Listen to this articleShelf is on a mission to enable people to learn faster through better access to information so they can take the right action, at the right time. Below is our recent interview with Sedarius Perrotta, Head Of Innovation at Shelf:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Shelf?
A: Shelf was founded on the premise that a company’s know-how, it’s collective knowledge, is one of it’s most valuable assets. If that know-how gets lost or buried in different content repositories or “walks out the door” when an employee leaves, the company’s ability to take the right action at the right time is severely compromised.
Our next generation knowledge automation platform enables people to quickly connect with the information they need to do their jobs. Shelf also leverages AI to make managing constantly changing content easier than ever before.
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Q: Can you tell us how you got into this space and why you built Shelf?
A: I’ve worked in knowledge management(KM) for over a decade. It all started back in my Peace Corps days when I worked for a think tank that was providing thought leadership on The Future of the IT industry in Eastern Europe. My experience researching, organizing and maintaining massive amounts of information began there.
I later co-founded a KM software company where we built custom SharePoint sites and custom knowledge portals for clients. This was also where we worked with artificial intelligence technologies in NLP and ML to automate content tagging, categorization, and auto-organize content through neural networks.
No matter what projects we were working on, we kept running into the same problems – no matter how much money people spent on SharePoint or building portals they almost always complained that they were too complex, difficult to use and it was really hard to find stuff.
Whether it was a company with offices around the US or a Fortune 500 with offices all over the world the problem was the same. I thought to myself, there’s gotta be a better way. So it dawned on me to build a new product that leveraged my background in AI and Shelf was borne.
Q: How is Knowledge Management(KM) being transformed? Why should our readers care?
A: Traditionally the Achilles Heel of Knowledge Management was the time-consuming, maintenance tasks that an analyst or manager needed to perform to keep the system up-to-date and accurate. They often needed to perform these tasks along with a multitude of other time sensitive activities that had a higher priority.
Another major issue with the traditional management of knowledge was that it was difficult to measure the effectiveness of the overall program. No one could answer questions as to what content was the most important, where were users losing time, who were the best performers, was the overall system helping or hurting performance. The lack of ROI and clear metrics have lead to the failure of many KM initiatives in the past.
The transformation of knowledge management to knowledge automation transfers many of the tasks and opens up the black box of activity providing transparency to how people use content and significantly reduces the administrative overhead. This exponentially increases the effectiveness of a small number of people to improve the flow of knowledge in the organization.
It can be said that traditional knowledge management is becoming obsolete and the age of knowledge automation is upon us.
Q: You’ve recently received the prestigious best new product award in the startup category for your AI-enabled knowledge automation software; could you tell us something more?
A: The BIG Awards recognize the innovative products, people, and technologies leading their respective industries. Shelf was selected from a pool of 1000’s of applicants, thanks to its unique ability to transform how employees access critical company knowledge.
According to Maria Jimenez, chief nominations officer of the Business Intelligence Group, “We assessed numerous enterprise technology products in our search for the Best New Product and found Shelf’s capabilities to be truly unique. The product itself is intuitive and easy to use, and the ROI Shelf produces for its customers is undeniable. As a result, we felt as though Shelf was in a class of its own and deserving of this recognition.”
We are thrilled to receive this prestigious award from the Business Intelligence Group. We see this award as recognition of our commitment to being the most technologically advanced and user friendly knowledge platform in the world.”
Q: Can you give us insights into your solutions?
A: Getting new employees up-to-speed and keeping remote workers current on constantly changing organizational knowledge is a massive challenge. Shelf integrates with critical workflow systems as a seamless “guide on the side” and instead of forcing users to stop what they are doing, to search for the info they need, Shelf’s AI automatically surfaces content in real-time. Not only does this dramatically improve employee efficiency, it turns new hires into knowledgeable, seasoned employees.
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Q: What are the benefits of using your product?
A: Everybody can agree that having the right information at your fingertips is a good idea. Shelf’s MerlinAI has the ability to take over the previous inefficient and ineffective way of “managing content “and bring order to this chaos. Shelf’s customers have experienced an 80%+ reduction in the time required to retrieve information, 100’s of hours of reduced maintenance per month and have more compliant, consistent information across their organization.
Q: What are the company’s plans and goals for the future?
A: We believe that the vision of artificial intelligence can empower and promote the betterment of the US and Global workforce. Shelf can fill a massive training and knowledge gap in the modern economy. It is our mission to take a new employee and instantly give them the knowledge of a veteran with 5 years’ experience. Knowledge automation has the potential to transform the US workforce by enabling people of different education and economic backgrounds to take jobs where they can make a fair wage and provide a meaningful impact.
