With the future of work becoming a hybrid model, it’s unlikely we’ll see a return to the traditional modes of everyone being in the same space at the same time. For many businesses, this makes finding and sharing valuable knowledge a daily challenge. Increased geographical and communication barriers means that new team members have an even harder job getting up to speed, 1-to-1 knowledge transfer can be less effective over video conference, and information that has traditionally been kept in silos makes it more difficult to access a simple view. As a result, people spend about an hour a day—or up to seven weeks per year—searching for or recreating information. To drive productivity, employers must find new ways for knowledge to be consumed however and wherever people work, which is where tools such Microsoft Viva Topics and SharePoint Syntex can help.
Viva Topics automatically organises and turns expertise into useable content. With built-in security and compliance features, it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to connect and manage your organisation’s knowledge and expertise, delivering them across the Microsoft 365 apps your people use every day. SharePoint Syntex uses AI and machine teaching to automate content processing and transform content into knowledge.
These two solutions can help solve some common organisational challenges in today’s hybrid workplace, such as onboarding new employees and optimising the sales process.
Streamlining human resource processes
It’s predicted that post-pandemic, 48% of employees will continue to work remotely some of the time. Because of this, a sense of ‘not-fitting-in’ can quickly develop when interactions are solely online. New employees may feel neglected without personal induction or training, and it can be more difficult for them to onboard without side-by-side learning and collaboration.
With Viva Topics and Syntex, HR can unlock knowledge from digital content and provide new recruits with the knowledge needed to onboard – all in one place. This helps accelerate their time to productivity and integrate more quickly. The ability to offer in context learning means employees can be empowered to learn about topics relevant to their jobs in the flow of their work. Instant access to the latest information means HR can reduce search times and automate the process of capturing and transferring knowledge.
Keeping sales and customer service up to speed
The new hybrid working landscape and associated rapid acceleration of online work presents many challenges for sales and customer service professionals. An increased self-sufficiency from buyers means more are independently researching and evaluating the products and services they are interested in. Accompanying this trend is the need for every interaction to be seamless and instantaneous. As such, 95% of sales leaders agree that creating greater agility in sales engagement and execution is essential to drive customer insights and trust. To support this, effective sales training that’s well designed has been proven to increase the chances of achieving targets by about 17%.
Viva Topics and Syntex can help improve sales outcomes and reduce proposal production time by helping salespeople find subject matter experts (SME) and re-use existing content and knowledge. Using a product and service knowledge base, staff can ask questions and learn, with easy access to product details, announcements, and roadmaps. Staff can quickly find answers to product-related questions in one consolidated dashboard. And with the ability to find SMEs, sales and customer support reps can ramp up their expertise which helps improve resolution outcomes and efficiency.
Viva Topics and Syntex are the key to unlock your organisation’s information
Along with HR and Sales, there are a multitude of business units that can benefit from the ability to share knowledge, connect, learn, and create together. Perhaps you’re looking to drive operational productivity with easy access to asset-related information, or deliver consistently high quality product marketing by providing best of breed IP. Viva Topics and Syntex enable faster processing and innovation by using AI to reason over your organisation’s data, making it easy to find information and put knowledge to work.
