As 2014 winds down, it’s natural to start thinking about what is in store for next year. In the software business (and today pretty much every business is a software business), things change quickly as tools and
Knowledge base software, and the knowledge
Mobile, mobile, mobile
It’s worth saying one more time: mobile. The time people spend using mobile apps is now greater than the time they spend on desktop computers and mobile websites put together. And the mobile trend is no longer just limited to the consumer market. The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement has made the use of mobile devices in the workplace mainstream, and as a result more mobile enterprise software applications are appearing all of the time. For knowledge base software in particular, mobile support will become absolutely essential as companies realize that both their employees and their customers are using smartphones and tablets far more often than they are using computers.
Data becomes actionable insights
Knowledge base software serves a variety of functions in an organization, only the most basic of which is providing knowledge resources on demand. But many knowledge management applications also collect an incredible amount of data about how the knowledge base is used, such as which resources are accessed most frequently, which are most useful, and who accesses what type of information. As of now, although the data are being collected, not all organizations have been able to use those data to create actionable insights. This will change in 2015 as businesses start using the data to, for example, improve their
More emphasis on retaining organizational knowledge
In the past, if you had a question about a particular process or unusual situation, you could usually just go ask the guy in the next office who’d been with the company for 20 years and knew everything about everything. This is no longer true. Why? Because younger generations don’t stay in jobs as long as they used to. Today, the average worker spends only about four years at a job, and a vast majority of Millennials plan to stay at their jobs for less than three years. In certain high-skill industries, like software development, the average time at a job tends to be even lower. With the high cost of replacing and training new workers, companies will need better processes to hold onto what employees know even when those employees leave. This need will drive an increased use of knowledge base software with a focus on retaining the knowledge resources within the organization.
More integration with social media
At first, social media was something businesses were afraid of, and then it was something they realized they had to do whether they wanted to or not. But attitudes toward social media are changing as companies are now viewing the interactions that happen on sites like Facebook and Twitter as the sources of valuable organizational knowledge. Knowledge base software programs haven’t as a whole figured out how best to create, tag, and store resources based on social media feeds, but this is something we will undoubtedly see more of in the next year.
The idea of knowledge and the way companies manage it are changing. These four trends represent just a few of the developments that are likely to emerge in 2015.