Bloomfire
Centralizing Knowledge for Exceptional Productivity

The upheaval caused by the pandemic has transformed the way people work and collaborate. With many companies abruptly switching to long-term remote work, employees can no longer turn to a coworker to ask a quick question. However, that doesn’t mean that workplace knowledge sharing has to stop.

Sharing knowledge across the entire organization is crucial in ensuring that everyone is using the same playbook while executing various business functions. An efficient knowledge management system can meet this need to a great extent. And as companies aim to capture new knowledge, disseminate content efficiently, and increase productivity, knowledge management systems are becoming vital to thrive in the new business landscape.

Helping businesses meet this knowledge management need is Bloomfire, a knowledge-and-insights-sharing solutions specialist. With their easy-to-use knowledge management platform, the company helps organizations break down data silos and systematically organize information. The platform makes collaboration easier and allows employees to find the right information to perform their organizational functions efficiently. Bloomfire’s knowledge management software is used by thousands of employees globally for diverse use cases such as market research, customer service, and sales and marketing alignment. In this exclusive interview with CIO Applications, Mark Hammer, CEO of Bloomfire, shares his thoughts on its solution and the benefits it affords customers.

Could you share with our readers a brief overview of Bloomfire?

As a knowledge engagement platform, Bloomfire empowers an organization’s workforce to leverage their collective intelligence. We accomplish this by providing organizations a centralized and searchable place to collect, find, and democratize knowledge and insights.

The idea for Bloomfire was conceived by our founder while working as a product lead at a medical device firm. While demonstrating a new medical device to a client, he found he was unable to answer questions about how to use the device and could not get the answers in real time. He knew there had to be a better way to share internal knowledge, and Bloomfire was born. Our mission is to increase organizations’ collective intelligence and make employees smarter by helping them find relevant content quickly.

What are some of the benefits your clients receive through Bloomfire?

Typically, data tends to be organized by the internal departments of an organization.

As finance, marketing, HR, and other departments need different information to perform their functions, information sharing across teams rarely happens, resulting in organizational silos. Because we provide a centralized platform for sharing content, we are able to break down organizational silos by giving employees equal access to the information they need. We encourage teams to share maximum content to help every member tap their potential. As the platform is highly engaging, it offers multi-pronged benefits to its users. First, users can share a diverse range of information and make it available across the entire organization. This can be something as simple as a WiFi password or large information using a simple search or a more complex Boolean search and react to the content.

How does a client get started with Bloomfire?

Before deploying the platform, we spend considerable time with clients to understand their pain points. This helps us know the type of content they want to make available on the platform. Next, we execute a knowledge audit process that allows us to retain or discard certain content. Following this, our team works on migrating this content from its sources. Typically, a client’s data is located on disparate systems such as SharePoint drives, Dropbox drives, laptops, desktops, or other devices. We help the client consolidate and bring this data into a central searchable location. Subsequently, we collaborate with the client teams to make the content available in specific areas within the platform. Bloomfire then tags the content based on the relevance of keywords and phrases in the documents uploaded into the platform. Proper tagging is essential to find the right information at the right time effortlessly. As manual tagging is laborious, our platform automates this process and saves considerable time.

Following this, we create a content hierarchy manually within the platform with the help of a cross-functional team. When clients launch the application for the first time, they can see this content hierarchy. The content hierarchy helps the user to filter the content they want using a set of parameters.

Could you share with us an instance that highlights the benefits brought to one of your customers through Bloomfire?

In one instance, Conagra, a consumer packaged goods company, approached Bloomfire with a challenge. The company’s research team wanted a better knowledge base that would work like a simple search engine. Upon onboarding the client, we conducted a short survey to understand their employees’ common challenges while searching for information. As a result, we understood that finding the right information was a laborious task for the client. Previously, Conagra used a document-sharing site, but most users found it difficult and time-consuming to search for content. Consequently, employees spent about 40 minutes every day searching for information, which affected their overall productivity. For that reason, the client required a knowledge engagement platform capable of finding the right documents. With Bloomfire, employees improved the processes of curating research and came up with new ideas faster. In addition, the platform reduced the employees’ learning curve significantly. With the help of our knowledge engagement platform, the company saved an average of 30 minutes per employeeper day while searching for information. This helped the employees focus on other pressing issues within the organization. In essence, the client has had tremendous success with Bloomfire.

Could you share with us the company’s roadmap for the near future?

Currently, we are focusing on providing a personalized experience based on user behavior. In other words, as the platform understands the user more and more, the experience will start to change based on the user’s past behavior. We are constantly working on building the platform’s intelligence so that it can automatically surface the information that users are interested in.