For many businesses a corporate blog is seen as an external marketing or PR tool used to create conversations and relationships with people outside the organization.
But for others, like IBM, it has far more value as an internal knowledge-sharing tool. Knowledge management solutions are now among the most important strategic technologies for large companies, according to a new report and survey Know how: Managing knowledge for competitive advantage by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
In the survey, 67% of companies cite knowledge management/business intelligence solutions as important to achieving their strategic goals over the next three years. This compares with 63% that accord the same level of importance to new CRM solutions, and 35% that see mobile/wireless technology as vital.
The survey reveals that executives currently feel unable to exploit large amounts of corporate information. Two-thirds of companies in the survey complain that while their IT systems generate huge volumes of data, much of it is not actionable. According to the report, executives are now seeking smarter IT tools that enable them to access, filter, prioritize and analyze corporate knowledge.
Knowledge management can present a challenge – the knowledge is in employees’ heads and can easily be lost. The current age demographics and high turnover rates in some professional areas are a threat to the expertise that underpins many businesses. As one executive put it, “Our assets walk out the door every night.” Using a corporate blog as an internal tool can help to capture that knowledge and share it through the organization.
“Unfortunately very few companies realize the potential of friction-free, personal publishing for enterprise use,” said Bill French, co-founder of Myst Technology partners, the company that developed Blogsite.
“Corporate weblogs have a different set of requirements that revolve around security, permissions, and discovery. The blogging framework must be designed to meet these requirements.”
Corporate blogs and knowledge management seem to be made for one another. When your experts have access to blogging software that is a part of their normal work environment and these blogs are collected and indexed against an organizational taxonomy (list of categories) optimized for the organization, its interests, and its experts, vital expertise is preserved and easily accessible by others.
Sally is the author of Website Content Strategy blog: Information about the shifts in media consumption and the use of
technology in marketing and PR so business can stay in touch with
their rapidly moving audiences.
