Elium Leader in Lecko 2026 : AI Knowledge Management

The Lecko 2026 study: An unprecedented state of play on internal transformation

Many imagined that the COVID crisis had closed the cycle of digital transformation in organisations. The facts show the opposite: that period was merely an inflection point.

Since then, companies continue to absorb the effects of hybrid work: multiplication of digital solicitations, drift in usage patterns, rise of organisational noise that has become a major barrier to performance. Your teams experience this daily: “We’re drowning in notifications, we don’t know where to search for information, we’re wasting enormous amounts of time.”

At the same time, generative AI and the first forms of agentic AI have accelerated the need to adapt practices, processes, and governance. For the first time, these topics are no longer experimental: they’re becoming structural, strategic, and carried at the highest level.

Another dynamic has emerged: the question of digital sovereignty. Facing economic, legal, and geopolitical challenges linked to dependence on major vendors, organisations are reconsidering their choices, architectures, and ability to control their work environments.

The 5 major challenges of the Lecko 2026 study

This 2026 edition of the Lecko benchmark addresses the concrete issues you face:

1. Organisational noise: Updated analysis of causes, impacts, and action levers to restore operational efficiency
2. Digital sovereignty: State of dependencies, possible trajectories, and lessons learned from public and private initiatives
3. Generative and agentic AI: Understanding models, measuring gains, realistic use cases, limitations, pitfalls, and support frameworks
4. Evolution of digital usage: Hyperconnection, collaboration, CO₂ emissions, impacts on quality of work life, and levers for genuinely sustainable digital practices
5. Digital Workplace benchmark update: Evaluation of 21 European solutions across 36 use cases in the AI era

Sovereignty, collective efficiency, and innovation can no longer be considered separately. This is exactly what validates our positioning at Elium.

Our conviction: No AI without knowledge

Lecko validates what we’ve been saying from the start: knowledge is the foundation of all competitive AI.

Generative AI generates significant hype. But one truth remains: you’ll never achieve competitive AI without a solid knowledge management layer that marries people, processes, and tools.

Your AI is only as reliable as your knowledge

AI doesn’t create value from nothing. It amplifies, accelerates, and facilitates access to existing knowledge.

If that knowledge is fragmented, outdated, poorly structured, your AI will be mediocre. Your teams have said it: “We can’t deploy AI safely without knowing that the knowledge feeding it is accurate.”

If your knowledge base is organised, updated, and contextualised, your AI becomes a formidable competitive advantage.

That’s why we assert: knowledge is the foundation of all competitive AI. Without this foundation, you’re building on sand.

Our recent article on Knowledge Management as the foundation of AI details this approach with the SPIE ICS case study: -73% search time, turnover halved. Results proving that building KM foundations before deploying AI radically transforms performance.

Whilst AI evolves, knowledge differentiates you

AI models evolve every few months. GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Llama… Architectures change, performance improves, yesterday’s leaders are replaced by today’s.

But your organisation’s collective knowledge – when properly managed – constitutes your sustainable competitive advantage.

AI is volatile. Knowledge is permanent. That’s why we manage knowledge like code: structured, versioned, reusable. This “Knowledge as Code” approach ensures your knowledge doesn’t degrade over time, remains accessible and actionable, and continues to feed your AIs as they evolve.

“Elium has made enormous progress this year on this vision. It’s not just about content structure, files; it’s also about surfacing those with expertise and knowledge in the organisation.”
— Bastien Le Lann, Director, Lecko 2026

The Digital Workplace market has reached maturity

Bastien Le Lann, director at Lecko, stated it bluntly during the presentation: “The battle is no longer about features, but about how to embed the Digital Workplace within an organisation.”

This observation marks a fundamental turning point. Organisations are no longer buying features. They’re seeking solutions that integrate naturally into their business processes and address real usage needs.

Three maturity signals are transforming the market

The Lecko study identifies three major advances redefining the Digital Workplace landscape:

1. Inclusivity for all employees

All market players have finally understood that a Digital Workplace must reach 100% of employees, not just white-collar workers at their desks. Mobile approaches have become sophisticated: onboarding journeys for new joiners, adapted experiences for field workers without digital identity, accessibility for mobile workers. This democratisation is no longer optional; it’s a business requirement.

2. Democratisation of contribution

How many times have we heard our clients say: “Our wiki is a graveyard – no one updates it”?

For too long, creating content on an intranet resembled an obstacle course. As Bastien said with humour: “You’ll swear many times before creating an article on SharePoint.”

Today, thanks to generative AI and simplified workflows, all employees – communications professionals or not – can contribute easily. This democratisation of content creation radically changes the game: expertise is no longer locked in silos; it circulates.

