‘Knowledge is power’. We all know this old saying and in my line of work, I see how important it is on daily basis.
Consider this situation: A small business that is doing well, going from strength to strength. The team starts growing. Initially, the business owner has all the knowledge in his head and as they grow, he/she needs to pass it to others - but it’s not recorded anywhere. What would happen if one of the key people in the business leaves without “transferring” all that knowledge?
Effective knowledge recording is the first step to leveraging all the knowledge gained and retained by your employees, as well as partners and customers/clients, to improve your organisation. This also comes hand in hand with appropriate management of that knowledge. The goal is to ensure its diffusion to the right people in your business.
With a solid knowledge management framework and strategy to capture it, your organisation can boost efficiency, lower costs, and strengthen overall customer/client satisfaction.
What is knowledge capture?
It’s the process of taking the information that an individual and/or organisation have (or another inaccessible form) and recording it so it can be taken to a broader audience. Businesses do it by storing it in a place where it can be accessed by others, for example, an intranet database or CRM (Custom Relationship Management). This might include the capture of gained experience as well as implicit knowledge such as technical know-how processes.
In the context of a company, this might mean documenting the expertise of experts in a specific area, as well as their consultants and other partners so that this expertise might inform future work. There are two specific audiences for this captured knowledge:
Internal knowledge capture is useful for boosting efficiency within an organisation when talent leaves. It will also help inform the replacement decision and support the transition.
External knowledge capture can also help customers more quickly reach the answers they need, boosting their satisfaction with your processes.
Benefits of knowledge management for your business.
Efficient knowledge management allows organisations to innovate, collaborate, learn, and grow. Here you have five of them:
Decision making
The right information in hand makes it easier to make good and faster decisions, as well as allowing individuals to access the information anywhere, anytime they want to.
Easy accessibility to information
Employees (and customers!) do not want to spend a lot of time looking for information. Having all the information in one place supports information accessibility, as well as reduces the need for reinventing the wheel for any process. Easier access leads to increased productivity.
Streamlined workflow process
Knowledge management helps in storing knowledge in one place. This makes the workflow process seamless and faster. It allows for recording the experience of all members, including the experts. This provides major learning from the knowledge of the team. It also is a great way to share the knowledge and information that each one possesses.
Increased scalability
Knowledge management eliminates the need to take one-on-one training programs/onboarding. It allows the employees to access all relevant data and knowledge at once. Especially for global businesses, it is crucial. It helps in reaching a wider number of employees. This leads to easier and increased business scalability. Therefore, the employees can also perform the organisational requirements from across locations.
Customer satisfaction
Well-structured knowledge management makes it easy for customers to interact with the business and increase the organisation's retention rates. This also helps in solving the queries in the first contact itself. It plays a key role in reducing the time required to solve a query as well.
There are other benefits such as allowing collaboration, effective learning of employees (and customers) and delivering value to customers. Overall, it makes business processes easier and supports your team to work efficiently to support all your customer needs.