Knowledge management (KM) has become both an important topic driven by a number of industry trends, foremost among them the strong and growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI). A knowledge base (KB) can serve as the centralized source of knowledge for an organization, providing the data needed to feed an AI solution. 

Interest in KM is also being driven by its ability to help companies achieve many of their top enterprise servicing goals: improving productivity, increasing the use of self-service, decreasing customer effort, reducing operating costs, improving cross-departmental coordination, increasing customer and staff engagement, and delivering a better, more personalized customer experience.

This is a major and long overdue turnaround for the KM, which has taken many years to catch the attention of organizations. The question that organizations are now asking is whether KM solutions are able to meet their needs in the era of digital transformation.

KM Awakening

The new generation of KM solutions, many of which are relatively new market entrants, are either up to the digital challenge or are benefiting from investments to get them there. These solutions are built to run in the cloud (although many can also be placed in a private cloud or on premises); use the newest database technology; incorporate responsive design techniques to allow delivery of content to many groups of internal and external users in a variety of channels; depend on highly sophisticated and fast-search software to speed the delivery of information; and embed content management functionality to enable the collection and preparation of all types of data from an unlimited number of sources. 

Many of these solutions also incorporate a KM framework such as knowledge center support to help users roll out and apply their solutions effectively.

Differentiating between KM, search, and content management software has always been a challenge. In fact, a good KM solution depends on content management techniques to enable it to capture, structure, and properly store data. 

KM ensures that the right components of the data are delivered in a manner appropriate for each group (agents, IT staff, back-office employees, executives, customers, partners) and in a format appropriate for each channel (live agent, web self-service, voice self-service, email, chat, SMS, video, social media). When it comes to data sharing, a KM solution is the heart, and it pumps knowledge out to where it is needed, when it is needed, to keep an organization running properly.

Changing KM's Perception and Value Proposition

Major technical innovations during the past few decades are enabling a new generation of KM solutions. But this is only a small part of the developments that are altering the perception of KM. 

In the past, KM solutions were sold to customer service, contact centers, technical support, field service, and other departments that were dependent upon having a source of information to address customer inquiries. 
The value proposition was that a KM solution could replace or lessen the need for staff training and reduce the average handling time with customers. Essentially, KM solutions were sold to enhance productivity and reduce operating costs while improving service quality and first-contact resolution (FCR).

The problem was that employees did not like using many of the KM solutions because the solutions slowed them down; instead of reducing the average handling time of inquiries and improving FCR, the opposite occurred, and agents were penalized. The solutions came with poorly designed interfaces, and the search capabilities were ineffective. 

In addition, agents learned not to rely on a KM solution’s answers because much of the information residing there was either out of date or inaccurate, and the process of keeping knowledge current was cumbersome, time consuming, and costly.

The situation is different today. Companies are anticipating much broader uses for their knowledge bases. Executives have bought into the concept of having a single version of the truth for organization's knowledge, particularly when the information can be rendered appropriately for each group of users. 

As a result, the number of potential KM users has increased, which is a significant game changer. Customers are also making it known that they prefer to use self-service over speaking to live agents, making it necessary to have a clean, accurate, and easy-to-update KB. 

Additionally, Millennial agents, who are now the primary employee demographic throughout  organizations, are wired to look up answers and are happy to use a KM solution, as long as it can quickly give them the accurate information they need. In other words, the current generation of KM solutions is delivering on its promise and has a proven and quantifiable value proposition, when supported by the right enterprise framework and culture.

The KM Competitive Landscape

The fundamental KM concepts still stand, but how they are addressed varies by vendor. Each solution is unique, with an assortment of underlying technology and approaches. Vendors are entering the KM market from many IT sectors, including AI, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), IT service management (ITSM), workforce optimization (WFO), contact center infrastructure, professional services, and others. 

Some vendors sell only a KM solution; many others offer a KM capability as part of a suite of products, but do not offer it on a stand-alone basis.

The market is in the early stages of transformation, and a great deal more change is expected in the next few years. KM has remained more or less the same for decades, but this is expected to change as organizations get serious about creating a single source of knowledge. The opportunities are great for disruptive solutions to enter and transform this sector.

