Business knowledge is critical to successful companies in an age when information is plentiful but insight is frequently lacking. Taking a systematic tack with business information by actively collecting it in a cloud-based knowledge management system is beneficial to businesses keen to stand apart from competitors.
Here are some of the ways that using a cloud-based knowledge management solution could benefit your company.
Better Decisions at All Levels of the Organization
When only the management has access to business information, decision-making is strictly top-down. In a slow-moving operation, this may be acceptable but for business environments that must evolve quickly, it’ll be too slow. The lag time from key decision-makers to the staff will create additional operational problems because decisions and strategies won’t be made on the fly.
Instead, providing access to useful business data for the members of staff that need it means they can review what’s required and make the most appropriate decision at that time. It will still be in keeping with company values and what’s needed but reflects the market reality too. Ultimately, this can allow the business to be more adaptable to change.
Use Software Information Tools to Guide Actions
Software tools shouldn’t be seen as a black box solution where they’re seldom understood and require a huge leap of faith for the company. Instead, cloud-based tools must provide meaningful data to guide decisions about the next right move.
For instance, an SEO agency would use a mix of cloud-based search engine optimization (SEO) SaaS tools to gather information about websites. They aim to create a relevant SEO strategy that’s unique for each business to help it rank better to drive more website traffic. They can develop ideas in-house based on what’s worked previously, what competitors are presently having success with, and suggestions from the tools based on the status of the site too.
Decisions are made on likely prospects for opportunistic search terms to pursue to rank in Google to generate traffic. Furthermore, link-building opportunities can be developed by using cloud-based technologies to mine data across the internet. These are things that simply cannot be done by hand.
Locate Emerging Trends
New trends emerge but it’s difficult for companies to jump on them. Whether that’s an opportunity to launch a new product or to create a service to serve a growing need, companies can only move on to it when they know it exists.
Google Trends is a free cloud-based tool that the search engine provides. It’s available for businesses to perform searches and comparisons between different keyword search terms. Within the tool, it’s also possible to see highlighted breakout search terms and to analyze a growing interest in certain topics over time. It can also be compared seasonally to see if it’s likely to be a spring-summer-only event, an ongoing one, and may have a yearly expectation of repeating from now on.
There are now business systems of all types to pull together information that’s useful for companies. While some are industry-specific, others are more generalized and multi-purpose. Companies would do well to utilize both types of cloud solutions to enhance the business information available to them. As a result, their critical decision-making is likely to markedly improve over time.
