The pandemic left companies with a new experience in remote work. Every day, more organizations choose this work model, whether for their employees’ quality of life, chaotic transportation systems in large cities, or the possibility of hiring talent who do not live in the headquarters city.
In 2020, the company Nilsen asked Human Resources department leaders about their experience with working from home: 85% of respondents said the biggest challenge was the impact on technology resources needed to meet employees’ needs so they could achieve their goals from home, and 76% cited the challenge of knowledge management and how to deliver it easily to employees so they could do their jobs. So far in 2022, this hybrid or remote work model continues to play a leading role at large companies such as Amazon, the Virgin Group, Apple, Google and Aramco. And not only international multinationals: in Colombia, companies such as Alpina, Grupo Bolívar, Ecopetrol, Bancolombia and Nutresa kept the remote or hybrid model after the lockdown was lifted because of its advantages and the increase in productivity.
But how can information be delivered to employees effectively and simply? The root of this challenge is that employees lack a consistent, reliable way to obtain the data they need to stay informed. In some organizations, this happens so quickly that it even begins to threaten business continuity, especially as more employees rely on the digital workplace to be more productive. Now, faced with a sudden and abrupt rise in the importance of essential and critical information, regardless of the source or format organizations handle, companies are realizing that the solutions put forward are insufficient. Any organization that values knowledge management has a digital work platform that includes some kind of enterprise search engine. Using keywords, companies find information, perhaps by downloading a rudimentary tool to build their own search engine and query different sources. Or, why not, they may have opted for other, more robust tools that store their information outside the system. However, they do not find the answer in these traditional tools.
Whatever the choice, not every option on the Enterprise Search market offers tools that are consistent and robust enough for organizations’ real needs. There are fundamental parameters that must be taken into account to add value to information, data and their sources. One of them is data security and user access according to each user’s permissions. This must be enforced rigorously and by default. Another is achieving the highest accuracy in search results so employees can do their work properly, effectively and quickly. This requires different types of linguistic analysis, preferably ready to use, to save time when implementing enterprise search. The same goes for classification driven by machine learning algorithms, which must be available out of the box for scenarios in which a rules-based approach is not enough. Finally, clear, flexible and agile visualization that delivers solutions for multiple use cases across the organization.
A solid enterprise search solution lets employees quickly find the documents, content and information they are looking for, instead of wasting time trying to reach other employees and interrupting everyone’s workflow. This allows people to save critical time that can be used for more productive and effective work.
Enterprise search also enables organizations to make the knowledge and expertise of senior managers visible, so that this organizational knowledge is not lost when employees leave the organization. With the IFindIT enterprise search solution, the company’s current or future employees can easily access information and continue carrying out their tasks and duties with ease. Today, it is hard to know for certain how much productive time employees leave on the table simply because they cannot find the information or content they are looking for. What is clear is that employee turnover within organizations is very high in every market, and this is something that can be favorably impacted. Enterprise search provides a central place to find all your files, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, web links and other rich media. This allows team members to quickly access information from any device, regardless of their location, greatly facilitating hybrid and remote work for employees who are not on the company’s premises.
Constant knowledge also translates into better customer service and faster response times. Because employees save a great deal of time, they can focus on what really matters and help the company be more successful. Organizations not only need to remain hybrid or remote for some of their employees; now may also be the perfect time for them to invest in tools and technologies that directly improve operational efficiency. The positive impact on business continuity, cost savings and employee empowerment can be enormous. When employees have to spend hours searching for a single file, for example, productivity plummets. This is the case for organizations that use dozens of tools without a centralized location to search all the data they hold. In turn, employees have to ask other team members for help, which consumes even more time and resources. The result is that the digital workplace becomes inefficient and costly. Digital workforce solutions solve productivity problems by giving team members access to what they need, automating repetitive tasks and much more.
In conclusion, IFindIT makes it easy to search for information in your documents, just like a regular internet search. Even the most obscure information will surface easily and be available to organizations from anywhere with internet access. By searching for information with IFindIT, you can access all of the organization’s information without complex filters or searching across different information sources. Information is also visualized in dashboards, where results can be manipulated through intuitive graphical controls or text responses.
With IFindIT, the technology and knowledge management challenges that a remote and hybrid workforce poses for organizations are overcome, not only by giving companies the results they had before the new work model, but by surpassing those numbers in productivity and efficiency.
Creangel Ltda