Global professional services firm RealFoundations activates new level of knowledge-sharing for global workforce with Microsoft Viva Topics

Building on a foundation of expertise 

RealFoundations’ knowledge initiative began with the adoption of Yammer—allowing employees across the organization to communicate more seamlessly, share ideas and feedback, and discuss topics of interest—and quickly moved into the adoption of SharePoint, where the organization now houses all organizational content. Today it also uses Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications. 

But these applications didn’t fulfill all the needs for RealFoundations’ knowledge activation initiative. RealFoundations needed a solution that would allow employees to more easily access tacit knowledge—knowledge that is beyond what they have learned from their own experiences or training. They needed a tool that would allow them to capture, curate, disseminate, and use enterprise knowledge companywide. They needed new tools to build a knowledge network. “We wanted the organization to get to a whole other league of knowledge activation,” stated Chris Shaida. 

RealFoundations turned to Microsoft and found Microsoft Viva Topics, part of the Microsoft Viva employee experience platform. Using AI, Viva Topics processes an organization’s information—whether that’s content, conversations, or other data—and organizes it into topics to enable employees to share, collaborate, and discover key information with ease. Organizations like RealFoundations can use Viva Topics to build a knowledge network, capturing valuable information from employees throughout the organization and ensuring that information is shared and retained even as employees leave or switch roles.

Achieving new heights: Viva Topics for peak knowledge activation 

RealFoundations uses Viva Topics to discover and create topics across several key information types throughout the organization including capabilities, artifacts, industry terminology, related professional services, and service offerings. With each topic, employees can access documents and project materials, in addition to related organizational experts. And because RealFoundations encourages its employees to interact and collaborate with clients on their shared platform, Viva Topics can pull knowledge from these interactions into the appropriate Topic pages. 

In years past, RealFoundations would have relied on a team of interns or other resources to sort through, organize, and classify the organization’s vast collection of documents. And while editing topics does require some time and dedication from a few team members, CEO and co-founder Chris Shaida estimates that by taking advantage of the power of AI with Viva Topics, the organization has saved more than 30,000 hours—the equivalent of 15 full-time employees dedicated solely to knowledge classification for an entire year. 

Employees have also benefited from Viva Topics. They now have frictionless access to knowledge throughout the organization and an improved knowledge-sharing process for clients. Staff are empowered to find and access unique knowledge faster, with greater visibility into their product and service offerings. By including their clients in this process, RealFoundations has set a precedent among professionals in the industry for knowledge activation initiatives, exemplifying how to adopt Microsoft 365 products to roll out a truly modern workplace that enhances collaboration, knowledge discovery, sharing, and reuse. 

With new features coming soon, such as the ability to surface topics in Microsoft Teams and Yammer, leadership at RealFoundations expects the benefits of Viva Topics to continue to blossom. “That is where we expect the unexpected,” says Shaida.  

Find out more about RealFoundations on YouTube and LinkedIn.