Combating siloed information with expanded employee network and interaction

The modern industry is defined by its speed; how fast it can innovate, how fast it can deliver products, how fast organizations can respond to crises, how fast your analytics teams can interpret data, and the list goes on. While any enterprise cannot be nearly as instantaneous as the market may desire, particular strategies in knowledge management can help facilitate accelerated operations to improve overall business success.

Sarah Dobson, new business director at Starmind, discussed how optimized knowledge management can improve R&D cycles for enhanced time-to-market in KMWorld’s webinar, “How Knowledge Sharing Accelerates R&D Cycles.” Backed by statistics from their BCG Global Innovation Survey, Starmind positions itself as a key player in advancing the time it takes to develop and produce products.

Based on the aforementioned survey, industries only put 20% of revenue back into innovation; further, 42% of global innovation executives attribute long development times to low return on innovation. These numbers emphasize the widening gap of productivity that the pandemic has exacerbated; while the years leading up to the global crises indicated a shift in efficiency, Dobson remarked, the pandemic undoubtedly exacerbated the current impact on production.

Part of the reason for this undeniable inefficiency is siloed information. Dobson explained that siloed knowledge causes duplication of efforts, wasted time and resources, high development costs, and increased frustration on behalf of R&D employees. In fact, 68% of those surveyed felt that the reason projects were delayed was because of missing information. Silos are bad, but they are not sole actors; shrinking networks, Dobson posited, are endangering innovation.

“Pre-pandemic, there was a lot more interaction between teams, across different siloes. Looking at post-pandemic, this has changed significantly,” said Dobson. “For example, Microsoft research shows that at the onset of the pandemic, interactions with our close network increased, but interactions outside of our close networks—or in distant networks—had diminished. We clung to our immediate teams and the people we knew well for support, but we let the relationship outside of our close teams fall by the wayside.”

These small networks only serve to heighten the level of siloed information. With expertise already largely undocumented and living in the minds of employees, we naturally look towards traditional knowledge management and collaboration tools; Dobson explained, however, these tools are not enough.

Traditional knowledge tools, such as Wikis, knowledge bases, and enterprise search often necessitate human-dedicated manual upkeep, do not holistically capture an employee’s expertise, and do not make knowledge easily consumed. Social collaboration tools also fail to embrace an informative, community-based knowledge system; instead, employees stay in their respective communicative bubbles, where their knowledge is trapped in conversations, not captured for organization-wide benefit.

Dobson then introduced the viewers to Starmind, which provides a plethora of advantageous benefits towards effective and efficient knowledge management. With AI-enabled intelligence, Starmind leverages technology to facilitate subject matter expertise to be easily accessible and captured by those who need it, expanding employees’ networks in the process.

“We incorporate human intelligence to enable people to find expertise and insights across the organization, from the experts they need, to solve these real-time problems,” said Dobson.

Starmind identifies and connects the right experts to answer questions and share experience with employees that need it, when they need it. According to Dobson, Starmind is able to unlock 80% of hidden knowledge and experience in an organization, reduce time spent searching for answers by 75%, and push an average resolution rate of 95%.

To learn more about Starmind’s solution and successful examples, you can view an archived version of the webinar here.