Trends in navigating knowledge management migration amid cloud adoption

As cloud migration increases in necessity, questions revolving around the movement of knowledge from on-premise systems to cloud arise. Content migration poses a particular challenge to digital transformation and knowledge management with which enterprises must content to successfully transition.

Sjoerd Alkema, global head of sales and partnerships at Xillio, and Rob Aaldijk, principal consultant and product architect at Xillio, joined KMWorld’s webinar, “Knowledge Management Migration Trends,” to explore the latest migration trends for KM, positioning both Xillio and Microsoft Viva Topics as the solutions to best navigate cloud adoption and content migration.

The speakers pointed out that, in general, KM migration trends center around content, and furthermore, Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 has grown as a capable ECM and KM solution, accompanied by a combination of intranet and ECM repositories.

KM migration trends also focus on quality of data—ensuring its cleanliness, structure, and enrichment through context—as well as the consolidation of knowledge.

Xillio customers represent a variety of challenges that follow KM migration with cloud adoption. Fragmented and outdated repositories, high costs and risks of on-prem systems, information governance, low adoption of new systems among employees, and integrations on the application and document level are just a few of the mounting difficulties that KM cloud migration poses.

Fortunately, Xillio offers a wide array of solutions that address these challenges, including:

• Xillio content migration platform and services providing content insights, migration builders, connectors, and accelerators, paired with KM and ECM professional services.
• Business supporting software solutions such as Xillio Link Redirector; Xillio E-mail and Office Manager; Xillio Content Manager; Xillio Azure Archive; and Xillio SharePoint Provisioning.
• Microsoft content services advisory with Purview, Syntex, Viva Topics, and SPO to aid in implementation.

According to Alkema and Aaldijk, the consolidation of silos are a critical piece of KM migration, as well as ensuring the best quality of content at migration time and afterward through content cleansing, metadata enrichment, restructuring, and multi-source consolidation.

The discussion then turned its attention toward Microsoft Viva Topics, which addresses the need to harvest and share knowledge effectively across Microsoft 365 applications. Leveraging AI that mines content in SharePoint, Viva Topics identifies relevant topics and user profiles to generate topic pages, providing standardized information and expert links for selected topics. These topics can be surfaced throughout M365 applications, and can connect people, content, and communities more effectively.

Personas that can benefit from Viva Topics range from end-users seeking context within the M365 platform, to information and knowledge managers ensuring accurate context for end-users, to business and IT managers targeting higher productivity and enhanced end-user satisfaction.

Though having ample technology to navigate KM migration is critical, it cannot succeed without taking preemptive cautions and making thorough preparations to underpin content transition, the speakers remarked. Understanding your current KM landscape—its source types, organization, and present obstacles—will yield effective KM migration.

Alkema and Aaldijk offered a few guiding steps to aid organizations in their cloud adoption and KM migration journeys:

• Consider your knowledge strategy and define business objectives.
• Inventorize the current sources of knowledge, their content, and their locations.
• Track the product roadmap, join the Viva Topics TechCommunity, and educate users on current and future possibilities.
• Create a business case.
• Consider starting small with a pilot, targeting a subset of content, departments, or roles.

To see live demos, example pilot approaches, and engage in an in-depth conversation revolving around KM migration, you can view an archived version of the webinar here.