KM Needs a Framework and Best Practices

While the KM offerings have improved substantially, the primary challenge confronting this sector remains the acquisition, maintenance, and delivery of content. A KM solution is effective only if the underlying data is correct; if the data is inaccurate, it doesn’t matter how well organized or how fast and easy to deliver it is. 

Moreover, for a KM solution to work, a company needs to create an operating environment where all employees support the concept and practice of KM. It’s more than building a KM culture. An organization must institute a framework supported by internal infrastructure that facilitates the processes. It’s not about rewarding employees for authoring articles and using the KM solution. Instead, KM needs to become an inherent and essential component of what employees do on a daily basis.

Final Thoughts on KM

It’s taken a few decades, but KM is finally in the spotlight. AI is helping to push the KM agenda, and companies are getting on board with the idea of creating a single repository of enterprise knowledge, formal and “tribal”, as they consider its broad benefits for the organization, employees, partners, and customers. 
While it’s challenging to implement a KM solution, this is actually the easy part of the effort. More challenging is to set up the organization and processes to succeed with the transformation.
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We have 20 years experience in KM. Please contact us today for a free consultation.

​Regardless of how great its knowledge management, every organization should take time to see if it enables the flow of knowledge across people and systems and identify opportunities for its improvement. 

Most organizations go through some evaluation when they first initiate their KM programs. However, it is equally important to revisit that self-evaluation at key intervals, such as when participation in KM tools and approaches lags or when leaders want to capitalize on the success of an effective, but limited, KM implementation by expanding it organization-wide.

This post is about knowledge management strategy as well as governance, processes, technology, and change management associated with successful and sustainable knowledge management implementation. In following posts, we will share details about the governance structures, processes, technologies, change management enablers and measurement approaches associated with successful and sustainable KM implementations.

Focus on Value Creation

Start with a focus on value creation. When it comes to building KM capabilities within your organization, it’s important to focus on the organization's goals from the very beginning. According to analysis of the assessment data, organizations that acknowledge value creation as a major objective of KM have a significant advantage in setting clear goals and objectives for their KM efforts. 

Specifically, those organizations are nearly four times more likely to document their KM strategies and road-maps than similar organizations which are not focused on value creation and they are 15 times more likely to articulate formal business cases that lay out the expected benefits and impact of applying KM to business opportunities.

Organizations which start by understanding the relationship between the flow of knowledge and desired business outcomes and then work to design KM tools and approaches that will aid those outcomes are successful in their KM efforts.

Any KM initiative worth pursuing must generate business value in the form of increased revenue, faster cycle times, cost savings, enhanced quality or other tangible benefits. When value creation is acknowledged as the underlying goal of KM, the initiative is starting on the right foot.

By contrast, if an organization has not made the connection between KM and value creation is prone to start throwing tools and techniques at employees without thinking through how they will be used or what broader purpose they will serve. And that kind of KM program tends to fade out over time as users fail to perceive why they are being asked to share their knowledge or how the new tools will help them in their day-to-day work.

Define your strategy and road-map

Once your organization recognizes the relationship between KM and business value, the next step is to cement that relationship by building it into a formal KM strategy and road-map. Writing down exactly where your KM program is headed and how you intend to get there is very important. 

A solid strategy will accelerate knowledge management maturity by providing focus, alignment, and credibility throughout your KM journey. It will also guide conversations with the business stakeholders whose support and buy-in you need to win along the way.

Alignment between KM and enterprise strategy is important for many reasons, but most importantly because it helps you justify the ongoing time, energy, and money required to support and participate in KM tools and approaches. If senior leaders understand the link between KM and the big-picture business concerns that keep them up at night, securing support becomes much easier, even during downturns and business disruptions when funding for “nice to have” programs dries up.

Documenting a KM strategy and road-map is linked with an even more meaningful outcome: the ability to leverage knowledge assets for competitive advantage. Almost every modern organization wants to compete on knowledge: to put its collective know-how to work to get to market faster, deliver superior products and services and earn customer loyalty.

KM exhibits its benefits behind the scenes, and customers reap the rewards without distinguishing the role played by better, faster access to institutional knowledge. But regardless of whether customers see your superior KM processes or they just know they’re getting something better from you than from your rivals, the ability to leverage knowledge for competitive advantage is a goal worth striving for.

