Transform Your Business Operations
If you’re starting to notice the same questions surfacing repeatedly across your organization and among your customers, it might be time to establish a knowledge management system.
It's hard to run a successful company when no one knows where to find answers to simple questions. A robust knowledge management system can transform your business operations by enabling proactive responses in real-time. Through knowledge management, you can provide your teams with the information and resources they need to do their jobs efficiently. In addition, it allows your business to retain information thus promoting efficiency, a better working experience, and less repetitive work for your business.
Understanding Knowledge Management
Knowledge management is the process of identifying, organizing, storing, evaluating, and disseminating information within an organization. This information can then be used to improve the customer experience and help customers have a positive experience using your products or services. It can also be used within the organization itself to improve operational efficiency.
When knowledge is not easily accessible within an organization, it can be costly to your business. Valuable time will be spent seeking out relevant information, instead of focusing on the task at hand. Creatives On Call helps companies establish centralized knowledge management systems within their organizations, enabling them to achieve better results.
There are many benefits to building a knowledge management system including:
- Decreasing support costs
- Improving the overall customer experience and satisfaction
- Streamlining organizational processes, such as training and onboarding, leading to reports of higher employee satisfaction and retention
At Creatives on Call, our teams create knowledge management systems for organizational learning and collaboration among employees and facilitate faster decision-making across the business. For example, with customer service, having an effective knowledge management system means creating a base where accurate answers to common questions are readily available to both agents and customers. This ensures a faster decision-making process among employees and high satisfaction among customers.
Ensuring Maximum Utility of Generated Knowledge
There are many different kinds of knowledge available within an organization:
Tacit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge is acquired through experience and observation and cannot be expressed in words easily. This knowledge includes a salesperson’s knowledge of how to approach and engage with a potential customer, a manager's developed leadership skills, or a designer’s technique for developing a brand. While this knowledge is difficult to convey in words, it is usually communicated through demonstrations, mentoring, discussions, and direct observation.
Explicit Knowledge
Explicit knowledge is information that is well-documented, easily transferable, and communicated across the organization. These are the core learning documents of your business, which include manuals, research reports, policies and procedures, and training materials vital to the internal knowledge of your organization. This form of knowledge is important to facilitate successful organizational knowledge transfer to new employees.
Implicit Knowledge
Implicit knowledge is a blend of explicit and tacit. While it is difficult to put tacit knowledge into words, implicit is knowledge that hasn’t yet been documented. More often than not, an employee has been using this knowledge without even thinking about it. However, once this knowledge is identified, it is easily transferred to paper. One example would include navigating software without needing an in-depth document describing each step.
At Creatives On Call, our team leverages these types of knowledge to significantly help individuals through their journey to achieving their goals. For tacit knowledge, we partner with your organization to provide mentoring programs that identify and pair top performers with new and struggling employees. That way, this knowledge that is difficult to put into words, can be passed down for the benefit of both your employees and the company as a whole.
Further, we understand just how vital explicit knowledge is for the success of your business. Our experts are trained in identifying and collecting information that is crucial in providing employees with the foundational resources needed for success. Training materials, research reports, and comprehensive manuals provide new employees with valuable guidance and ensure a smooth transition of organizational knowledge.
Lastly, our teams will be able to recognize the unspoken know-how that employees naturally possess, or implicit knowledge, and allow your organizations to identify and document these practices, promoting efficiency.
Through strategic integration of these types of knowledge into training, mentoring, and documentation processes, organizations can empower individuals to navigate their professional journeys with comprehensive knowledge, ultimately resulting in success.
The Role of Knowledge Management in a Business Setup
Establishing a knowledge management system is so much more than just storing documents in a folder.
Knowledge management involves capturing the acquired knowledge through documents, data, and manuals. The key role is to prevent knowledge from being forgotten or lost. When knowledge is accumulated, stored, and utilized effectively, it can enhance employee satisfaction and increase organizational efficiency.
To have a successful knowledge management system that benefits your business, you must establish a platform that gives employees one central place to access the information they need to do their jobs and assist customers. As a result, they spend less time searching for resources or trying to find subject matter experts, allowing them to focus on more impactful activities.
