No matter what industry you’re in, who your audience is, or what products or services you offer: Knowledge management (KM) should be 100% at the center of your business.

Everything that happens within your organization is based on knowledge, data, and information:

Your products and services are created and improved by the knowledge your team holds

Your ability to effectively engage and provide value to your customers depends on your knowledge of their needs

Your internal processes are driven by your team’s knowledge of best business and operational practices



Simply put:

If this knowledge didn’t exist within your organization, your business just wouldn’t be able to function.

However, the mere existence of said knowledge isn’t enough to allow your teams to function properly. Rather, knowledge must be able to flow freely throughout your organization (and to your audience) in order to be useful.

Which is where knowledge management comes in.

What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management is the systematic process of documenting, storing, communicating, and applying all of your company's knowledge in an effort to improve upon your organization’s various processes.

But what does this mean for your business and why should you care?

In this article we're going to show you why implementing a knowledge management initiative is so important for your organization as we discuss:



Let's get started, shall we?

What is Knowledge Management Really About?

At its core, knowledge management is nothing more than finding the best way to identify, organize, and share knowledge so it can easily be transferred on-demand to teach someone to do something.

But to understand how knowledge management is able to achieve this, we need to understand the types of “knowledge” that exist within an organization.

Types of Knowledge

While there are several types of knowledge, the two major types that we are interested in when discussing knowledge management are explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge.

(Source)

Explicit knowledge is any knowledge that can be easily codified meaning that it's easy to capture, store in a database, and then share with others. Some examples of explicit knowledge include information found in databases, memos, standard operating procedures, videos, etc.

is any knowledge that can be easily codified meaning that it's easy to capture, store in a database, and then share with others. Some examples of explicit knowledge include information found in databases, memos, standard operating procedures, videos, etc. Tacit knowledge (which is sometimes referred to as implicit or tribal knowledge) is the knowledge that is inside people's heads but is difficult to explain. Typically referred to as know-how, this type of knowledge can be intuitive and is largely experience-based. As an example, think about your ability to breathe. While it's something many of us are able to do with ease, explaining how to actually do it is another matter.



Why is Knowledge Management Important?

The goal of knowledge management is to harness this knowledge, and channel it in a way that allows your organization—and your customers—to thrive.

Successfully implementing knowledge management processes allows organizations to:

Store and organize explicit knowledge

Capture tacit knowledge and codify it into explicit knowledge

Make this knowledge easily accessible so your organization (or your audience) can operate more effectively.



As an example of how this can be applied internally, knowledge management systems can help with:

Onboarding activities, processes, and goals

Workflow and communication protocols

HR- and personnel-related information



...and much, much more.

On the customer-facing side, the information captured via knowledge management software can be used to keep your audience informed, engaged, and trusting of your brand. Some key examples of such knowledge formats and software include:

Blog posts, articles, and deeper, often-gated content (e.g., white papers, etc.)

Knowledge bases, corporate wikis, and FAQ pages

Testimonials, case studies, and other social proof-focused content



...and, again, much more.

Benefits of Knowledge Management

We’re just going to come right out and say it:

Knowledge management is just good for business.

Rather than just leave it at that, though, we’re going to take a closer look at exactly why adopting effective knowledge management practices can give your business a competitive advantage!

(Note: Throughout this section, we’ll be referring to some of the tenets of KM, and alluding to the process of creating an effective KM strategy. If you’d like to jump right to these topics, feel free to scroll to the next sections before coming up here.)

1. Improved Team and Employee Alignment

An effective approach to knowledge management keeps your organization aligned in two key ways:

On a more surface level, KM enhances knowledge sharing by systematizing communication and collaboration between all team members.

This makes it easier for teams to stay on the same page while completing tasks—ensuring hand-offs go smoothly, and redundancies are kept to a minimum.

KM also allows your individual employees to truly understand how their efforts help the organization reach its overarching goals.

As TinyPulse recently reported, this ability to recognize their value to their organization actually leads employees to become more engaged in their duties—and more dedicated to creating success for their company.

On both levels, proper knowledge management enables all team members to continue working toward a common goal. When aligned toward a common goal, it becomes much easier to...

2. Increase Team Productivity

A 2017 survey by TSIA found that over 70% of organizations believe improving their KM-related efforts will increase their overall productivity.

And why wouldn’t they?



Knowledge management ensures that your employees can:

Access documentation detailing best practices and step-by-step instruction for certain tasks and processes

Communicate and collaborate with one another in real-time

Use any available tools and technology to more efficiently reach their goals



Without proper knowledge management, your team members can easily lose sight of where they want to be headed (and may not know how to get there when they figure it out).

But, with KM acting as both a compass and a roadmap for your employees, your team will always know which way they should be going—and the best way to get there.

3. Retain Knowledge Within Your Organization

When a valued employee retires or moves on from your company, they tend to leave a pretty big hole within the organization.