Estimate impact

The most powerful accelerator of KM maturity related to strategy development involves analyzing the financial and other benefits your organization can expect from implementing the proposed KM tools and approaches. 

Although that may entail estimating a hard-dollar return on initial KM investments, it does not have to. But regardless of the nature of the benefits on which an organization focuses, your KM team must get specific about the projected impact (on productivity, quality, safety or other key performance indicators) and articulate a set of measures that can be tracked to compare reality against the forecast.

Those organizations that follow this strategy, get it back in the form of reliable funding, leadership and business unit support, program resilience and return on investment.

Financial analysis and documentation of benefits would greatly help the allocation of a KM budget. Even more impressively, organizations that document KM benefits are over five times more likely to procure flexible KM budgets that expand in response to increased demand for knowledge assets and competencies. This relationship is logical because leaders tend to be forthcoming with additional capital as needed if they feel confident that their funds will yield tangible results.

A clearly articulated business case and projection of value are also instrumental in engaging and retaining business unit support. There is no more crucial enabler of KM sustainability than solid business unit backing. Your KM core team can only accomplish so much on its own, and without the business dedicating resources and assigning people to support KM processes and approaches, KM’s scope is destined to remain limited.

Solid business unit support goes hand in hand with opportunities to expand and enhance the KM program, so it is not surprising that financial analysis and documentation of benefits are statistically linked to outcomes. 

For example, KM groups that perform the analysis are more likely to enhance KM capabilities across business units or disciplines and to expand focus from initial areas to other areas of the business. They are also more likely to be able to develop a formal business case for expanding KM to new domains based on predicted gains and impact to the organization.

The most compelling reason to perform financial analysis and documentation of benefits is its strong link to return on investment (ROI). Although many KM programs achieve success without measuring ROI, those that rely purely on anecdotal evidence and success stories to justify KM investments may find themselves on shaky ground if the business environment changes or a more skeptical CEO arrives. Some clear measure of business impact, whether ROI or another outcome in keeping with the goals laid out in the KM strategy and road-map is required to ensure sustainable KM development over the long term.

Conducting financial analysis and documentation of benefits during KM strategy development is highly correlated with an ability to show that type of tangible result. KM programs reap what they sow, and those that establish clear milestones and measures of success upfront are much better positioned to substantiate claims of value down the road.

Stay tuned for further posts on knowledge management.​

​Knowledge management has been helping many organization to achieve higher efficiency and productivity for many years. It is especially important in a contact center.

When a customer calls, contact center agents rely heavily on knowledge base to answer customer questions. Not having knowledge management in place can jeopardize the quality of customer service in a contact center.

The biggest hurdles to providing high quality customer service is lack of contact center knowledge and inconsistency of answers across different channels of contact as well as inability of self-service help center to deliver information needed by customers. The solution to these hurdles is is the unified multiple channels knowledge management.

These are the main reasons why knowledge management is crucial component in service organizations:

1. Multiple Contact Channels – customers contact with organizations using multiple channels. It is very important to provide a single source of the truth, so that contact center
employees can provide consistent answers to customer questions across phone, email, chat, SMS, and social media. Having a central knowledge base accessible across channels
eliminates silos of information that can lead to different answers for the same question.

2. Self-Service – majority of customers prefer to find answers to questions on their own. Since there is no employee involved in this process to provide answers, an easy-to-navigate knowledge base is essential to give customers a place to search for answers on their computers or mobile devices. This can also service customers while employees are on holidays break, sick days, etc. Self-service also deflects need for customers calls, chat and emails.

3. Issue Complexity – one side effect of the popularity of self-service is that the issues that do arrive in the contact center can be the most difficult and complex. Because of this, agents are unlikely to know the answers and will rely heavily on a knowledge base to find information. A good knowledge base which contains information across a wide variety of topics would be very helpful.

Even if an agent has never taken a certain type of call, he/she can resolve the issue with confidence having such knowledge base handy. Ability to answer complex customers' questions would reduce the rate of return due to inability of agents to answer customers' questions and solve their problems.

