20 Oct
Though companies function as a single entity, there are multiple silos within every organization. The purpose of knowledge management is to unite these valuable yet fragmented pieces of information together and make them accessible to all the employees of an organization in a streamlined and organized manner to achieve goals and objectives.
According to a survey, Fortune 500 companies lose around $31.5 billion (about $97 per person in the US) a year by failing to organize and share knowledge. Though knowledge remains as the number one asset of an organization, companies are not doing enough to preserve and share it. Having a good knowledge management system will help companies in the following areas.
1. Faster decision making
Whether it is top management or entry-level executives, every employee in the organization must be able to easily retrieve the information they need to make informed decisions. While knowledge management will help top executives to steer the organization by making informed decisions, it will help a customer service manager to quickly help customers, leading to an increase in customer satisfaction.
2. Better collaboration
A study reveals 67% of employees are not engaged in the workplace leading to a loss of $7 trillion worldwide in terms of lost productivity. Having a good knowledge management system will ensure employees at all levels share their insights and knowledge with other co-workers leading to better collaboration, morale, and teamwork.
3. Manage knowledge transfer
Without a proper knowledge management system, employees who are leaving or retiring from the organization will take all the knowledge with them and the companies will have to spend a lot of time and money to fill the void left by these ‘knowledge workers.’ Companies must make an effort to document their ‘experience’ so it can help the existing as well as future employees to fill the knowledge gap.
4. Improve business process
Everything happening within your organization like developing new products and providing services is based on employees’ knowledge. Without this knowledge, businesses cannot function. But an organization cannot succeed with mere knowledge alone. Knowledge must flow freely and integrate seamlessly for businesses to succeed.
5. Improve productivity
According to a report by IDC, an average knowledge worker spends about 2.5 hours per day, or 30% of a workday, searching for information. Another study reveals that 70% of organizations believe improving their knowledge management-related efforts will increase their overall productivity.
Having all the information in one place and organized will help companies to boost employees’ productivity. For most of the companies, knowledge is hidden in their emails, group chats and other artifacts shared between the employees.
Clariti for Effortless Knowledge Management
Clariti is a free SaaS product that ensures all your communication is automatically organized in Threads of related information that can be easily accessed for a complete history of the topic to make an informed decision when needed. These threads are called Topic Threads in Clariti. They can include emails, chats, to dos, shared documents and much more.
Also Read: All about Clariti’s AI-powered Threads
Using Topic Threads for all your internal and external communication will help you to devote more time to do meaningful work, and less time searching for the email attachment that you sent to the client last week or the PowerPoint that was shared in the group chat yesterday.
