Transforming the Digital Workplace with Cognitive Search

In the rush to keep up with customer demands, organizations are launching digital transformation initiatives without considering the effect these plans will have on employee productivity.

Why would strategies that improve customer experiences have a negative effect on employees? Because more often than not, they contribute to the growing silos of information spread across the organization. The very information that employees need to perform their jobs.

The Digital Workplace Faces Many Challenges

For an organization to be successful, real transformation must happen internally as well as externally. When it doesn’t the challenges employees face can feel insurmountable: 

• Information silos force employees to spend too much time digging across systems for information. And it can be difficult to know if they have found everything they need to make the right decision.
• Finding experts also proves equally difficult because there is no way to easily find out who has the expertise needed to provide answers.
• Ineffective, outdated interfaces slow the search for information. Employees are used to new consumer search experiences such as Google and Alexa and expect their companies to provide the same experiences internally.

This lack of easy access to information frustrates employees, leading to reduced productivity and even churn.

Creating the Right Tools for the Digital Workplace

There are many ways to improve the digital workplace. The best tools have cognitive search at their core, providing a centralized view of all information across the organization regardless of where it resides or what format it is in. Cognitive search also provides AI technologies like machine learning and text analytics to analyze content and employee interactions with that content to easily and quickly surface the right information, even when the employee doesn’t explicitly ask for it.

When you combine cognitive search with:

• Knowledge Management: Employees have one place to look for information and find answers, experts, and content they need. The system can also recommend content by analyzing past requests and interactions.
• The Intranet: Create a digital community connecting people, skills, and expertise. Cognitive search helps increase engagement by providing personalized experiences that improve as employees use the Intranet.
• A Research Portal: Cognitive search unifies silos of information, helping employees find answers faster and get the insights they need to perform their jobs well.

Implementing digital workplace solutions that unify information and provide easier access to expertise is critical to transforming employee productivity. Solutions that can leverage AI-technologies to surface insights faster, personalize experiences and eliminate hunting and pecking for information are critical for digital transformation success.

You can learn more about cognitive search for the digital workplace in our new ebook, How AI-driven Search Empowers the Digital Workplace.