First of all, the loss of an employee causes a gap in your organization’s workflows and overall productivity.

And, even when you do bring a new hire onboard, they’re still not likely to reach the productivity levels of your former employee for at least a year—and maybe more.

Finally—and perhaps worst of all—you lose the tacit, intangible knowledge your former employee had accumulated throughout their tenure with your company.

While these problems will always exist on some level when losing an employee, effective knowledge management helps with knowledge transfer which can help minimize the damage done to your business when an employee leaves.

With regard to workflow gaps, your team will have access to all documentation related to the empty position. With this clear insight into the duties and best practices of the position, your team will be better equipped to fill any workflow gaps left by the previous employee.

KM also aides the process of employee onboarding, as it ensures new hires have everything they need to start being productive from Day One.

With proper knowledge management processes in place, your new employees should always know their next steps.

Finally, while true tacit knowledge can be difficult to capture, it is possible to document it “in action.”

Demonstration videos, creatives portfolios, and other such knowledge creation activities by your previous employees all hold intangible information that can only be understood when seen.

Since you’ll no longer have access to their actual knowledge (i.e., their brains and their talents), having their previous work is the next best thing.

4. Provide Added Value and Enhance Your Customer Experience

An effective approach to knowledge management also benefits your customers—in two key ways.

For one thing, management of customer-facing knowledge involves creating and delivering content for self-service purposes.

This allows them to navigate the use of your products or services (complete with any troubles they may face along the way) without needing to reach out to your team for assistance.

(As we’ve discussed before, offering such a self-directed experience is key to improving customer satisfaction.)

Additionally, since KM provides your internal service and support teams access to a robust collection of knowledge, they’ll be much better equipped to handle customer inquiries as they come in.

Needless to say, the less friction your customers face during these engagements, the happier they’ll be.

It’s also worth noting that these two benefits actually go hand-in-hand, in a way:

Because your customers can solve smaller issues on their own, your team will likely experience fewer support tickets for said issues.

In turn, they’ll have more time and energy to invest in solving the larger problems that do require a more hands-on approach on their end.

In any case, it’s your customers who ultimately end up benefiting from your KM-related efforts.

5. Continual Growth Based on Knowledge

Take a quick look at the following graphs from the TSIA report we mentioned earlier:

See any common threads?

Basically, the more knowledge-focused your organization, the more focused on growth your team will inherently be.

More than just using their collective knowledge in various ways, KM-focused teams also continually look to improve the knowledge they hold, as well.

Since they’re essentially always learning something new—and figuring out how to apply it to their duties—your KM-focused team will only continue to grow as time goes on.

Four Key Tenets of an Effective Knowledge Management Strategy

Proper knowledge management is guided by four overarching principles.

In following these principles of knowledge management, it will become much easier for your team to accomplish the goals you’ve set for your KM initiatives.

Let’s take a look at what these four tenets are, and what they entail.

1. Intentionality

Knowledge management is a systematic process that needs to be ingrained in your organizational culture.

It’s not something to be done when it’s convenient, or when you’re reminded of how important it is. In order for your knowledge management initiative to be successful, it must be approached intentionally.

This means developing KM-related processes, procedures, and protocols for your team to follow.

It means injecting these KM-related processes into your employees’ duties.

And it means tying your employees’ (and organization’s) KM-related efforts into their overall performance reviews in a standardized manner.

If you’re not quite at this point yet, don’t worry; even top-performing organizations struggle with intentionality:







Still, in the interest of keeping your KM-related initiatives headed to your true north, your efforts must be intentional from the get-go.

(Note: We’ll talk more about how to create a comprehensive and intentional knowledge management strategy in the next section.)

2. Accessibility

The entire point of knowledge management is to ensure that all pertinent knowledge is available to all stakeholders, in the most convenient and/or efficient way possible.

As we discuss in our article on knowledge management software, knowledge can be presented in a variety of formats, on a variety of platforms.

Within these various content “types,” the relevant knowledge should be presented in a way that most effectively allows the user to consume said knowledge.

While creating a robust text-based library of knowledge is a good start, creating multimedia content can put your organization way ahead of your competition in this regard:

Additionally, you need to ensure your knowledge is accessible to the user regardless of the device they’re using. Again, this is where many organizations fall short:







It just makes sense:

If your knowledge isn’t easily accessible by the people who need it most, it’s not going to be of any use to them.

Make it easy for your users to access your vast collection of knowledge on their terms, and you’ll make it even easier for them to accomplish their goals.

3. Collaboration and Cohesiveness

Earlier, we talked about how introducing knowledge management into your organization can help maintain and enhance alignment throughout your organization.

But:

This alignment must at least be somewhat in place before you try to get your KM-related initiatives off the ground.

This goes back to intentionality: If not all members of your organization are on board with the new initiative, there’s no chance of it being as effective as it can be.