4. Trusted Content – social content from forums and online communities can be a plentiful source of useful information, but customers can never be sure if the information is accurate. By promoting social content as part of a structured knowledge base, you can ensure that customers trust that the information is accurate and up to date.

5. Tools and Tactics – the tools and tactics to make contact center workforce successful must also evolve. Contact center workforce should be able to look up information rather than memorizing, and they usually rely heavily on a knowledge base to find answers for customers.

6. Pace of Change – when issues arise, up-to-date information is paramount. Weather issues, communication outages and software bugs can all generate an influx of calls demanding answers with the very latest information. A knowledge base gives employees a place to find the most current information on a frequently changing situation.

7. Speed of Answer – everyone is looking for shorter handling time. Customers are happy to get answers quickly, and organizations get the cost savings they require. However,
shorter handling times are only valuable when the call is still resolved with complete, accurate information. A knowledge base provides a quick way to get reliable answers to even the most complex questions.

8. Any Agent, Any Call – specialized agents can cause frustration and inefficiency as customers get transferred from employee to employee to get an answer. When each agent can access the full breadth of information in a central knowledge base, there is less need to specialize agents for tier one calls. Transfers can be reduced, resulting in happier customers and a more efficient contact center.

9. Employees Engagement – it is important to provide the tools for employees to feel engaged, do their jobs well, and feel confident and motivated in their work. A comprehensive knowledge base is a very useful tool that empowers employees and enables them to answer a broad range of customer questions, even on topics they may not have encountered before.

10. Employees Turnover – employees turnover can be extremely costly. Each time a new employee is on-boarded, weeks of time are spent training him/her on the vast array of information required to help customers. A knowledge base that contains the information needed to answer customer questions can significantly reduce training time, allowing trainers to focus on soft skills and customer engagement.

11. Employees Training - you can reduce employees training needs without compromising service quality by having an optimal knowledge base in place. You can also reduce employees training time which in turn cuts the time lost due to training time.

Providing high level of customer service is not easy, but with a successful knowledge management, you can empower your customers and employees with the information they need, when they need it. Since customer service issues will only grow in both number and complexity, now is the time to ensure your customer service operation is equipped with a knowledge management system. Done right, knowledge management can transform contact centers.

Galaxy Consulting has over 18 years experience in knowledge management. Please contact us today for a free consultation.

​Effective Knowledge Management (KM) is very important for an organization, especially for a service organization who has customer support to answer phone calls and chats. KM drives performance and innovation. It can help companies solve critical problems.

Here are 10 tips to optimize knowledge management in your organization.

1. Agile KM helps to stay focused and deliver quick results. Agile methods can contribute to KM in a number of ways. Pilot projects is very good way to test KM initiatives, its direction, and assumptions. KM challenges today include keeping up with operational tempo, adjusting to or creating new behavior and evolving new metrics. Agile KM helps an organization develop new possibilities, new mindsets and new capabilities.

KM is a long-term journey but you also need to show quick results. An example of a quick result could be after action review (AAR) methods as an example of a quick win. Agile KM helps an organization develop new possibilities, new mindsets and new capabilities.

2. Tie knowledge to learning. It is not enough to promote a knowledge sharing culture. You also need to promote a learning culture. KM metrics will also have to evolve and cover a range of activities and impacts, such as user adoption, knowledge sharing, user benefits and customer satisfaction. Different kinds of learning tools and channels can be explored. Gamification, rewarding system, rap songs about KM features would be very helpful.

3. Map the different types of leaderships and narratives. This will create a clear picture of what you currently have in your KM program and what you are missing.

4. Build bridges between KM, big data, and data analytics. KM and data analytics are connected. In consumer, corporate, and industrial work place contexts, analytics can yield useful insights, if the right questions are asked, and that is where KM can help.

5. KM education and industry need to be tied together. KM education helps KM practitioners to stay on the top of global trends and findings, and industry best practices.

6. Let people express themselves in their own creative ways. While much in knowledge capture and communication tends to focus on the typed or written word, people also express themselves in multiple other ways. KM visioning exercises have shown new insights when people express themselves through doodles, drawings, figures, PostIts, flip charts, cards, audio, video, and even skits.

