Working environments, social spaces, personal interaction — it’s nothing like it once was — nothing like it was even a month ago. Everything has changed and we don’t know how long our movements and contact will be restricted! When gatherings of more than two people are prohibited and social distancing of 1.5 metres is required, you have no choice but to think outside the box and look at alternative ways to cultivate successful outcomes.
From a company perspective this means working remotely as phase one, but the wider scope it that you need to re-evaluate and re-purpose how you facilitate communication between your workforce and ensure knowledge is collated, synthesised and appropriately distributed.
You’ve begun doing your research – or you’re reading this post as part of your research because you know your organisation is lacking the knowledge structure needed to help navigate this unchartered territory. You may be experiencing failure to capitalise because of a lack of consistent customer service delivery and the internal procedures to help you manage and drive your business forward.
Once upon a time you may have heard of knowledge management and thought it might be nice to add to the toolbelt, but perhaps not right now. But now your faced with a whole new set of challenges, your transitioning the way your teams work and how you communicate with customers.
You need a solution to your collaborative project management issues and need to unify your channels into a cohesive system that makes sense — not just to stakeholders, but your staff.
So how does knowledge management work? How are you expected to communicate all your important company knowledge at a time like this – a time when it matters more than ever?
Identifying your challenges
Perhaps you have a lack of up-to-date materials, guides or training manuals for your employees. Your teams are finding it difficult to access the answers they need.
A knowledge management solution like KIQ Cloud allows your teams to access materials when and where they need it, and gives them the opportunity to properly train and up-skill in a trusted environment with feedback, structure and the guidance needed to build confidence and empower the provision of optimum service delivery.
Knowledge management at its core, helps you understand where your knowledge gaps are and gives you a solid foundation to fill the gaps and provide appropriate distribution or access.
Collating knowledge
Part of the planning and decision making around investing in a knowledge management solution is to understand the different types of knowledge that exist in your organisation — where it’s stored, who owns it and how it’s going to be collated for synthesis within the platform.
How you ultimately collate what’s important to your organisation is the first step in your knowledge journey and in improving the operation of your organisation at every level.
So, what types of knowledge exist within your organisation and where is this knowledge stored? Who has access to it and is it organised for usability?
It’s time to get your project team involved. Clearly identifying where the holes are in your knowledge base is the only way to structure a plan around fixing those holes and project managers are great at deciphering exchanges between teams. Teams may have conflicting views on the how? What? Why? and When? Of your organisation’s service delivery but a unified front it what is needed now.
Find the documents that matter, create the documents that don’t exist and listen to the people that actively use this knowledge within your organisation. Your employees are key to deciding and understanding what is most important and the fundamentals of updating, archiving and intertwining disparate knowledge forms into one tactile, active repository ultimately comes down to them. Open a dialogue, get that project happening and look at ways you can all pitch in to populate your new system.
Synthesise knowledge
It’s a good opportunity now, since you’re researching, to talk about that collation process so you can start thinking of it in practical terms – envisage the knowledge flowing from different areas to where it’s needed – the unnecessary and unhelpful parts that weigh you down can be put aside and you can begin to see a fresh, highly useable and meaningful collection of knowledge, making it’s way to exactly where it should be, ready to be delivered.
What this really means is you’re starting to funnel accurate answers to customer queries that can be accessed with immediacy by your teams without them having to search. Your system’s collation of knowledge is so highly functioning that it seems ‘artificially intelligent’ – really, it’s deliberate, intuitive and relevant.
But how do you get from identifying the challenges and finding the knowledge, to forming the content and creating the dialogue needed to make it actionable. That’s where knowledge synthesis come in.
Synthesis happens in the knowledge management platform where information is organised, structured, updated, analysed and validated by the knowledge owner for credibility, accuracy and relevance. Removing duplication and outdated documentation keeps your knowledge fresh and reliable.
Knowledge and data
To collate informed knowledge on things like customer behaviour, product popularity, most frequent inquiries and common challenges you first need to translate data into digestible and communicable bites of knowledge or information. That means identifying where and how this information is gathered and documented.
Perhaps you are using Salesforce as a CRM as well as chatbots and a range of analytics tools based on web activity and traffic. These are all data points that need to be processed, synthesised, communicated or acted upon. Knowledge management creates an omnichannel view of your information and simplifies it for use. It enables knowledge and document owners to analyse and collaborate within the platform to create a cohesive and updated repository and then push that out to exactly who needs to access it. Specific parts of documents can be made available to specific teams and individuals without having to send large chunks or unrelated or irrelevant material to those people. The idea is to create efficient, productive, reliable and empowering sites that drive your business forward.
To chat to a team member about how KIQ Cloud can help you transform data into well established and aligned knowledge for your teams, pick up the phone or fill out a contact form today and we’ll be in touch.
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or watch our video on HR and People Teams here:
HR and People Teams from Knosys on Vimeo.