Impact and Relevance of Knowledge Management System in 2022

"Knowledge management" is a term that dates back to the 1990s, when academics (mainly Nonaka, Takeuchi, and Davenport) coined the term. Using company procedures and technologies to utilize corporate information is knowledge management's primary goal.

Traditionally, knowledge management systems capture knowledge in centralized systems and make it available later. However, this first step was so unsuccessful that knowledge management appeared to be doomed at the turn of the millennium.

The process of defining, structuring, retaining, and sharing an organization's knowledge and experience is known as knowledge management.

Organizations create enormous institutional knowledge as they progress, expand into new areas, and define their business approach. This data is beneficial to the firm. It is critical to teach it to new or less experienced employees to keep operations running smoothly. Knowledge management aims to make it easier for employees in need of information or institutional knowledge to connect with those who have it.

Organizations can share information and boost the level of expertise held by specific individuals or teams to improve the efficiency of their processes by using a robust knowledge management system. Frequently, the term refers to training and learning within a company or among consumers.

Maximizing the effectiveness of an organization's collective expertise consists of a cycle of creating, sharing, structuring, and auditing knowledge.

Types of Knowledge

When considering knowledge management, it's helpful to think about the many forms of knowledge and how they might be shared within a company.

The three main types of information knowledge management can be categorized as follows:

Explicit knowledge

refers to knowledge and information that can be codified and taught, such as how to change a printer's toner or mathematical formulae.

Implicit knowledge

Is the knowledge that explains how to apply explicit knowledge in the best way possible. Consider discussing a project with a more experienced co-worker. They may provide detailed instructions on how to execute the task. The seasoned employee taps into and shares their implicit knowledge to increase the team's performance.

Tacit knowledge

refers to information learned via experience. As a result, it's more intuitive and more difficult to share with others. "Know-hows," "innovative thinking," and "reading" body language are examples of tacit knowledge.

Using the company's experience improves the entire organization by establishing best practices for everyday activities, raising situational awareness, building employee intuition for course corrections, and increasing organizational capacity.

Organizations benefit from knowledge management since it improves decision-making efficiency. To develop a more competent workforce, it is imperative to ensure that all employees have access to all the organization's expertise. This makes the crew better equipped to make timely and informed decisions beneficial to the entire organization.

Knowledge management enables the growth of innovation within the firm, improves access to best practices for customers, and lowers employee turnover. With each passing year, the importance of knowledge management grows.

As the market grows increasingly competitive, one of the best ways to stay ahead is to create your company in an innovative, flexible approach. You must be able to detect problems from a distance and react rapidly to new information and developments.

Companies undertake the process of knowledge management for a variety of reasons. But what are the reasons for the need for knowledge management?

"If HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive," claimed Lew Platt, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

In other words, knowledge management makes it easier to locate the information you require or the people who possess it. It improves efficiency and production, allowing you to work more effectively and decreasing the need to "reinvent the wheel."

When employees have access to the entire organization's knowledge when they need it, they can increase the quality and speed of their decision-making. When making decisions, workplace collaboration technologies make it easier to get different people's perspectives and experiences, which can help you make better conclusions.

Encourage and enable the exchange of ideas, collaboration, and access to the most up-to-date information. Individuals can use knowledge management to encourage innovation and the cultural shifts required to evolve the organization and meet changing business needs.

Knowledge transfer and cross-collaboration aid in increasing the value provided to customers & overcome the problem of knowledge hoarding. The company can provide faster responses or reduce its time to improve a product or service.

According to a Gartner report (2014, Knowledge Management Will Transform CRM Customer Service, behind a paywall), it was boosting employee or client access to contextual knowledge reduces the time it takes a provider to respond by 20-80%, increasing customer satisfaction. Using effective knowledge management operations, a firm can also cut the cost of customer assistance by 25% or more. It is pretty apparent that technology plays an essential role in this context: it must be viewed as a tool for enabling new collaborative practices and information sharing and a driver for new collaborative approaches and knowledge sharing.

Modern commercial communication and collaboration solutions are sometimes constrained in their ability to integrate the most up-to-date popular features, typically following consumer-driven trends.

Indeed, with the popularity of consumer apps like WeChat and WhatsApp, we are now witnessing the emergence of "company chat" following the enterprise social networking trend. Organizations considering deploying new communication and collaboration platforms must also establish their knowledge management strategy.

In some ways, workplace social collaboration's unique practices and technology have warped the view of how to utilize employee expertise through a new model of creating, sharing, and applying information. This "network" effect has enabled us to connect people to share knowledge and make it more accessible. "For the first time, corporations may accelerate not just their learning skills, but also their efficiency, innovation, and agility by engaging in a collaborative ecosystem of information."