Viva topics is the first module of Microsoft Viva to be released. Microsoft Viva is a new Employee Experience Platform (EXP) that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights. With Viva, you can foster a culture where people and teams are empowered to be their best from anywhere.
In today’s business climate Covid-19 has increased the geographical and communication barriers between teams providing new challenges. New team or project members have an even harder job to get up to speed than previously, the 1-to-1 knowledge transfer is less productive and effective over video conference. It is likely these challenges will persist as things start to return to normal, more remote working is here to stay. Businesses need to find ways for employees to consume knowledge in new ways.
Knowledge Management in your organisation
Knowledge is the lifeblood of business, without knowledge your employees cannot provide a service to your customers. Information has traditionally been kept in silos or by functional teams. Knowledge can exist across these Teams but is rarely collated to give anyone that is looking for knowledge a simple view. With Viva Topics, knowledge champions can be assigned to collate knowledge on specific topics and curate that knowledge. Employees can consume this knowledge in all of the familiar products they use today such as Teams and SharePoint.
Examples of how Viva Topics can be used
1. Project Knowledge for internal or client-facing projects
Traditionally only the project team working on a project have access to the project site. This silo’s a lot of information that could be available to everyone in your organisation. Using Viva Topics project information is surfaced in Microsoft Search and that information is curated by the Project Team. Joining a project team is made easier as they can get up to speed with the project information very quickly and know who everyone working on the project is.
2. Knowledge Management in a Law firm
The knowledge that a law firm has enables different lawyers in different teams to use that knowledge on the work across different clients. In a typical law firm every 7 minutes is billable, if that time is saved finding information there is a real ROI and a USP for you clients. The knowledge management team in a law firm can now create topics that match the specialisms that the firm has and this knowledge can be kept up to date and relevant, both of which are extremely important in a law firm. Content and knowledge can be stored together to give users all the information they need.
3. Sector information in Local Government Enterprise Agencies
Enterprise agencies have different teams that provide different services to companies. A lot of sector information is held by each team dealing with each service the enterprise agency provides. By extracting this knowledge and content from different teams not only will this improve services to the clients but this will save valuable time when dealing with companies from the same sectors at a later date.
4. Services as Topics
Every company has services that they provide to their customers, sometimes these services are described in a service catalogue but there are many organisations that do not. Defining each service as a topic not only shows who is responsible for that service but also brings out the content and knowledge for that service in one place. Joiners to the business and other business teams can quickly get up to speed with what is offered to your customers, find out who owns the service and access sales and marketing material.
Conclusion
Viva Topics functionality will continue to be expanded upon by Microsoft, the real value of Viva Topics will come with the integration to other systems and the available customisations through the SharePoint Framework, which we think will undoubtedly come along over the course of this year. With the ability to customise and build solutions on top of Viva Topics truly enterprise and global knowledge management solutions could be built. All in an existing product for those of us who have been waiting for a knowledge management offering from Microsoft.
Ready to learn more?
If you are looking for a knowledge management solution or see Viva Topics as a solution to other business challenges contact us today for a demo or chat about your ambitions.