Benefits of Incorporating Knowledge Management in Your Business
Every business stands to benefit from incorporating a knowledge management system. These benefits include:
Creating a successful customer relationship
A centralized knowledge management system can help grow your business by identifying best practices available to customers. This will create enthusiastic brand advocates who keep coming back for more and tell their friends to buy your products. Research shows that repeat customers spend 67% more money than first-time customers. Keeping customers happy and successful is vital to the success of your business.
Identifying and eliminating skill gaps among employees
By streamlining organizational processes, such as training and onboarding, you can identify any skills gaps and remove any barriers to improving their skills, leading to higher employee satisfaction and retention rates. Additionally, providing access to current and historical enterprise knowledge will enable your teams to upskill and make more informed business decisions.
Maintaining organizational knowledge (and avoiding knowledge loss)
Establishing a knowledge management system allows your organization to thrive, even when your seasoned employees or experts leave. It also enables businesses to access knowledge held by your long-term employees and other experts, and then make it accessible to your wider team.
The Relationship Between Knowledge Management and Productivity
If you’re looking to maximize your productivity, you must create a system that makes it easy for your employees to locate the information they need.
It can be difficult to find the right information at the right time when there is an abundance to search through. However, if the resources are organized and easy to navigate, you will be able to maximize the value of the information and ensure your employees thrive.
The best way to achieve unprecedented productivity, reduce employee turnover, and increase customer satisfaction is to implement a knowledge management system. It allows employees to focus on more meaningful work and important tasks. As a result, they spend less time running around trying to find the information they need, which slows down their productivity.
Implementing Knowledge Management Services: Our Approach and Methodologies
Now that you’ve explored what a knowledge management system is and the benefits of implementing one, let’s explore how Creatives on Call can help you implement an effective knowledge management strategy that will benefit your business:
Knowledge Creation
We help identify, collect, and capture the information you want to document.
From product information, onboarding guides, how-to tutorials, FAQs, or troubleshooting instructions for common issues to common customer inquiries that are submitted at your support helpdesk, we help you build your knowledge repository based on customer needs.
Knowledge Sharing
We identify how to organize the collected information based on your audience's needs.
Establishing a management system that acts like a content library will ensure the collected knowledge will work for your organization and audience. That way you can ensure your management system is effective and supports your business goals.
First, we identify the right software system to implement within your organization. It can be confusing to navigate the various knowledge management systems, which is why our team of experts is trained to identify which system works best for your company.
Next, we work with you to publish your content and make it easily accessible for users who proactively seek information.
Lastly, we work with you to promote this new knowledge base through the right channels that will ensure effective distribution across your organization, both internally and externally.
Our experts can help establish an internal knowledge system for sharing through company-wide announcements, targeted team updates, project/task management tools, or even personalized instant messages for specific individuals. We can also establish an external knowledge system that disseminates onboarding materials, email campaigns, on-site chatbots, or other customer-facing channels that facilitate engagement and learning.
Knowledge Improvement
We can help you establish robust data analysis systems that will allow you to improve your existing knowledge continually and consistently look for ways to enhance your organization's knowledge.
Knowledge management systems that are regularly analyzed ensure that they remain relevant and accurate, and continue to provide value to the organization.
How We Can Help
Developing a knowledge management system for your company can bring many external and internal benefits. From increased productivity among employees to improved customer engagement and satisfaction, creating a knowledge management system is crucial for driving success in today's fast-paced business world.
At Creatives On Call, we have over 15,000 subject matter experts focused on creating the best management system tailored to your business. With a team of proficient marketers, technology advisors, project managers, designers, and writers, we are capable of quickly producing and publishing content across portals, apps, and training programs to make creating a knowledge management system efficient and seamless. Our associates focus on quality and rapid implementation, helping to ensure effective and productive knowledge management systems.
Our team will revolutionize how your organization manages and disseminates knowledge, creating a knowledge-powered organization that drives productivity.
Get in contact with our team today for a free evaluation!
