EdTech

Knowledge Management, its Examples and Benefits

Knowledge Management

One of the greatest ways a company can maximize its potential is by making good use of the available expertise within the organization. Every company has a large source of knowledge, mostly untapped, just lying there in departments and individual employees. All you need is a proper management structure to search, store and make knowledge easily accessible to other departments and specific individuals. This, in return, will offer a tangible business advantage to your company and employees at large.

Knowledge Management: What is it?

Knowledge management entails several processes that make it whole and strategic. The processes include defining, retaining, structuring and sharing experience and knowledge within the company. The organization will create a certain amount of institutional knowledge and experience as it grows, venture into new business approaches and expand its territories.

If information is not shared among employees it becomes invaluable to the organization. Therefore, developing a knowledge management strategy is important to impart experience and knowledge to inexperienced and new employees. That is if you want to maintain successful business operations. The main aim of knowledge management is to ensure the connection between people looking for information and people having it. Knowledge management also ensures that almost 100% of institutional knowledge and expertise is readily available to anyone who needs it within the organization.

Therefore, your organization can improve employees‘ efficiency since you can raise the level of experience and spread knowledge to specific teams or staff. Most organizations refer to it as learning and training. The whole process involves sharing, creating, auditing and structuring organizational knowledge to improve efficiency and maximize overall effectiveness.

Knowledge Management Examples

Retiring

It is obvious the skillset and experience of a certain employee will grow as they spend more time in the organization or within a team. After many years of work in your company, employees typically retire with a great wealth of knowledge and expertise. The organization need to tap into that amount of knowledge using proper knowledge management techniques to prevent workforce expertise gaps and reduce disruption.

Your organization needs to identify meaningful info and capture and retain it to benefit all the necessary parties. Also, it is important to determine the best way to store and distribute this knowledge after it has been captured from retiring staff.

Promotion or Employee Transfer

When employees get a promotion or change position within the organization, they must match their expertise with their new role. Therefore, the need for new and additional expertise and skillsets. With an effective knowledge management technique, you can easily deliver this information to make the transition from one position to another look seamless.

Knowledge

Why do you Need Knowledge Management in your Organization?

Your organization can benefit in many ways once you introduce an effective knowledge management process. Knowledge management will boost the organization‘s decision-making ability. This is done by ensuring that employees can access every knowledge and expertise within the company. The organization will have a smarter workforce that can make quick and informed decisions.

Innovation will grow within the company, employee turnover will reduce and customers will benefit from best practices thanks to knowledge management. Therefore, get this critical tool if you want to improve your company‘s market share and bottom line. 

You may be wondering, will knowledge management enhance employees’ work performance? The answer is yes. Based on Mckinsey Global Institute Report, the KM system has the ability to reduce the time taken by employees to search for knowledge within the organization by 35%. This, in return, will raise the productivity level by 20 – 25%. The research study by International Data Corp also shows the importance of Knowledge Management by showing the loss Fortune 500 companies get from failing to share information and knowledge.

 Remember, as your company or business grow, the need to serve your clients better, access ready-to-use and reliable knowledge system and more revenue increases. Without a reliable KM system, your staff will be forced to learn and relearn different processes and information. In general, that is a costly practice and very ineffective, considering the fact that employees will have to speed a lot of time acquiring knowledge from unreliable sources. Also, the risk of losing information and/or processes is very high if legacy employees or people with knowledge leave the company.

 Therefore, this calls for a strict measure that may involve hiring a knowledge manager. The knowledge manager in your organization will be responsible for ensuring your staff can easily access all the essential information necessary to increase their productivity. These managers will ensure company knowledge and experience stays within the organization and deliver quicker time-to-value for new employees or people taking on new responsibilities.

 Knowledge management will improve the overall profit and the knowledge manager will develop the procedures and processes to share and store knowledge throughout the company.

Conclusion

The benefits of knowledge management in organizations are growing every year. The marketplace is growing and becoming more competitive and the best way to stay relevant and at the top is to come up with a flexible and intelligent way of doing things. Ensure you can respond quickly to issues while away and pass information easily to other employees. Be at the forefront of improving your organization with effective knowledge management processes. Making knowledge management part of your organization‘s leadership procedure is essential since it ensures a streamlined workforce. When your staff are well-informed, customers can benefit from experienced services.

Comments
To Top

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This