What is Knowledge Management?
At its core, knowledge management is the way your business captures, creates & shares knowledge, but that’s just the surface.
“Knowledge management is the biggest expense you don’t even realize you’re paying.”
Knowledge management can be broken up into four major categories:
01
PEOPLE
Main driving force of your organization’s knowledge management capabilities; this includes an individual’s skills, experience, and best practices
02
PROCESSES
Your organization’s functional roadmap, helping navigate the ‘how’ of your operations; this includes standard operating procedures, business rules, and more
03
CULTURE
The heart of your organization; often the most difficult type of knowledge to capture, but typically answers the question: “why do we do things the way that we do?”
04
TECHNOLOGY
The culmination of people, processes, and culture into a functional platform; this includes websites, software, third-party licenses, and more
Ideally, these four components should be working closely together to promote an efficient, proactive environment that encourages innovation and continuous learning. When these four components are out of alignment, your organization can be impacted in various ways, including:
- Critical knowledge/skill loss due to turnover, retirement, or organizational change
- Wasted productivity/redundant work
- Inconsistent quality across work products, deliverables & other organizational content
- Long lead times to onboard new resources into the organization
- Substantial financial loss
It is estimated that the average US business wastes $4.5 million in productivity annually just due to failing to preserve and share knowledge.
Experiencing knowledge management-related issues within your organization? Need a benchmark analysis to see how your organization is performing? Take a look at our services to see how we can assist you or set up a free pre-consultation today!