3 WAYS BUSINESSES GO WRONG IN APPRECIATING THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE

Is knowledge management (KM) worth investing in for a business or organization, or is it just another discipline created by those who seek to find relevance by peddling fads?

When asked which element was most important in an ideal customer experience, 47 % of the respondents in an EU global intelligence survey* said that fast response to inquiries and complaints was the most satisfactory element. Similarly top customer experience turn offs included in-accurate or misleading information about products.

This means there is something worth taking a second look at when it comes to how your business or organization views the knowledge resident within it. For retail businesses knowledge could mean anything from employee understanding of products, services, warranties, sales and offers in prices, marketing channels, availability and distribution outlets, customer feedback and comparisons to competition track records. Knowledge is vast. Perhaps that’s why many businesses would feel its best left alone.

But there is inestimable value and worth to be gained in investing in a knowledge management (KM) culture for your business or organization. Sometimes the best way to understand something is not in the Why but in the WHY NOTs. Here a 3 excuses businesses proffer for not investing more in KM and the reasons why they should.

 1) Most organizations have not formalized their knowledge Assets

As already implied, most organizations sit on tons of knowledge without ever realizing how critical this knowledge impacts successful outcomes. Such organizations trust their employees to seamlessly deliver knowledge about the business (e.g. of product or company performance, distribution outlets, shipments. etc) to clients.

Often times, this knowledge is not formally held but tacitly invested in the individual employee. Employees therefore waste lots of time to trying to locate, contribute, extract and share important information that maybe held as the preserve of one or two individuals in the company.

At that moment in time, the whole organization is held ransom to the availability and pliability of that one employee to willingly support the delivery of knowledge to the rest of the team.

No one individual or employee should singularly hold organizational knowledge in their hands or rather as a preserve of their position. There should be systems in place to ensure anyone needing access to important information that helps their performance should be able to readily and easily access the same. This eliminates the risk run of sabotage or delayed consumer gratification simply because information was not forthcoming in a timely manner.

 2) KM Is not a priority for implementation

The case against implementation of KM practice in the workplace has everything to do with ignorance of how-to (manage knowledge). While some organizations may agree that organizational knowledge is a valuable asset, few know how to advance from appreciation to the application. For this reason, KM is virtually non-existent because no one really knows how to identify a knowledge asset much less extract, store, share and apply it across different facets of the organization.

 A relatively simple point of departure in developing a KM culture for your business or organization includes identifying where your knowledge lies. For a small business this could be something as intellectually trivial as your product/service price-list. Knowing that this is a knowledge asset changes your view of how you treat it. In this case, it should mean that your price list is well categorized, documented, stored and showcased in a place where it can be easily referenced by sales people.

For larger more complex organizations, identifying and categorizing knowledge assets can be more complicated but nonetheless invaluable to profitability and growth.  Once you have a clear inventory of what knowledge assets reside within your organization or business, you can then come up with a system that allows not only access but security of information so that each person finds what they need and when they need it. Once you have a system in place it’s important to ensure that knowledge assets are continuously updated and made use of. Using our price-list example, an old, incorrect product catalogue or price-list is of no use to anyone no matter how well it has been documented or archived.

3) KM does not offer any real value

One of the perception problems knowledge management often suffers from is that it is not commoditized. This means many organizations see KM as just another reporting activity that keeps the communications, operations, projects interns or entry level executives busy. How does one derive any tangible, real-world dollar value from Knowledge?

The secret lies in shifting your view of KM from being an employee driven process to a customer/consumer -driven process. It’s not about who holds the knowledge in any organization but rather how much the knowledge gets shared and used. Once you embrace this shift in mind-set; from thinking about knowledge as being of internal benefit, employee driven model, you see the benefits that can be gained from ensuring your business or organization’s knowledge lands more in the hands of your clients and consumers and that they get to engage and interact as often as you generate new knowledge. KM not only helps organizations improve their operations, but also helps create opportunities for customer engagement. This in turn build trust, which is, invaluable intangible capital asset for your brand.

*Knowledge Management For Customer Service Report -2016 by Microsoft