Adding Cognitive Features to KM Part 1 (Video)

Video produced by Steve Nathans-Kelly

In a session at KMWorld 2019, Nalco Champion's Dynisha Klugh and TechnipFMC's Kim Glover discussed how and why voice recognition, natural language processing, and multi-language are useful to knowledge management. The wide-ranging discussion covered what users really want in terms of capabilities, and how the technologies are being used at home versus in business settings.

"As a user, I want to interact with the KM environment just like I would with my Google Assistant or with Siri. I want the ability for it to recognize my voice, I don't want to have to type everything out, very simple," said Klugh. "That's what our users are telling us. The technology is there, we know the technology is there; we just haven't brought some of these things into the office. And more and more people are frustrated with us because they say, I have a different experience at home than I do at work. And at home, I'm very technology-enabled, and then it's like I walk into the doors of the company, and I've taken a step backward, and that's not going to work anymore. So we're listening to what they've said that they want and trying to see how we can get them there."

Glover agreed, saying her company has not done a lot with AI yet but is evaluating options. "One of the little nuggets that we snatched was, Microsoft Stream does voice recognition and, for our podcast, which is called, 'Branded Illuminate.' When we post or drop--I think this is the right term--each new episode, there is a transcript that Microsoft Stream somehow figured out using AI that floats along as the person is listening. We have our podcast and Microsoft Stream. Same with our knowledge-sharing webinars when they're posted in Microsoft Stream. So it's a little thing, but it's a step."

As users, Klugh said, people want to be able to speak to the KM environment in a conversational way. "I don't want to do old-style keyword searches, I don't want to have to resort to operators like and/or to get additional information. At home, if I am hungry, I can say 'where's the nearest restaurant that serves Italian cuisine?' I talk like I would talk to a friend. I don't have say, restaurant and Italian or Italian cuisine, but that's how people are still interacting with our KM environment, and they don't want to do that anymore. They want natural language."

In addition, users want multi-language. "So if somebody goes to one of our communities and they post a question in a different language, someone again has to copy that, go paste it in Google Translate, hoping they got it kind of right. We have a lot of terms of nuances that are unique to our industry that it doesn't understand. And so they're kind of cryptically putting it together just so they can reply and help somebody in another region. So we need something that will already have multi-language capability in it so that people can communicate across regions."

"We don't have it in our KM program yet, but in our company intranet--which I didn't say this earlier, but we are in 48 countries--we do have auto-translation into, I think it's nine languages," said Glover. "For all of the news and all of the events that are posted within intranet proper. And it doesn't always work perfectly, but it is very meaningful to people to have that news and that new information in their own language. And we have a setup where people can say, 'this isn't quite right, can you adjust it?' So it's a nice give and take thing. I don't know if the AI is learning from those adjustments or not, but that would be a good thing to find out."

This is a great step toward global user engagement, said Klugh. "If this is something for all, we should make people feel like that's the case and they should be able to come there and then feel comfortable talking to it in their local language and knowing that a friend across the pond and help them out."

Videos of KMWorld 2019 awards presentations, keynotes, and many sessions can be found here.

Many speakers at KMWorld 2019 have also made their presentations available at www.kmworld.com/Conference/2019/Presentations.aspx.

SAVE THE DATE FOR KMWORLD 2020: NOVEMBER 16-19, 2020!