Capturing Corporate Knowledge Before it is Lost

The loss of knowledge in companies due to employees retiring or changing jobs is a major problem.   Highly experienced employees may have many decades of knowledge, which the company relies on, but which can walk out the door overnight. Most approaches to capturing this knowledge rely on unstructured, anecdotal descriptions of specific events or cases, often placed in a binder on a forgotten shelf.  Exsys Corvid provides the framework to systematically capture the experts’ complete decision-making process for a subject.  This provides a detailed documentation of the knowledge that can be examined and understood by others, and automatically builds an on-line system that enables the knowledge to be used to provide detailed situation-specific advice – 24/7, whenever needed. 

There is no full replacement for a valuable employee, but steps can be taken to capture some of the experts’ knowledge in key areas.  Some of these have been to have the employee write training documents or make videos on their background.  These can provide interesting anecdotal historical information, but usually they are too unstructured to really capture the expert’s knowledge. 

The WAY that knowledge is described limits the TYPE of knowledge that can be described.  A highly unstructured approach will lead to jumbled knowledge, full of gaps.   Also, focusing only on major decisions may miss the more typical day-to-day decisions that are commonly encountered.  Using non-systematic techniques of knowledge capture will greatly reduced the effectiveness of a knowledge capture project.   

Corvid provides the best approach to systematic capture of structured decision-making logic.  The expert can fully describe the way they approach a problem, and the Corvid system can be designed following that methodology.  Corvid’s flexible Logic Block structures allow the system structure to parallel the expert’s decision-making process.  There are many ways to design a system, so experts are not forced to think in the paradigm of the tool.

Corvid also automatically indicates areas where the logic has gaps, so the expert’s methodology can be filled in completely and systematically.  The logic can be immediately tested to see if the expert agrees with the results.  If they don’t, the logic can be examined to see where there it requires expansion or correction.  Once complete, the Corvid system can be fielded on the Web to provide an interaction with end users that emulates a conversation with the expert to provide situation-specific advice.

Corvid is a highly flexible tool that can be easily learned, but capable or representing very complex logic.  With Corvid an expert can either build their own knowledge automation system; or work with someone trained in Exsys Corvid to rapidly build systems that capture and preserve their knowledge on a particular tasks.   Implemented throughout an organization, a repository of business knowledge not only preserves business knowledge, but also can automatically be delivered on-line via the Exsys Corvid Inference Engine.