7. Ensure knowledge succession. Knowledge must succeed and be sustainable. Organizations need to focus not just on creating knowledge but also on its implications and immediate actions. Innovation is at the intersection of local knowledge, organizational knowledge, academic knowledge and stakeholder knowledge. Aligned conversations help companies keep the focus on strategic knowledge in the long run.

8. Explore weak ties and strong ties. Organizations certainly must share knowledge and build on collaboration but they also need to master a number of other factors. For example, there are advantages as well as challenges to virtual teams: geographic dispersion (but lack of shared context), online reach (but less richness), structural dynamism (but less organization) and national diversity (but also culture clash). Weak ties give access to novel knowledge and information, but it is the strong tie that will lead to transfer of the innovative idea.

9. Inter-organizational KM must lead to co-creation. Mature KM practitioners are extending their initiatives across organizational boundaries to share knowledge between organizations. But that should extend beyond sharing and cooperation to collaboration and co-creation. Co-creation is usually with a smaller group than in crowdsourcing and includes active involvement of customers.

10. Focus on formal as well as informal knowledge sharing activities. Focus not just on knowledge assets in the “forefront” (e.g. documents) or in the “background (e-mails, PostIts) but also “out of sight” (stories), and online discussion. Acknowledge and identify backroom knowledge sharing in informal clusters. There also needs to be a healthy attitude toward learning from failure.

Future KM trends include a continuing emphasis on collaboration, alignment with business strategy, blend with analytics, and rise of the multigenerational workforce.

Galaxy Consulting has over 20 years experience in Knowledge Management. Contact us today for a free consultation.

Knowledge Management (KM) main goal is to improve the internal processes of the organization so that it operates better, faster, cheaper, safer or cleaner.

It is important to create KM strategy. KM strategy is about ensuring that KM processes are as good as they can be throughout the organization.

Regardless of what industry your organization operates in, it is likely that you are concerned about operational efficiency and effectiveness, which means that operational excellence is a cornerstone of your KM strategy.

The KM strategy should include development and deployment of continually improving KM practices, process innovation, the use of communities of practice and knowledge base, and standardization of process wherever possible.

In a customer service organizations, KM aims to improve the delivery of knowledge to the customers and the people who work with the customers on a day-to-day basis so that customer relationships are maintained, service levels are high and sales volumes are increased.

In a not-for-profit or non-governmental organization, your customers are the beneficiaries of your KM programs. Similar ideas apply in this circumstance as in a for-profit organization.

The crucial knowledge of an organization is that of the products or services that the organization offers, as well as knowledge about the customers themselves, the market, competitors and other participants in the sector. The majority of this knowledge will be internal with some external knowledge (knowledge from outside the organization) which is needed to fully understand the client, the market/environment, the competitors, etc.

Your KM strategy should include the creation of a reliable knowledge base of products or services for use by your sales force, your service force or your call center or your employees, allied with close attention to customer relationship management (CRM).

There may also be elements of your strategy focused on the processes of selling and bidding, as even the best product or service will not make money if you can’t sell it. If your organization is in the service sector or is largely concerned with marketing and selling, customer knowledge is likely to be the cornerstone of your KM strategy.

Customer knowledge also applies to internal customers, for example, the IT department’s help desk for internal use. The help desk will need to be able to address employee technology issues based on what services and equipment an employee is using. There is less focus on sales and marketing in working with internal customer knowledge, but the other issues and concerns exist in this case also.

An innovation focus for KM involves the creation of new knowledge in order to create new products and services. The crucial knowledge is knowledge of the technology and of the marketplace. Much of this knowledge will be external, which is what primarily differentiates an innovation strategy from other KM strategies.

The strategy should include knowledge-creating activities such as business-driven action learning, think tanks, deep dives and other creativity processes, as well as knowledge-gathering activities such as technology watch and market research.

There may also be elements of your strategy focused on reducing the cycle time for new products, as even the best product will not make money if takes too long to get it to the market. If your company is in the high-tech, bio-tech or pharmaceutical sectors, or any other sector with a focus on research and development and/or new products, then innovation is likely to be the cornerstone of your KM strategy.

