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Knowledge management is on most CIO’s minds – whether it’s something that needs to be done, or is in process, businesses today are beginning to see the benefits of this clever tool in being able to improve internal efficiencies, but at the same time having a powerful impact on the customer experience. However, with the growing need for an effective knowledge management tool or better knowledge exploitation, how do you ensure the user experience, whether internal to your business or externally to your customers, is improved? And how do you make sure that person with all the knowledge gives up this valuable information to help others? It’s a tough one but by following these points below, it can be done.

Knowledge is power – establish a first-time fix

Everything nowadays is about knowledge. With the likes of Google and Wikipedia and the growing demand of AI tools such as Alexa, when adopting a knowledge management system, you should always think about it from a consumer perspective. When I talk about a ‘consumer’ it can mean the internal users in the organisation, or external public consumers that you are working with. Their mindset must be met and that is “I want this information now, I don’t want to wait.” Therefore, establishing a first-time fix solution which will help encourage the consumer to partake in self-help or self-service is key. It’s all about empowering the consumer to be able to access the knowledge they need, when they need it and quickly. The knowledge gained through the correct process of a knowledge management system will improve processes, streamline operations and ultimately improve the bottom line.

Don’t reinvent the wheel – make the intangible, tangible

If your business is faced with a certain business problem, the help of a knowledge database may be needed. These databases are not just among existing documented information, but are also the intangible assets that are possessed by people. Trying to figure out who knows what to fix a certain problem can be time consuming and frustrating, therefore by carefully linking the right people to the right knowledge can ensure an effective route to a more efficient knowledge management tool. Avoid re-inventing the wheel, use the correct personnel to help gather, edit, document and most importantly maintain knowledge articles to ensure it is useful and accurate to your consumers.

Learn from your mistakes – don’t ignore them

We all make mistakes, it’s in our nature, but don’t let that discourage you from learning from them. One thing that is important when implementing a knowledge management tool is that you should learn from and improve on mistakes that have happened before. It’s all about quality not quantity.

I have the knowledge but why should I give it up? Changing the mindset

Businesses today must change the mindset of their personnel to relinquish the knowledge needed to create knowledge articles. This may be easier said than done. However, it’s all about coaching them to stop thinking, “I’m going to lose my job if I give up all my knowledge”, it’s getting them to share their knowledge so they can start thinking about the more strategic ways that can make an organisation’s operations run smoother. For example, “why do we have these problems?” and “how do we stop them from happening?”

The use of knowledge management tools will continue to grow and when we start thinking about AI, there will be lots of ways on how consumers in the future can access data and shortcut the manual interaction with the keyboard and screen. However, it’s all about getting it done the right way, resulting in a better user experience but more importantly saving time and money.

Neil Peerman
Director of Worldwide Professional Services

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