Knowledge management: why apply it in your company?

Knowledge management is a term that has been commonly used due to its importance for the better functioning of organisations.

But what is knowledge management?

Knowledge management is nothing more than concentrating and storing all the knowledge generated or learned by your corporation over time.

It comes from the English "knowledge management" and, at first, it may seem a complex subject, but in practice it is, or should be, something basic in each and every company.

Imagine the amount of data your company shares and uses daily: emails, files, documents, presentations, reports or projects.

To carry out knowledge management is to have a historical base with all of this, what has already been carried out, the good and bad practices, what went well or not, the history of the relationship with your clients, among so much other information.

In isolation, these items may seem irrelevant, however, if we think over the years, all these files are essential for the learning and evolution of the company.

All this stored knowledge is what will be able to identify adjustments, bottlenecks or even growth opportunities for your business.

It is important to stress that knowledge does not focus solely on management.

Knowledge is spread throughout your corporation and being able to extract this data from your employees is essential.

They are the ones who operate the business on a daily basis and certainly have essential data and information for the full operation of your company.

Knowledge management is basically composed of three (3) essential elements that guide this process: data, information and knowledge.

Data

These are basically records or acquired values that have not yet been worked on or analysed.

To exemplify, we can consider a registration database, where your customers' data such as name, e-mail, telephone, address and similar are stored.

Much has been said regarding this aspect in recent years and having a clean and fully functioning database is crucial when it comes to KM.

Some companies already have sectors dedicated to this stage, in general, the database is the responsibility of the information technology sector, but its feeding is inherent to the entire corporation.

Information

Essentially it can be translated as the interpretation of data. In other words, data by itself is not capable of generating information, for this to be so, an analysis of this material is required so that in this way information emerges.

A good example would be to extract your base register and metrify what the average age of your customers, gender, location where they live and the like. Once this is done, you will have measured the average age of your customers, what their main region of operation is, among many other insights.

Knowledge

It is, finally, the junction of both aspects, with data and information you conquer knowledge, which in turn must be constantly updated and revised.

People change, patterns change and so it is with your company too.

How important is it?

The analysis of all organisational knowledge is fundamental for successful companies, but do you know how important knowledge management is for your organisation?

A fully functioning CG operation within the company brings huge results.

The data analysis process goes far beyond the storage of information and knowledge. The analysis enables the identification of improvement points for optimisations, market gaps and growth opportunities, thus making the whole equation more profitable.

With increased profitability, predictability of errors and reduced product costs, corporations can invest in their intellectual capital.

Remembering that human capital is an essential element of this whole process.

It is through people that all the cogs work, every detail, every data, every information stored in your brain that makes up your corporation.

Working on KM is consequently about developing people and encouraging them to evolve.

Your company is responsible for managing these people and maintaining knowledge within your corporation.

How to apply Knowledge Management?

Bearing in mind that the importance of employees in this process, it is necessary to understand what challenges CG presents and how to encourage its employees.

The lack of openness for people to express their knowledge can be extremely harmful, to solve this issue, make it clear that your corporation is open to suggestions and constant dialogue.

Encourage meetings, joint working cells and the exchange of information between sectors.

Moreover, the process of writing all this data and information must be stimulated, sometimes some people may not be familiar with writing, to solve this issue provide tools or even short courses on the subject to your employees.

Give basic direction, guidance on creating post-meeting agendas, formalising important phone conversations via email.

Implement a kind of manual for each sector, ask each member of your team or department to literally put down on paper their daily activities with guidelines for their performance.

Once that's done, it's time to plan where to store all those materials!

Currently there are several free and extremely useful data management systems for storing this information: Google Drive, Trello, Meister Task, One Drive, or even, Slack.

Good options for cloud storage, logging activities and conversations.

We can conclude that knowledge management aims at identifying the skills that your company needs to develop for its better functioning.

It thus provides better corporate management, optimising processes and consequently increasing investment in intellectual property.

In other words, every time your company corrects errors and presents more effective solutions, time optimisation becomes a consequence. In this way, your corporation has more time to analyse data and invest in training.

The introduction of this new culture is a laborious process and at first sight a bit difficult, really, the first step towards this change can cause resistance and encounter difficulties in the first months.

However, getting through this stage and reaping the rewards of knowledge management and its competitive advantages is the big goal.