A growth and change focus for KM involves replicating existing success in new markets or with new staff. It is critical to identify lessons learned and successful practices, so that good practices can be duplicated and mistakes learned from, and to transfer existing knowledge to new staff.

New staff needs to be integrated efficiently and effectively with adequate training and knowledge transfer so that they become valuable members of the team as quickly as possible. Regardless of what industry you are in, growth and dealing with changing market and organization conditions are often considerations in your KM strategy.

Strategic Focus

In reality, companies may have elements of all four focus areas. They may be concerned about operating their companies efficiently, while also developing customer knowledge and retaining a focus on creating new products.

However, the KM strategy should primarily address the most important of these four. Don’t spread yourself too thin; don’t try to do everything all at once. Instead, pick the most important driver, and devote your attention to developing an effective KM solution that addresses this focus area.

Doers vs. makers vs. sellers

Some companies do things, some make things, and some sell things. Different organizational focus, different approach to KM. The doers are concerned with operational efficiency, the makers are concerned either with operational efficiency or product innovation (depending on the product and the market they are in), and the sellers are concerned with customer knowledge.

Most organizations are a mix of doing and making, and all sell something, but the point is that depending on the market you are in and the type of product or service you have, you will have a different focus to your KM strategy. One of the main differences in KM strategies is the amount of attention placed on practice knowledge vs. product knowledge.

If an organization does things, its KM approach is all about the development and improvement of practice. The strategy would be to develop policies and procedures, develop communities of practice, and focus on operational excellence and continual practice improvement.

The same is true for the professional services sector and the oil and gas sector. In the case of the oil companies, selling the product requires little knowledge about oil (except for those few specialists concerned with selling crude oil to refineries), and the main focus for KM is on practice improvement. The KM framework involves communities of practice, best practices, practice owners, and practice improvement.

A typical product-based maker organization would be an aircraft or car manufacturer. They make things. Their KM approach is all about the development and improvement of product. They develop product guidelines for their engineers, their sales staff and their service staff. For example, Electronic Book of Knowledge would be a wonderful source to contain information about automobile components, Tech Clubs would be communities of practice.

In a maker organization, the experts are more likely to be experts on a product than on a practice area. With the more complex products, where design knowledge is critical, KM can become knowledge-based engineering, with design rationale embedded into CAD files and other design products.

If an organization is focused primarily on product learning, much of which learning is shared with the product manufacturer. For a product-based organization, the entire focus is on knowledge of product and product improvement.

The danger in KM comes when you try to impose a solution where it doesn’t apply. For example, imposing a maker KM solution onto a doer business, or an operational excellence KM solution onto an innovation business. This is why the best practice is to choose one area of focus for your KM strategy, and work with the parts of the business where that focus area is important.

Workforce demographics

Another factor that can influence your KM strategy is the demographic composition of your workforce. In a Western engineering-based organization, for example, the economy is static, and the population growth is stable. The workforce is largely made up of baby boomers. A large proportion of the workforce is over 50, with many staff approaching retirement. Within a company, very high levels of knowledge are dispersed around the organization, scattered around many teams and locations.

Communities of practice are important in a situation like this, so that employees can ask each other for advice, and receive advice from anywhere. Experienced staff collaborate with each other to create new knowledge out of their shared expertise. The biggest risk to many in an engineering-based organizations is knowledge loss, as so many of the workforce will retire soon.

In a Far Eastern engineering-based organization, the economy is growing, the population is growing, there is a hunger for prosperity, and engineering is also a growth area. The workforce is predominantly young with many of them employed less than two years in the company. There are only very few real experts and a host of inexperienced staff.

Experience is a rare commodity, and is centralized within the company, retained within the centers of excellence and the small expert groups. Here the issue is not collaboration, but rapid integration and enhanced training. The risk is not retention of knowledge, it is deployment of knowledge.

These two demographic profiles would lead you to take two different approaches to your KM strategy. It is possible to combine the demographic view with the focus areas described previously.

Create your KM strategy based on a combination of the four focus areas and the two demographic types, with the addition of another demographic type, a balanced workforce with a good spread of young and experienced staff.
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Galaxy Consulting has over 17 years experience creating and implementing KM strategy. Please contact us for a free consultation!