Organizations are drowning in information; leveraging an organization’s intellectual capital and accumulated experiences into something actionable for business has become a challenge in the Information Age. Turning disorganized SharePoint sites (or some other ECM not used for formal RM) into efficient, easy-to-access, and searchable information repositories is a recognized competitive advantage.
The problem is because organizations struggle with effective and efficient ways to accumulate and leverage their intellectual capital, knowledge workers have lost opportunities to make timely and informed business decisions that would’ve benefitted from the client and market insights that knowledge management provides.
We live in the information age, where information acts like a powerful currency that an organization can leverage as intellectual capital in the marketplace. Organizations that can effectively capture, manage, and leverage their intellectual capital will win more business, deliver client value more efficiently and outperform their competition.
Organizations that have a knowledge management practice are less vulnerable to losing subject matter expertise over time due to lost assets or staff turnover. And employees are liberated from the drudgery of inefficient information searches that research has shown up as much as 30% of a knowledge worker’s time. The bottom line is that when employees spend less time searching for the insights they need, they’ll have more time to produce value-adding initiatives and be attentive to their job descriptions.
Additionally, by compiling knowledge into an accumulated knowledge bank, organizations can codify the lessons they learn over the years into checklists and processes that help ensure past mistakes are not repeated. The 2020 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends revealed that 75% of respondents prioritized “creating and preserving knowledge” as an essential strategy for their future and immediate business. Yet, only 9% of those same respondents claimed they were equipped with the means to pull it off. Surprising yet not surprising, right?
Possessing a platform that enforces, guides, and automates the steps required for knowledge capture and reuse ensures organizations can use knowledge management correctly. Knowledge Management can also streamline organizations with periodic reviews of assets to help maintain the most current versions, archive anything obsolete, or apply new tags as internal terminology evolves. And in a way that can address concerns about redacting confidential client information from people not authorized to see certain things by implementing automated workflows that help ensure a flawless anonymization process with reviews, approvals, and publishing.
All of this points to the reality that leveraging knowledge from within an organization is now a priority and no longer simply a “nice-to-have” luxury as the business landscape evolves. Don’t let this be you! Those that aren’t thinking about adopting knowledge management are already behind.
