How (and when) to update your KM strategy
Vendors supporting vector search, natural language queries, content summarization, and other facets of GenAI deployments within services that organizations currently use are highly influential for updating a company’s KM strategy. According to Petruzzelli, updating that strategy in such a situation pertains to “what sort of initiatives or training programs can be put in place” for companies to understand the implications of these new possibilities.
Adopting neuro-symbolic AI solutions, which pair “traditional” KM constructs such as taxonomies, ontologies, and knowledge graphs with statistical AI expressions (including generative machine learning models), is a natural means of updating a company’s KM strategy. This tandem can “automate the structuring of unstructured data, facilitate more accurate and context-aware search capabilities, and enhance decision-making processes by providing deeper insights and reasoning capabilities,” remarked Franz CEO Jans Aasman. Vendors offering these technologies can ease the updating process by blending new technologies with KM capabilities organizations employ.
Customer expectations
The bifurcation of customer expectations is pivotal to updating a KM strategy. On the one hand, organizations must consider customers’ demands, which increasingly include a clamoring for self-service in expert services fields such as wealth management, tax advice, and other advisory services. Customers want greater access to their own data and the company’s resources for delivering that access—whether that involves an intelligent chatbot or enhanced website capabilities. “Before, companies tried to hold back that information, saying it was theirs and clients need to call or visit them. Additionally, they would expose it for them as a paid service,” Nivala commented. “Even that’s changing in a sense of how much of that needs to be provided free of charge in self-service ways.” According to Kamien, the legal field is undergoing a similar transformation to render services on a subscription basis, rather than as just billable hours, partly to accommodate customer demands. In both cases, Kamien revealed, “The knowledge management strategy will need to adapt for a business strategy to support the delivery of knowledge as a service.”
On the other hand, how technology vendors address the changing needs of their customers—and those organizations’ expectations—also influences the success of updating a KM strategy. Petruzzelli referenced a dichotomy in a vendor’s relationship with organizations pertaining to the organization’s leaders and its end-user consumers. “It’s important to talk to leadership about high-level strategies such as the road map of your software, the direction and vision of your company, and whether your company’s goals are aligning with their company’s goals,” Petruzzelli said. Vendors are also expected to educate end users about how the software and its capabilities work to fulfill strategic objectives. A variety of training options, including online classes, certification programs, virtual training programs, and on-site training, can accomplish this goal. “I think that the enthusiasm, after knowledge is adopted, trickles both ways: both down from leadership and up from end users,” Petruzzelli indicated. “It’s important to have both so that your customer is happy on the whole.”