Businesses today have access to vast amounts of data, more than ever before, that can potentially be leveraged to improve collaboration and productivity across teams. According to an MIT Sloan report, up to 80% of this information is defined as unstructured data, information that exists in the form of documents, images, videos, audio, and social media. Unstructured data also includes the knowledge and experience that resides in the minds of leaders within the business. This is also known as “tribal knowledge” and consists of workaround best practices and procedures.
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The main challenge that businesses face when trying to harness the power of unstructured data is the fact that much of it is stored in a distributed and siloed manner. Think about how much data is floating around in your organization, from instructional videos in digital libraries, to spreadsheets and workflow documents stored on servers and filing cabinets, to the organizational knowledge of colleagues who have been with the organization for years. Now imagine how difficult it is for employees to quickly access the information they need to optimize their work. New hires, especially, have a tough job as they try to glean knowledge about the organization, its workflows and operational processes, and the projects they will be working on. On average, employees spend 3.6 hours a day researching relevant information to do their jobs.
This is where innovation happens Generative AI GenAI can be of great use to business planning. GenAI technology streamlines information, dramatically improving knowledge sharing and productivity across the organization. Enterprise planning software platforms with GenAI capabilities Digital Twin TechnologyCompanies can gain unprecedented end-to-end knowledge visibility into their operations and connect that information to planning processes and decision-making across supply chain planning, procurement, finance, marketing and sales, as well as interactions with external suppliers and customers.
GenAI enables employees to gain deep insights into a company's unstructured data and unique knowledge quickly and efficiently, accelerating the transfer of knowledge and critical information and raising the level of expertise across the organization.
Here are some examples of how GenAI can break down unstructured data silos and benefit your employees.
Enhance your onboarding experience
Employee onboarding is one of the most critical stages of joining an organization. According to a Harris poll conducted by CareerBuilder, companies without a structured onboarding process can experience a 16% decrease in productivity and a 14% increase in inefficiency. While a formal onboarding process may only last a few days or weeks, employees will spend a significant amount of their first six months to a year getting acquainted with the organization. When employees try to pull data and insights from multiple places where information is stored, it can result in a disjointed experience. GenAI applications can make this process more seamless by ingesting the vast amounts of unstructured data stored across an organization and transforming these data points into knowledge and business insights that new hires can directly apply to their role.
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New employees can quickly understand the end-to-end business overview of the company, from financials to corporate filings, customer overview, sales channels, products, suppliers, business process characteristics like manufacturing, retail, distribution etc. They can quickly gain knowledge about external factors that affect the business (weather, pricing, local events etc.) and gain detailed information about their specific job function (user journey, daily life, how it fits into the overall business process flow and how it impacts the business etc.). For example, if an employee joins the purchasing department of an organization, he or she can access this accumulated knowledge about suppliers and a knowledge base about contract terms, risks etc. All this information is Digital Twin Corporate.
Closing the skills gap
It is predicted that in the next 5 to 10 years, skills gaps will emerge in multiple roles and functions across industries. This is because experienced professionals prepare for retirement while new professionals are not being adequately replaced. As a result, some industries may have significant skills gaps that will impact every aspect of their business, from productivity to profitability. For example, in the next five years, the manufacturing sector may experience a shortage of planning skills. Companies are having to do more with fewer resources and people. But the GenAI platform can help close this knowledge gap. As organizations start to leverage GenAI, AI-powered platform Having an organization that can collect, organize, and curate unstructured data and unique knowledge from seasoned professionals who are soon to retire will provide a powerful knowledge base that colleagues and budding professionals can learn from and apply to their roles.
Expert playbooks accumulated by experienced and seasoned employees can be digitized and handed over to new hires and those in the early stages of their careers. GenAI acts as a co-pilot for job functions and the training wheels to guide employees in upskilling. Feedback mechanisms also allow employees to customize what they learn and provide feedback through data-driven post-game analysis to drive continuous improvement.
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Give employees access to the information they need
Companies that invest in digitizing their organization's unique knowledge empower employees at all levels to make critical decisions by giving them access to up-to-date and accurate insights. For example, imagine a pharmaceutical company that underestimated the need for antibiotics due to a harsher than normal allergy season. Unique knowledge about the situation was communicated to field sales teams through email correspondence, covered by news media, and available as a pollen forecast in weather.com's Allergy Index, but the dots were not connected and were not accessible to all relevant teams. With GenAI, an enterprise planning platform can surface stories that were missed in the forecast and suggest corrective actions to improve the predictive model by adding new factors to the model (e.g. temperature, humidity, pollen levels), improving the pharmaceutical company's predictions for future antibiotics.
Overall, companies leveraging GenAI technology are making great strides in unlocking siloed, inherent knowledge within their organizations. These companies are generating business insights that ultimately benefit employees at every stage of their careers and enable continued growth across all roles and functions.
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