3. AI as invisible commodity

Generative AI no longer makes marketing headlines; it’s become self-evident. But beware: the best AI is the one you don’t see.

The challenge is no longer to project conversational mode across all platforms, but to develop gateways with other ecosystems, capture user context at the right moment, and serve relevant information without friction.

The new frontline: contextual AI

Lecko identifies a strategic frontier for 2026: getting as close as possible to the browser.

Your OS in 2026 is your browser. The platforms that can capture work context – whether you’re on Zendesk, a CRM, or any other tool – and reactivate information fluidly, without workflow disruption, will be the ones making the difference.

This is exactly what Elium has built.

The Lecko analysis on Elium: A recognised leader

Methodology and positioning in the radar

The Lecko 2026 benchmark evaluates Digital Workplace solutions according to a rigorous grid of 36 use cases covering organisations’ key challenges:

• Onboarding users in a journey logic
• Interconnecting the Digital Workplace with workflow
• Providing access to the company’s knowledge and skills
• Structuring and circulating information
• Managing collaboration and mobility

For each use case, Lecko evaluates both functional coverage and user experience quality. The scale is clear: below 3/5, the solution isn’t built for that use case; at 3/5, it’s fit for purpose; above that, it excels.

Elium positions amongst the market specialists, alongside more generalist players who have successfully married traditional intranet aspects with modern employee experience.

As Lecko notes: “Those who stand out are those who have adopted a journey logic around environments heavily focused on content and information circulation.”

Strengths identified by Lecko

1. A renewed knowledge vision

Knowledge Management isn’t a sophisticated filing system. It’s a discipline that must:

• Make knowledge accessible and actionable instantly
• Recognise experts and their skills within the organisation
• Transform employees from a passive posture to active collaboration

Lecko recognises that Elium “has made enormous progress this year on this vision.” Our knowledge management platform doesn’t just organise files – it identifies who holds expertise, facilitates sharing, and reactivates knowledge when it has value.

2. Invisible and contextual AI

Our major 2026 innovation lies in integration as close as possible to the browser. Lecko highlights our ability to capture what users do in their browser – for example on Zendesk or any other tool – and to reactivate that information directly in Elium, without workflow disruption.

“It’s clever. You move beyond just serving the platform’s initial value proposition. You give it meaning at the heart of a process.”
— Bastien Le Lann, Lecko 2026

We’re not offering yet another chatbot. We provide AI that understands your context, anticipates your needs, and suggests the right information or action at the right moment.

Concrete example: A FNAC Darty adviser handles a customer query about a technical product. Our AI assistant detects the context (product category, query type) and automatically suggests relevant product sheets, after-sales procedures, or answers to frequent questions. All without leaving their work tool.

Same logic for a support agent working on Zendesk: the AI detects context (problem type, customer, history) and suggests relevant articles, experts to contact, or pre-written responses based on similar situations.

At SPIE ICS, this approach enabled them to reduce information search time by 73% for their 140 support agents handling 540,000 annual requests.

Result: Field and support teams find information in seconds instead of minutes, improving customer experience and reducing operational burden.

3. UX excellence: the key adoption factor

Lecko continues to recognise our excellence in user experience. A Digital Workplace platform only has value if it’s used. And it’s only used if it’s simple, intuitive, and integrates naturally into daily work.

An enterprise knowledge base only has value if employees actually use it. That’s why we put user experience at the heart of everything.

Our approach: transform AI into a daily reflex, reduce cognitive load, create operational serenity. AI shouldn’t be another tool to learn, but an invisible assistant that facilitates work.

4. A credible sovereign alternative

In the context of rising digital sovereignty concerns, Lecko positions Elium as the leading sovereign alternative for organisations seeking to:

• Regain control: Avoid systemic dependence on closed ecosystems
• Favour hybridisation: Integrate Elium as a value layer above or alongside classic productivity tools (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace)
• Guarantee resilience: Use knowledge as a “formidable weapon” for enterprise sustainability

Our difference:

• European hosting (SecNumCloud certified, ISO 27001, GDPR native)
• Total data portability: you remain owner of your knowledge
• No vendor lock-in: open integrations and complete export at any time
• Fully European operational teams: support, development, and customer success based in the EU

Our approach: Invisible AI that works behind the scenes

Lecko distinguishes two generative AI approaches in the market. The first, standard, consists of acculturating users in conversational mode – a chatbot that answers everything. The second, far more demanding, is invisible AI: embedded in the right place, with intelligent pre-prompts, and maximum capture of user context.

This is the second approach Elium has chosen.

Context capture and reactivation without disruption

Our unique capability: capturing what users do in their browser – working on Zendesk, consulting a CRM, reading a document – and reactivating that information directly in Elium or in the tool where they are, without needing to change context.

