Global research - 500,000 digital conversations plus an independent survey of 2000 knowledge work organisations in 44 countries – illustrates that the future of work is knowledge work. Let’s first understand the difference between knowledge and knowledge work.
By knowledge, we mean the derived value from the data and information that exists in the firm, combined with the collective expertise and intelligence of the subject matter experts of the organisation. This “knowledge” is the competitive differentiator. When harnessed, it drives business performance and helps to deliver better outcomes by enabling the firm to use the information for decision-making, refining business processes or even identifying new solutions and services to meet clients’ changing needs.
Knowledge work, however, is the activity that captures knowledge and creates actionable insights to unlock the value that exists within the firm’s work outputs, content, and communications. Examples of a firm’s outputs are documents such as deeds, agreements, and contracts that the organisation produces.
A properly structured, central, and secure repository of information is the first step in harnessing the knowledge that resides in the firm. The iManage Work document and email management system is the core engine that enables this in many ways. Foremost, iManage Work is a dynamic information and document store. End users can work from anywhere, on any device, and at any time, while still ensuring that data and documents always reside in this central repository. iManage Work also integrates with a variety of commonly used tools such as Office 365, Teams, Gmail, and Google Workspace. Often, there is valuable information and knowledge that resides in people’s inboxes – that doesn’t get captured appropriately and promptly, potentially leading to knowledge leakage.
Furthermore, iManage provides a range of complimentary and tightly integrated solutions which combined with the document and email management system make it a knowledge management platform, that delivers ever more efficiency and productivity benefits alongside better collaboration – in turn enabling lawyers to work securely and smarter.
End users benefit from functionalities such as task and records management, security policy management, threat detection, and enhanced search. Crucially and noteworthy is that security doesn’t get in the way of collaboration, sharing of information, or access to documents, thereby creating a frictionless environment. Lawyers can quickly find templates, best practice documents, checklists, updates, examples of work, and more without accidentally overriding authorisations, permissions, security, and compliance considerations.
AI plays a role in easily accessing and activating knowledge for improved business performance and better outcomes. AI is natively built into the platform. Foremost, this means that the iManage platform offers the safest way to adopt AI. Secondly, firms wanting to adopt AI don’t need to undertake separate technology initiatives to adopt and escalate the use of this technology. With AI built-in, firms on the iManage platform automatically move up the AI maturity curve, as iManage evolves its AI capability in the future.
iManage is genuinely a knowledge work platform that offers a comprehensive suite of solutions to help firms work intelligently, unlock expertise, ensure compliance and governance, minimise risk – and most importantly intuitively manage knowledge for business advantage.
If you would like to explore the iManage work platform and its product suite in more detail, please view this eBook. You will find it informative. We would also be happy to provide you with additional information on the platform, within the context of your firm’s specific requirements.
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FAQs
Knowledge work is where critical thinking and expertise is applied to solve complex problems within a a specialist area or context. It is high value, qualitative work.
Knowledge workers are those individuals whose key asset is knowledge, and they create value by applying their expertise to situations to solve issues and problems. Typically, they are lawyers, financial advisors, architects, asset managers, academics, engineers, accountants, and editors – as examples.
They are specialists and so are considered trusted advisors in their area of expertise. They perform high-value work, qualitative work. They could be an engineer developing a new technology product, an accountant helping to problem solve a financial matter, a lawyer driving a litigation case, and so on.
Knowledge work creates value and a competitive edge, be it by solving complex problems within a specialist area or context, developing new products and services, driving better business outcomes, and so on.
Knowledge work is high-value, qualitative work that requires a high level of competency and critical thinking capabilities within a specialist area. Task work is work related to specific jobs or activities.