Corporate Memory: A Strategic Asset for E-Commerce

September 11th, 2023

The Cost of Losing Intellectual Capital

In the e-commerce sector, where agility and innovation are king, the loss of institutional knowledge is a silent crisis. With baby boomers retiring at an unprecedented rate, the U.S. is experiencing a massive brain drain. This isn’t just about losing employees; it’s about losing years of accumulated expertise and insights. Gallup estimates that the U.S. economy loses a trillion dollars annually due to voluntary employee turnover. The cost is not just financial; it’s operational and impacts competitive advantage.

What is Corporate Memory?

Corporate memory is more than a trendy term; it’s a business imperative. It’s the reservoir of tacit knowledge — what Dorothy Leonard of Harvard Business School calls the “unwritten, undocumented, perhaps even unspoken expertise” — that your employees carry. This knowledge lives within the minds of experienced employees who know how to navigate complex systems and situations.

Corporate memory offers a number of benefits for e-commerce firms, including:​​​​​​​
  • Improved decision-making: Corporate memory can help businesses make better decisions by providing access to historical data and insights.
  • Increased efficiency: Corporate memory can streamline processes and improve efficiency by identifying best practices and automating tasks.
  • Reduced risk: Corporate memory can help businesses mitigate risk by providing a repository of institutional knowledge and expertise.
  • Enhanced innovation: Corporate memory can facilitate innovation by providing employees with a shared foundation to launch new projects collaboratively.
Corporate Memory also encompasses the vast repositories of enterprise content and business documents. Leading tech companies have integrated language model functionalities into their enterprise offerings, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and Google Duet, thus signaling its importance in the modern business ecosystem.

The Challenge: How to Capture Corporate Memory

The real challenge lies in capturing this knowledge without disrupting the operational workflow. Failure to do so can lead to institutional amnesia, resulting in repeated errors and inefficiencies. WorkDone’s Expertise Capture technology is a game-changer here. It captures and distills best practices from each employee’s unique workflow, thereby mitigating the loss of knowledge due to employee attrition.

In a landscape where competitive threats are ever-evolving and corporate restructuring is the norm, maintaining knowledge continuity is crucial. Imagine losing a veteran underwriter who knows the intricacies of complex deals, or a sourcing specialist whose negotiation skills have been honed over decades. Their exits could be detrimental. Corporate Memory ensures that their expertise is not lost but preserved and made accessible globally.

WorkDone Expertise Capture

WorkDone’s patented technology enables enterprises to discover, understand, and discern best practices from each employee’s unique processing style. This not only mitigates the loss of knowledge due to employee attrition but also memorializes standards across the organization.

WorkDone employs machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and large language models to capture, understand, and ultimately automate these best practices. This helps businesses create a more comprehensive and up-to-date corporate memory that can be accessed by employees from anywhere in the world.

Conclusion

Overall, Corporate Memory is a strategic asset for e-commerce firms that want to stay ahead of the curve and compete effectively in the global marketplace. It’s a critical investment that pays dividends in operational excellence and competitive advantage. WorkDone’s technology offers a seamless way for both legacy and cloud-native companies to integrate Corporate Memory and AI into their back-office operations with minimal disruption.