Deliver results with AI-powered knowledge management: A conversation with Upland and Paychex

While the contact center is ripe for AI innovation, agents are still struggling to find answers efficiently. How can knowledge managers and beyond effectively use AI to uncover insights hidden within the organization?

KMWorld recently held a webinar, Fact, Failure, or Fantasy: Navigating How to Win with AI in Knowledge Management, featuring Tim Braman, global account manager, Upland RightAnswers, and Christa Seary, IT knowledge, reporting and tools manager, Paychex, who discussed strategies to lead smarter, more grounded conversations about how AI can make a real difference in knowledge management.

AI forms the strategic edge for enterprise knowledge, Braman said. Right now, knowledge managers are struggling with a 3-tiered problem: Knowledge is prioritized yet underperforming. AI initiatives are moving faster than foundations. Misalignment across roles creates friction.  The webinar then featured a game-inspired session where Braman and Seary asked viewers to separate facts from fantasies in blending AI with KM.  

Paychex is a digitally driven HR leader that is reimagining how companies address the needs of today’s workforce with comprehensive, flexible, and innovative HCM solutions for organizations of all sizes.

Seary outlined the lessons learned from Paychex's early AI initiatives, beginning with Paychex starting with a homegrown AI initiative, trying to fast track success across the company.

“We wanted to move really fast but there’s a balance between wanting to stay a main player in the technology space and knowing your limitations,” Seary said. “We were learning as we went. That’s when we took a step back and then said, ‘This isn’t really working out.”

A fundamental change in this stage would be to consider a more targeted approach on specific pain points within the organization instead of an all-encompassing system, she explained.

Only the IT and product teams were involved at first. Business stakeholders came in later. At first, this was a success since IT teams already knew the technology involved. However, users were later involved to give more feedback and that is when the company was able to gather the right information to improve the experimental tool, she said.

It wasn’t easy getting the tool adopted throughout the organization. “For a lot of our employees it was their first foray into AI,” Seary said.

As more people leverage AI capabilities in the future, training employees on these systems, such as ChatGPT or other LLM tools, it should get easier, Braman said.

“It’s very much about training on context,” Seary said. “Knowledge management is fundamental for implementing our AI solution.”

The success of any AI solution is to make sure the employees are on board with the mission, Seary and Braman emphasized.

“Getting adoption in an IT organization isn’t difficult, you’ll get pockets of resistance because there’s fear of the unknown,” Seary said. Paychex introduced training for their AI tool along with guidelines to follow involving ethics and compliance.

“We do what we can through open communication,” Seary said.

For the full webinar, featuring more detailed explanations, a Q&A, and more, you can view an archived version of the webinar here.