The importance of Knowledge Management
You want to know more about a project, consult a success story, or understand a particular process, but you don’t even know where to start. That’s where Knowledge Management shines.
If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions:
- Who do I turn to?
- Who can help me?
- Where is the information I need?
- How does this process work?
Then you know just how difficult it is to find the information you need sometimes. Knowledge Management is here to help!
Organizing all of your company’s information may sound complicated, but it isn’t. A specialized team can efficiently resolve this problem, making the process easy, simple, and fluid. We have recently implemented this model here at MJV, and it’s working very well.
Read ahead to understand what Knowledge Management is, how it works, and how to start implementing it in your business today!
What is Knowledge Management?
You might think that it has something to do with organizing files into drawers or binders. While that is partially true, Knowledge Management goes far beyond that.
Every human being has an intrinsic need to organize, understand, classify, and share the elements of their daily lives. This makes everything much simpler and more objective.
Knowledge Management is exactly that but aimed at corporations, connecting the past, present, and future through information.
- Past – preserving its legacy and history, everything it went through to get to where it is today.
- Present – recording what is done in the day-to-day.
- Future– preparing the ground for the corporation’s next endeavors, making processes simpler, clearer, and faster.
Knowledge Management is a fool-proof organizational system. Focusing on human development and consists of 4 steps:
- Organize
- Understand
- Classify
- Share
“Knowledge Management is a set of systematic actions used to facilitate the sharing of knowledge through appropriate policies, methodologies, and technologies.”
Regina de Barros Cianconi
There are several possible methodologies, several different ways that companies can facilitate sharing their employees’ experiences.
It’s important to remember that this has nothing to do with the size of your corporation or the industry you operate in; anyone can make use of Knowledge Management.
How does Knowledge Management work?
When we talk about Knowledge Management, we go far beyond just information. It’s about turning data into information and information into knowledge.
- Data: measurements and action registry
- Information: interpreted and contextualized data
- Knowledge: insights and predictability extracted from information
The process for managing the creation, sharing, and application of knowledge builds and connects different perspectives. It guarantees the creation and maintenance of a new business culture centered around disseminating experiences within your organization.
Today, we can say that knowledge is the strategic asset of global champions. Knowledge Management is the turning point to provide an agile network of experience sharing, strengthening organizational environments, and collaboration.
What is the importance of Knowledge Management?
As Paulo Coelho once said,
“Knowledge without transformation is not wisdom.”
Knowledge is one of a company’s greatest legacies. It is what generates value for the business, allowing for more aligned and assertive decision-making.
Still, the reality is that many corporations are still lacking in organizing and storing information, even more so when making that information readily available to employees. Systematizing the use of acquired knowledge and collective learning is a complex and constant challenge.
What is the crucial point here?
Knowledge cannot be withheld. It needs to be visible and easily accessible. The most considerable pain that Knowledge Management solves is the decentralization of information.
Ten Benefits of Knowledge Management
In this transformation of data into knowledge, your company guarantees benefits such as:
- Building a legacy of knowledge
This item is first on our list because it’s about preserving everything your company has already done. This encompasses values, missions, and principles, but also operational and strategic challenges you’ve overcome.
- Increased productivity
Your employees won’t waste time looking for the information they need to complete a simple demand, whether on the network, in folders, on the cloud, or even with other employees.
- Unified document repositories
Blazing down an uncharted path is always more complicated, right? A unified repository helps a lot in this process, shortening the path between the employee and the information.
- Human Error Reduction
Human error can be mitigated by giving people access to knowledge to help their decision-making for all employees, not just C-level ones. If there is a subject where someone has already “been there, done that,” there is no reason not to take advantage of that information and reduce work for the rest of us.
- Assistance in on-boarding employees
New employees can quickly and autonomously understand how the company works. This helps the assimilation of company values, purpose, and mission for a faster and more efficient learning curve.
- Agility in accessing knowledge
Hypothetical situation: A key person on the team urgently needs to leave a project and is replaced by another collaborator. Sound familiar? Some information is always lost in the process, which ends up delaying the transition. Knowledge Management can help.
- Employee integration
Regardless of the size of your company, several offices around the world, or the area in which you operate, you will always have new employees entering the organization. Sharing and making knowledge and experiences available to every employee quickly and intuitively helps everyone. Even for integrating current employees into new projects or areas, information is critical.
- The feeling of autonomy and ownership
Having knowledge and experience readily available allows employees to master whatever topic or area they’re active in. This information becomes ingrained in their minds after using it so often. That knowledge and experience become theirs, no more extended ties to a word document or excel sheet. This provides a sense of ownership. They become an authority on the subject matter, spreading not only a skillset but confidence as well.
- Smarter Decision Making
Data is the new oil. You may have heard this phrase in a meeting, but it’s more than just a buzz phrase.
The only way to remain competitive in today’s day and age is to use your data correctly. It is well organized and analyzed data that will support increasingly assertive, aligned, and intelligent decision-making.
- Minimize knowledge loss
Reduced risk of losing data and information that can easily be digitally misplaced or deleted. This also decreases the amount of time spent rewriting reports or reevaluating data.
How to start Knowledge Management in your company?
Over the years, we carried out a series of projects for clients that required the availability of prior information.
Because of the difficulty of obtaining this information, we noticed that most companies have a common problem: the decentralization of knowledge generated within the company.
With this, we identified the need for a definitive solution/tool for knowledge management.
We then built a solution factory that allows you to explore the actual value of digital tools. The service covers migration to the cloud, process automation, and integrated knowledge control to guarantee:
- Portability
- Productivity
- Efficiency
- Convenience
We also created a simple step-by-step guide that you can use to start implementing Knowledge Management in your company today!
1) Capturing knowledge
“With organization and time, you can find the secret to doing everything and doing it well.”
Pythagoras
2) Improve access to knowledge
This purpose depends on facilitating access and transferring among collaborators.
“People can take everything from you, but not your knowledge.”
Albert Einstein
3) Improving the organizational environment
We are creating policies to encourage the sharing of knowledge among people.
“Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.”
Dalai Lama XIV
4) Valuing Available Knowledge
Some organizations include intellectual capital on their balance sheets, while others are leveraging the asset to generate new revenue forms, reduce costs, and innovate.
“A people without knowledge of its history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”
Marcus Garvey
Knowledge is one of the key components embraced by ERP software implementations. Download our ERP guide, and discover the reasons why ERP remains a relevant tool for business management.
