The importance of knowledge that companies possess is increasing. Scenes increase when the quality and quantity of a company's knowledge grow in importance. Take, for example, cases in enforcing patent rights and in effectively using customer information.
What knowledge, then, does a company possesses?
Companies hold information in various forms. Varied information exists beyond that present in the backbone system. For example, it may be information saved as an individual experience or information held in documents on personal computers or in paper documents. As a concept, the information may be considered company knowledge when this information solved a certain issue the company faced, transcending the individual.
Taking the above into account, we may say that company knowledge has a role in raising the efficiency of business solutions. Where only select individuals use information there is room for improvement, from the standpoint of efficiency in business solutions. How do we bring about improvement? The first is to document the information in a way that many persons can use it easily. In so doing, we may say that we are converting information to knowledge. The second is to deliver the knowledge appropriately to the person who needs that information to solve an issue. We may refer to this method as the use of knowledge.
Of importance are how to deliver information to the person who needs it and how to convert varied information to knowledge. The purpose, of course, is to achieve increased efficiency in converting information to knowledge and the use of knowledge. Looking at business efficiency overall, simple electronic information, even for information already computerized, is not always the most suitable distribution form. And, to provide the right information when it is needed, technology is needed to properly evaluate information contents and the structure to reflect the business flow exactly on the information to be provided. Further, as customer businesses vary, there are no universal solutions that ensure increased efficiency across the board. The whole concept of the most suitable solution varies with the customer.
Ricoh proceeds with research to provide the most suitable solution for our customers, with the focus on document solutions to improve intellectual productivity in offices. It covers actual business, starting with documents, which are knowledge converted from information. The base platform is very important to provide varied document solutions when they are needed; we also do advanced research on the element technologies used for the platform.
Retrieval technology, for example, is an important element technology in this field to evaluate information accumulated in response to user requirements and to deliver that information to the user. Advanced database technology enables the information converted to knowledge as a document to be safely accumulated and stored. Platform technology, then, is very important in linking paper and electronic documents and in providing customized solutions that smoothly integrate with the customer's system. Further, by linking varied equipment on this platform, we can increase the efficiency of knowledge distribution, which was impossible with single equipment systems.
Our goal is to provide document solutions that improve intellectual productivity by identifying true customer requirements for the issues at hand and integrating not only these platforms and element technologies, but also open, user-friendly standard technologies.
