Retaining corporate memory

While South Africa is facing a severe shortage of skills as qualified people leave the country, corporations are facing a similar brain drain, as people with intricate knowledge of business processes and policies retire or move to greener pastures.

This loss of knowledge is even more perilous in listed companies when board members and senior executives move on without ensuring their successors have access to their knowledge and experience.

This state of affairs has been in existence since the first company was launched, but in today`s globalised and fiercely competitive business environment, losing intellectual capital can be a serious setback for companies. To prevent this situation from occurring, companies can institute various measures, such as mentoring or regular information sharing get-togethers in an attempt to develop and sustain a corporate memory.

"The reality is that these solutions only offer a limited amount of information transfer and often turn into social, political or networking occasions," says Marc Scheepbouwer, MD of Intellient. "That still leaves companies with the problem of retaining corporate memory for future use.

"Many business applications have been launched with the promise of retaining this memory, but their ultimate failure has always been that they rely on humans. No manager today has the time or inclination to sit down at a computer at the end of the day and capture all the relevant information that happened during the day, all the insights gained and any pearls of wisdom he/she comes up with."

Corporate memory is defined in Wikipedia as the "total body of data, information and knowledge required to deliver the strategic aims and objectives of an organisation". Corporate memory consists of data that cannot be contained only in traditional ERP (enterprise resource planning) or CRM (customer relationship management) systems, but which is critical to the effective running of the company and maintaining good relationships with customers.

If corporate memory is lost or ignored, the effects can be costly and can hamper the future growth of the company. The management of this information therefore needs careful attention, and a suitable platform is required to assist in the process.

"To ensure this corporate memory is retained, enhanced and used by successive generations of employees, companies need to implement an effective software package to store, collate and distribute this information, as well as ensure employees make use of it to find existing - and add new - data," Scheepbouwer adds. "And while the right platform to handle this information is important, ensuring people participate in the process is just as critical."

Scheepbouwer notes that the automated retention of corporate memory will also assist companies with their compliance initiatives. Corporate memory contains facts, figures and reasons for actions that should be retained and could even be required in case of legal action against the company.

It is also important to note that the concept of corporate memory is more than just data. Data can be stored on numerous devices and accessed in any number of ways, but its use in this form is questionable. Corporate memory, on the other hand, is information in context. More importantly, it is information in context in a community where feedback, criticism and continual validation in terms of the current business environment are part of the overarching "memory bank".

Just as information in a social network is always changing, while the basic foundations of the network, ie, the people, remain relatively static, so corporate memory is always being moulded and updated to the latest business environment. In fact, the social networking environment is a good example of how easy it should be to access this information, discuss it and share it.

This is not to say a corporate memory system should look like Facebook, far from it. The information contained in corporate memory must be secured and available only to the appropriate people. What is crucial if it is to add value to the business, however, is that it must also be available, malleable, traceable and easily updateable.

The retention of corporate memory is ultimately about information democracy. When information is freely available to the relevant people, they are empowered to further the goals of the organisation using data and methodologies that have become standard in the company over time. The operational processes that follow will therefore meet governance requirements, while any new legislation or corporate policy enhancements will automatically be incorporated into the memory for immediate and future reference.

States Scheepbouwer: "The simple fact is that information is of great value to businesses, but only when it is collected, collated, accessed and used effectively. The correct platform that makes it easy for employees to gain access to and input data into the corporate memory will assist people in meeting their obligations, driving the company forward through the collective use of experience gained over many years."