It’s estimated Fortune 500 companies lose more than $30 billion a year by failing to share knowledge, paying the price when employees leave. That problem is a big part of what emerging venture Cogodigital is trying to address with its knowledge management platform Co-operly.
Its platform shows organisations where knowledge lies and aims to make the sharing process more efficient. “It takes the knowledge people have in their heads and presents it so it’s really accessible,” says CEO and co-founder Dale Galloway. “It provides a heat map of where the knowledge is and where the big gaps are.”
The team has also developed a social Q&A platform so employees can tag questions to be answered by other staff with relevant expertise.
The service also helps with succession planning and risk management, says Galloway. “If someone leaves the organisation we’ve mapped [the knowledge] and it’s not such a high risk. The staff onboarding process is a lot more efficient.”
Galloway met his team members through the Digital Futures programme run by Creative HQ, VicLink and Victoria University, which focuses on building digital startups.
Two of his collaborators: chief operating officer Marcelo Hudson and chief technical officer Joseph Milsom finished studying computer science at Victoria last year, the same time as co-founder Hannah Faesenkloet was completing her design degree and Galloway finished in marketing and psychology.
The venture is targeting organisations with between 30 and 150 staff, an enterprise level that spells global opportunity.
“We don’t want massive organisations that have silos of knowledge and are not keen on sharing with each other. “We’re looking at organisations that are flat already. We want to grow with an organisation rather than trying to implement yet another IT system people aren’t too keen on. Changing behaviour is quite hard with existing systems.”
Organisations, mainly consultants, are trialling the Q&A platform ahead of a beta launch. The venture doesn’t yet have a set launch date.
It plans a software as a service model charged according to the size of the organisation.
