In 1996, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a report highlighting the foundations of the knowledge-based economy. Since then, the technological advances and the collaborative information consumption has changed dramatically the way in which in we use knowledge.
Knowledge is not only associated with power, but it is also associated with productivity.
The economically useful knowledge has become one of the key elements of the future. When we say knowledge, we don’t only mean the know-how of each individual employee but also the potential knowledge that is accessible to anyone in a team.
Cloud and collaboration tools increase productivity
In order to use knowledge properly, we need appropriate tools to enable a fast and cost-efficient way to store, structure, process and disseminate growing amount of data. Cloud and collaboration technologies are an increasingly important source of productivity growth to make knowledge and information accessible from anywhere in the world to anyone within an organisation. According to the Deloitte Digital Collaboration Survey 2013, workers are 17 percentage points more satisfied within their workplace culture when they have access to effective collaboration tools.
The basics for every company’s success are motivated employees and personalities who are willing to make their knowledge and skills available to everyone in their team. Teamwork and exchange of information and knowledge go hand in hand. This is the only way to build new avenues of collaboration and to make the most out of the existing knowledge within a team. However, the exchange must be efficient – otherwise there is the risk that valuable working hours are wasted on really time consuming tasks, like high email volume, extensive search of appropriate contacts within the company etc. According to the Deloitte survey, 60 percent of employees who believe that their organisation provides good digital collaboration tools also believe that the organisation is innovative, versus 32 percent in organisations without good tools.
Cloud offers easy and seamless collaboration
The key to increasing productivity and efficient knowledge management is making employees’ access to knowledge, data and information as easy as possible. When you use cloud services in the right away, you avoid information being stored in data silos where they would eventually become useless.
Therefore a smart and simple structure of the data in the cloud is important: Which data is stored and where? Who has access to what information? What data is available for only specific people in the company? How quickly can employees adapt or even be able to exchange ideas in the cloud? Connecting people and departments is also a key in order to avoid data isolation. Departments such as marketing and sales should have the opportunity to learn about each other’s activities in order to be able to collaborate.
Data security is essential
Last but not least, existing knowledge must be stored and protected in a serious manner. Especially in the UK, data security is particularly sensitive to cloud solutions. In the country of technology and innovation, the protection of knowledge is of paramount importance. At the same time, it is indispensable to develop cloud services that follow the advancements of digitalisation. Digitalisation is forcing companies to move forward at a high pace for internal and external communication.
Therefore cloud providers have to address the issue of security and have ready solutions for their customers. A key point is to provide businesses with the opportunity to store data in their country in order to meet the national laws. It also provides security and confidence to deploy the necessary encryption technologies and to comply with European compliances, such as the inclusion of EU Binding Corporate Rules, and standards such as the Privacy Shield Agreement between the US and the EU.
Providers that place a high priority on security and implement it in their services are helping companies not to abandon cloud technologies at the expense of productivity and innovation.
