Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management

When social networking and collaboration tools and media first emerged as a cultural phenomenon, many companies had a predictable reaction: ignore a new form of communication that, at first glance, could not be influenced, much less controlled.

However, as social media channels have matured, the most progressive brand stewards recognized that embracing social networks and collaboration tools can enhance customers’ relationships with a brand, and be an invaluable resource for serving those customers better.

Social media’s role in the knowledge economy is evolving rapidly, both within and external to an organization. Let's look at the best practices that can help companies to embrace social media, harvest knowledge from the conversations in their user communities, and apply that knowledge to deliver better customer service:

The modern workplace is increasingly spread out in many locations, with employees and expertise spread across multiple offices and areas. This makes it very difficult to know what information exists and where it is kept.

We can make the assumption that a majority of a company’s information is stored on hard drives, content management systems, file sharing applications and in the minds and memories of employees. This creates a few problems:

Knowledge management (KM) has become both an important topic driven by a number of industry trends, foremost among them the strong and growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI). A knowledge base (KB) can serve as the centralized source of knowledge for an organization, providing the data needed to feed an AI solution.

Interest in KM is also being driven by its ability to help companies achieve many of their top enterprise servicing goals: improving productivity, increasing the use of self-service, decreasing customer effort, reducing operating costs, improving cross-departmental coordination, increasing customer and staff engagement, and delivering a better, more personalized customer experience.

This is a major and long overdue turnaround for the KM, which has taken many years to catch the attention of organizations. The question that organizations are now asking is whether KM solutions are able to meet their needs in the era of digital transformation.

Regardless of how great its knowledge management, every organization should take time to see if it enables the flow of knowledge across people and systems and identify opportunities for its improvement.

Most organizations go through some evaluation when they first initiate their KM programs. However, it is equally important to revisit that self-evaluation at key intervals, such as when participation in KM tools and approaches lags or when leaders want to capitalize on the success of an effective, but limited, KM implementation by expanding it organization-wide.

This post is about knowledge management strategy as well as governance, processes, technology, and change management associated with successful and sustainable knowledge management implementation. In following posts, we will share details about the governance structures, processes, technologies, change management enablers and measurement approaches associated with successful and sustainable KM implementations.