worthwhile.
Tacit knowledge—which is difficult to codify—resides in every employee's mind and is typically exchanged through collaboration, which potentially creates a burden on known experts.2 Facilitating access to knowledge exchanged through the multiple emails, forum discussions etc. that are integral to collaboration will reduce workload for your high profile experts, as now lesser known experts can be identified and engaged. New knowledge created can also be easily found and reused.
Enable the Long Tail of Collective Enterprise Knowledge
The broad variety of knowledge—messaging and email, social media, CRM, collaboration tools etc.—generated within the informal organization,3 and lesser known experts reside mainly in the Long Tail of the knowledge spectrum, which accounts for 80% of the organization's collective knowledge assets (see Figure 1 in the downloadable PDF). Thus, to increase sharing and reuse of knowledge among employees, enabling access to the Long Tail is critical. However, the increased volume and variety of content available make find-ability more challenging. As a result, demand for powerful technologies that can index knowledge wherever it resides is on the rise.
Help Users Make Better Use of the Organization's Knowledge Assets
Providing users with the tools to access content relevant to their immediate needs is critical to user engagement in KM.
Coveo's search and relevance technology helps organizations unlock the hidden value of their knowledge assets, by tapping into the Long Tail of their collective enterprise knowledge, and bringing it to end users in a way that is pertinent to their specific situation.
Coveo's technology securely connects with and indexes an organization's big, fragmented data from across any combination of cloud, social, and on-premise systems. The Coveo Advanced Relevance Engine then injects the most relevant knowledge into the context of every user, boosting Knowledge Management initiatives by making an organization's collective knowledge easily accessible and relevant.
About Coveo
Coveo makes companies more relevant and responsive, by providing technology that delivers in real time the most relevant, context-aware information for every end user. Coveo is a strategic partner of several leading software companies such as Salesforce.com and Sitecore, and has been recognized as a visionary by Gartner in its 2013 Magic Quadrant. Among Coveo customers are leading organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Rally Software, and SunGard. For more information, visit www.coveo.com, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
For more insights into KM best practices, download our Driving Better Returns on Collective Enterprise Knowledge white paper series parts one and two.
1. Deloitte Consulting LLC, "Depth perception - A Dozen Technology Trends Shaping Business and IT in 2010," 2010
2. Coveo, "Why Knowledge Management is Becoming a C-Level Discussion," 2013
3. Coveo, "Why Traditional Knowledge Management Initiatives Fail to Enable the Long Tail of Collective Enterprise Knowledge," 2014