Does My Company Need an Information Management System?

Reports, articles, tweets, summaries, news, budgets, emails, handbooks, invoices, briefings, presentations ... In most companies, huge amounts of valuable content are created, consumed and stored on a daily basis. Are these resources available to every employee who needs them? Are they easy to find? Are they shared to avoid redundant efforts? Thinking about these questions is the way to find the answer to this article’s title.

At a time when the volume and variety of information are growing exponentially, knowledge management has emerged as one of the biggest business challenges. An advanced and custom information management system, tailored to fit the specific needs and objectives of a company, can bring important competitive advantages.

Reducing search time

A knowledge worker spends more than 8% of his workday searching for information. This percentage reaches 30% in the case of some executives. Therefore, one of the main goals of a good information management system should be to reduce these search times.

Intelligent search engines , capable of performing semantic search and user segmentation, are a key tool for a more efficient and effective knowledge management.

Removing information silos

Most organizations have different management applications, isolated content repositories, heterogeneously stored data, unlabeled information ... These information silos dramatically affect productivity. They lead to unnecessary duplication of tasks and hinder access to key information.

Information classification and data integration solutions make content available to those who can take advantage of it. On the one hand, reusing content saves time and money. On the other hand, the discovery of previously hidden information improves the quality and speed of decision-making processes.

Promoting knowledge sharing

Knowledge is one of the most valuable assets of any organization. An advanced information management system allows companies to turn intellectual capital, traditionally considered intangible, into a shareable value.

In addition to technical or specialized knowledge, workers should share any valuable information with their peers: a successful practice, a lesson learned, a new idea, a fruitful experience … This exchange of knowledge saves time and resources, generates productive synergies, promotes good practices, and reduces potential risks.

Taking advantage of existing resources

Waste of useful business resources is due, on many occasions, to a mere ignorance. So, an advanced information management system has to be proactive and to promote contents between potentially interested users.

Recommendation systems that incorporate machine learning solutions are able to anticipate users’ needs. These systems show users resources of their interest that they did not even know existed. Similarly, social functionalities or information classification systems leads to the discovery of new information.

In addition to these general benefits, each organization, depending on its idiosyncrasy, can gain different competitive advantages from knowledge management. To maximize results, it is essential to choose intelligent solutions that fit the specific business needs.