How to treat knowledge as a valuable asset and competitive weapon
It’s a safe bet that the leaders in your firm have years of real-world experience, perspective and specialized knowledge that’s not written down anywhere but which they would be happy to share over coffee. Top-performing firms are beginning to treat such knowledge as valuable intellectual property, capturing it and managing it like any other firm asset.
To handle that job as a natural part of everyday workflow, CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business, offers KnowledgeConnect. This software solution helps identify, record, share and save all insider expertise, making it easy to access that information whenever it’s needed and revolutionizing knowledge management to take firms to the next competitive level.
“KnowledgeConnect is all about communities, experts, sharing and collaboration,” says Wendy Grice, product manager. She points to three key benefits:
• Firms can save time two different ways. Leaders don’t have to answer the same questions over and over again. (Once a question is answered in KnowledgeConnect it’s available to anyone else in the firm.) Employees save time because they can search by keyword for answers they need.
• Firms can capture knowledge efficiently “before it walks out the door.” The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has said that 75 percent of knowledge leaders in accounting will retire by 2020. “Firms need to be proactive about capturing that knowledge and sharing it with younger generations,” Grice says.
• Firms can identify their “go-to” experts. KnowledgeConnect automatically tags in-house experts based on their answers to questions as well as on their published articles. “People don’t always know who to turn to,” Grice says. “KnowledgeConnect solves that problem.”
KnowledgeConnect will integrate with ProSystem fx® Document, IntelliConnect® and the CCH Support Knowledge Base, providing federated search capability. When you search the term “international tax,” for example, KnowledgeConnect will search across all available databases, and then display results found in each solution. Additionally, the search will display the firm’s experts on the subject, ranked in order of their expertise, so you can connect with them when further collaboration is needed.
“The long-term road map includes integration with all relevant CCH solutions, as well as third-party partners, to provide even more benefits to our customers,” Grice says.
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This story is from the CCH e-newsletter First Choice, written specifically for tax, accounting and audit professionals. First Choice offers tips, tricks and ideas about how to increase your public accounting firm’s productivity and efficiency. Every issue also features insights with a tax, audit or accounting professional.
