A migration is, for most organizations, the best chance to secure the time and resources necessary to tackle this messy, complex problem.
Eye on evolving technologies
There’s a wide range of exciting, KM-relevant technologies on the market and under development. But when APQC asked KM practitioners about the most important technologies to adopt right now, 65% pointed to a classic: team collaboration and digital workplace apps. These apps are a bigger focus than AI-driven search (37%), AI-driven content recommendations (25%), or knowledge graphs and relational databases (24%).
The simple truth is that enterprise IT does not move as fast as buzzwords and blogs. Collaboration and workplace apps have been around for a while, and although they don’t have the whiz-bang buzz of AI, they’re key to how people interact and get things done in the modern world. Cloud-based ecosystems such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have revolutionized how people experience knowledge flow in their daily work by combining productivity, collaboration, and knowledge discovery all in one place.
But just because many organizations have had these tools in place for a year or two does not mean KM’s job is done. There are still many opportunities for KM to do the following:
♦ Better integrate KM processes and activities such as communities and knowledge repositories into collaboration and workplace apps
♦ Set guidelines and ground rules for these tools so that employees don't drive each other crazy with too many threads to follow and notifications to manage
♦ Serve as super users to leverage and educate others on the new capabilities that are continually added to these subscription-based platforms
♦ Identify emerging knowledge needs and gaps by analyzing platform activity
When we shift the conversation further out on the horizon, however, the emphasis on AI becomes clear. Respondents list AI-driven recommendations as the number-one technology for KM to embrace in the next 3 years, with 44% putting it in the top three. Forty percent cite AI-driven search as a top priority within 3 years, and 27% cite AI to identify and surface expertise.
But despite AI’ s undeniable impact on KM, practitioners see other foundational factors as more essential to optimizing the KM user experience. Nearly three-quarters of survey respondents said it was most important to simplify KM interactions and embed them directly in the flow of daily work.
These two user experience goals go hand in hand: An experience that happens in the flow of work feels simpler, whereas simplifying the KM experience makes it easier to embed that experience into work processes. AI-enabled findability, along with all-in-one workplace collaboration platforms, can help KM with both goals—and they’ re a prerequisite to achieving more leading-edge user experience goals such as anticipatory and personalized knowledge delivery.