All this being said, it’s essential that each of your team members:

Regularly contributes to your organization’s collective knowledge

Knows how to utilize this collective knowledge to enhance their own performance abilities



The goal, here, is to eventually make KM-related collaboration an organic part of your teams’ processes—rather than something done in isolation when directed to do so.

In facilitating this cohesiveness from the start of your new initiative, you’ll better enable your team to become even more collaborative as time goes on.

One way to get people on board is by identifying people who are interested in utilizing knowledge management and enabling them to build a Knowledge Management Community of Practice (CoP).

Communities of Practice consists of individuals that are looking to interact with others in the pursuit of attaining knowledge regarding a common practice (in this case the practice of knowledge management).

4. Iterative Progressiveness

The final overarching principle of knowledge management we’ll be discussing is the idea of continual improvement.

Simply put:

Knowledge management is an ongoing process that should never be considered “complete.”

There will always be more for your team to learn. Your organization will always encounter new experiences—both good and bad. Your audience, competition, and industry will always be evolving in some way.

Each new piece of information that trickles through your organization provides an opportunity for growth.

Knowledge management is about ensuring your team takes full advantage of these opportunities not just as they come to them—but as they actively work to discover them, as well.

How to Build a Successful Knowledge Management Framework

With the aforementioned tenets of KM in mind, let’s now break down all that goes into creating an effective knowledge management strategy.

Step #1: Define Your Focus

This first step is pretty straightforward, and can be done by answering a single question:

Who are you creating your knowledge for?

You might be aiming to create a comprehensive database of knowledge for your internal teams to pull from as they go about their duties.

Or, you may want to create a customer-facing knowledge management system that allows your audience to quickly find the information they need to accomplish their goals.

(Or, you may be looking to accomplish both of these goals simultaneously.)

Moreover, you also want to define your rationale for undertaking such an intensive initiative in the first place.

Now’s the time to get super-specific. While we’ve established the more general benefits to be gleaned from proper knowledge management, you’ll want to have clearly-defined goals for your use of KM—tied to granular KPIs to assess your efforts over time.

Though KM is an ongoing process with no “end” goal, you definitely need to set milestone markers to strive for along the way. In turn, you’ll be in a much better position to make continual improvements to your KM initiatives moving forward.

Step #2: Define Involved Parties and Their Roles

We’ve talked about the idea that everyone on your team should contribute to your KM initiatives in some way or another.

Here’s where you determine how, exactly, each of your team members will do so.

For each of your knowledge management initiatives, you’ll want to assign certain roles to specific individuals. These roles can include:

Project Managers , who oversee the specific initiative at hand

, who oversee the specific initiative at hand Knowledge Finders , who actively search for the necessary data and information

, who actively search for the necessary data and information Knowledge Communicators , who synthesize this information into usable knowledge

, who synthesize this information into usable knowledge Knowledge Creators, who document the collected knowledge in a way that allows for maximum accessibility



Now, these roles are not meant to be set in stone—especially if you don’t yet have the capacity to hire a dedicated KM team.

Rather, these roles should shift with each initiative you pursue, as each may involve different departments and team members to varying degrees.

Again, the goal is to get each of your team members involved in your KM efforts in various ways. The more fluid and flexible your roles are, the more likely you’ll be to achieve these goals.

Step #3: Define the Tools and Technology to Be Used

The advent of modern technology has completely revolutionized the concept of knowledge management altogether.

That said, you definitely want to take full advantage of the tools and technology that can enable your KM-related initiatives to succeed.

First things first, you need to have a comprehensive knowledge management system—or knowledge base—at the ready. A searchable knowledge base is the backbone of your knowledge management processes.

Your knowledge base (KB) is where all of your organization’s knowledge can be found.

As we’ve mentioned, KBs can be created for a variety of purposes.

For example, industrial automation giant Yokogawa developed a KB to be used internally by over 10,000 employees.

This allowed employees to capture and share “tribal knowledge” throughout the organization—leading to enhanced productivity and efficiency across the board.

Organizations can also use knowledge bases to provide self-service and automated support options to their customers. RMS Cloud did just that—and eliminated up to 75% of its support requests in the process.

By today’s standards, knowledge bases need to allow for:

Navigability via search functionality and content categorization

Internal communication and collaboration

Analytics and optimization (i.e., Lessons Learned)



Once you’ve decided on the knowledge base software that best fits your needs, you’ll also want to look into using tools to complement your efforts.

For example, you might want to consider using separate tools for:

Project Management

Project-Centered Communication

Content Creation and Collaboration



By integrating these tools with your KB software, you’ll quickly be able to optimize your knowledge management efforts.

Knowledge Management Process

Once you have your knowledge management framework set, you can effectively allow your team to create knowledge that is easily stored, organized, and shared.

This process, itself, is worth taking a closer look at.