Your teams have said it: “Our support agents waste enormous time searching for procedures.” Our AI solves this problem by serving the right information at the right moment, in the workflow.

At FNAC Darty, this approach enables advisers to save 10% time per call by instantly answering technical questions about thousands of product references, without leaving their workstation.

Micro-apps and agent builders: meaning over accumulation

Lecko notes that few players invest heavily in agent builders and micro-apps. Yet this is where tomorrow’s value is being shaped.

Rather than “piping everything everywhere,” we invest in a platform that skilfully blends conversation, automation, and the concept of usage-oriented micro-apps.

The objective: for each employee to instantly find the right information, the right expertise, or the right action, at the right moment.

The complete knowledge lifecycle

Unlike solutions that simply store files, Elium actively manages the knowledge lifecycle:

• Active production: Capture expertise at the right moment, where it’s created (in exchanges, projects, problem resolutions)
• Recognition: Identify and highlight those who hold knowledge, create a sharing culture
• Continuous feedback loop: Prevent knowledge degradation by regularly soliciting updates, validations, enrichments (what we call “knowledge gardening”)
• Contextual reactivation: Recirculate knowledge when it has value, in the context of daily work

Knowledge isn’t a one-off project. It’s a continuous discipline.

This is exactly what Lecko recognises in our approach: we don’t manage documents, we manage living knowledge. An approach we detail in our article on the 4 transformations of AI-augmented KM, illustrated by the SPIE ICS case that transformed a high-pressure profession by halving turnover through this active lifecycle management.

Digital sovereignty: A credible European alternative

Bastien’s presentation on digital sovereignty particularly resonated with our positioning. Lecko identifies three action perimeters for organisations wanting to regain control:

The three perimeters according to Lecko

1. Digital Workplace (easy zone)
This is the perimeter best covered by sovereign alternatives. Lecko notes: “We have a well-supplied market. We have alternatives, we have things to explore.” Elium positions strongly in this zone with a mature offering.

2. Email and productivity (critical zone)
Alternative email solutions exist, but the market is more restricted. Productivity remains a challenge (convincing users to switch from Microsoft Office to OnlyOffice isn’t trivial).

3. Infrastructure and foundation (the real problem)
Windows, the OS, security – all the building blocks that are the foundations of an information system. This is where Microsoft dependency is deepest, and alternatives rarest.

Dare to change the codes

Lecko’s message is clear: let’s stop copying Microsoft.

“Why? Because copying Microsoft amounts to copying a vendor that’s just afraid of being bypassed.” Teams facing Slack, Loop facing Notion… Microsoft replicates others’ innovations without adopting their deep philosophy.

Let’s dare to propose usage leaps. Let’s dare to trust platforms that offer genuine focused, consistent user experience on well-thought-out collaborative use cases.

Elium embodies this philosophy: we’re not trying to imitate SharePoint or Teams. We propose a different approach, centred on knowledge, expertise, and contextual AI.

Elium as a hybridisation building block

Lecko recommends organisations wanting to work towards sovereignty to dare hybridisation:

“If you work by identifying targeted building blocks, you’ll manage to reduce costs, to progressively inject something other than Microsoft into your work environment.”

Elium integrates perfectly into this hybridisation strategy. We don’t ask our clients to replace everything at once. We position ourselves as a value building block that coexists with existing tools (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or others), but provides that structured knowledge management layer and contextual AI that makes the difference.

Result: Our clients keep their productivity tools but gain a knowledge infrastructure that powers their AI.

Conclusion: Knowledge is a continuous discipline

The Lecko 2026 benchmark confirms a market reality: the Digital Workplace has become mature. Organisations no longer need more features. They need solutions that make sense, facilitate real work, and transform knowledge into competitive advantage.

What this Lecko recognition validates:

• ✅ AI without structured knowledge doesn’t work (“No AI without knowledge”)
• ✅ Knowledge is a permanent strategic asset, even as AI models change (“AI moves, knowledge stays”)
• ✅ Invisible, contextual AI beats generic chatbots
• ✅ European sovereign alternatives are credible and mature
• ✅ UX excellence determines adoption (150,000+ active users prove it)

At Elium, we’ll continue innovating on this frontline: invisible AI, context capture, expertise recognition, European sovereignty. Our ambition remains the same: transform document chaos into tangible operational advantage.

Thanks to Lecko for this brilliant analysis, and well done to all market vendors for their respective evolutions. This mature market is collectively pulling us towards excellence in service of users.

Discover how Elium transforms knowledge into competitive advantage

📊 Discover our client case studies
FNAC Darty, VINCI Energies, SPIE… Discover how our clients transform their knowledge into competitive advantage with measurable results
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Access the complete analysis of 21 European Digital Workplace solutions evaluated
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