28.01.2025 | News When the baby boomers leave, software must help
The shortage of skilled labor is already being felt everywhere - but it will soon become even more acute. According to the German Economic Institute (IW), almost 20 million workers will reach retirement age by 2036, leaving a huge gap in the labor market. Because too few young workers are coming into the labor market, this gap cannot be nearly closed.
This makes knowledge management more important than ever for companies and public authorities. To mitigate the labor shortage, they need to systematically collect and organize their knowledge and make it available to new and less experienced colleagues as efficiently as possible. By using AI-based tools to provide and share information and process knowledge automatically, they can also relieve their understaffed workforce of routine tasks.
Enterprise search and the knowledge management ‘built into’ it offers them a powerful IT tool for this. Today, search software is equipped with state-of-the-art technologies, including generative AI, that enable organizations to use knowledge efficiently and effectively. IntraFind, a specialist in enterprise search and AI, shows how companies and public authorities can use it to mitigate the consequences of the skills shortage.
1. Provide easy access to company knowledge. How do I apply for leave, how do I claim my travel expenses, how can I order a laptop? If organizations integrate search software into their intranet portal, new employees can easily find documents that provide answers to questions about their day-to-day work. Conversational bots are now part of modern enterprise search and enable HR departments, for example, to make information more easily accessible to employees via self-service. They ask their questions in natural language and receive the answers in natural language. A dialogue-capable bot, fed with company knowledge, is also an ideal onboarding tool.
2. Provide easy access to specialized knowledge. In customer service at companies or in citizen services at public authorities, for example, the AI bot can compare incoming enquiries with previous cases as part of the intelligent search and suggest suitable solutions to employees. There is also the option of using intelligent chatbots in customer and citizen services to answer simple enquiries completely autonomously. Chatbots can also optimize internal knowledge management tools such as a company wiki by answering employees' detailed questions about products, for example.
3. Relieve employees of routine tasks. Chatbots not only share knowledge quickly and easily, they also relieve employees of standard tasks such as answering recurring simple inquiries. Enterprise Search can also do this in many other places, for example by summarizing documents or texts from hit lists. Authorities can implement a note assistant that supports caseworkers in the creation of memos. It summarizes the facts of a case, while the assessment and final evaluation remain the responsibility of the case handler.
‘In times of demographic change and a shortage of skilled labor, there is no way around efficient knowledge management,’ explains IntraFind CEO Franz Kögl. Today, enterprise search not only includes smart search, but also the ability to engage in dialogue with company data and covers many aspects of modern knowledge management out of the box. This technology has a key role to play in the digitalization efforts of our economy.’
