This post is about data management.

69% of decision makers use social media for purchase decisions. 90% of buyers trust peer recommendations. 94% of B2B buyers conduct online research before making a purchase. Companies like Amazon and Alibaba continue to raise the bar, forcing every company to rethink its digital strategy. Companies such as Airbnb and VRBO continue to wreak havoc in the hotel industry and threaten to disintermediate additional industries. Uber and Lyft have transformed the taxi industry using powerful digital tools.

89% of executives say that digitization will disrupt their businesses. Yet less than one-third of these executives believe that their digital strategies are correct, and only 21 % believe that the right people are setting their digital strategies. What is causing this disconnect, and why are so many digital transformation projects underperforming or failing?

Knowledge management (KM) has become both an important topic driven by a number of industry trends, foremost among them the strong and growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI). A knowledge base (KB) can serve as the centralized source of knowledge for an organization, providing the data needed to feed an AI solution.

Interest in KM is also being driven by its ability to help companies achieve many of their top enterprise servicing goals: improving productivity, increasing the use of self-service, decreasing customer effort, reducing operating costs, improving cross-departmental coordination, increasing customer and staff engagement, and delivering a better, more personalized customer experience.

This is a major and long overdue turnaround for the KM, which has taken many years to catch the attention of organizations. The question that organizations are now asking is whether KM solutions are able to meet their needs in the era of digital transformation.

While consumers have happily shared personal data on social platforms in return for greater connectivity and shared experiences, recent news about data harvesting has caused alarm. Many companies that rely on consumer insight are rethinking how to build digital trust and make it sustainable.

A study of 25,000 consumers across 33 countries, the majority of 92 % of which are U.S. consumers say it’s extremely important that companies protect their personal information. Another 79 % say it’s frustrating to realize that some cannot be trusted to use it appropriately. Lack of trust is one of the biggest reasons consumers switch companies.

Data complexity in companies can be a big obstacle to achieve efficient operations and excellent customer service.

Companies are broken down into various departments. They have hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of employees performing various tasks. Adding to the complexity, customer information is stored in so many different applications that wide gaps exist among data sources. Bridging those gaps so every employee in the organization has a consistent view of data is possible and necessary.