Does your company have trouble managing information? Is information management a pain-point for you? Can you turn your information in Knowledge and use that Knowledge to make wise business decisions?
That daily struggle to manage knowledge is ever-present. It happens in every company and organization in the world. The drag on efficiency and effectiveness is enormous. Countless hours are wasted searching for, or remembering, or confirming key business information.
What about you? Do you find yourself mired in incomplete or dubious data, inaccurate information, or faulty knowledge?
Are you unable to make wise choices because you can’t trust your info?
What you are facing is a Knowledge Management issue.
Typical KM-related issues occur when:
- There are no clear policies or processes for creating and maintaining information
- There is no single source of truth – There are multiple places where information is “stashed”
- Current and correct information is difficult to find
Typical Symptoms:
- Information search times are excessive & often yield poor results
- Confusion & wasted effort
- Poor revision control leads to rework of documents, faulty analysis and mis-informed decisions
These symptoms are usually caused by three main culprits:
- It’s unclear where information should be created and maintained
- It’s unclear who is responsible for the information
- How information is to be maintained is unclear
There is a solution: Have a Knowledge Management Plan.
The goals for a Knowledge Management Plan are simple:
- Ensure the business can leverage Knowledge as an Asset
- Enhance this ability with best practice Policies, tools and procedures
- Help ensure that you can methodically capture accurate & useful knowledge
- Improve Knowledge Access for Key Users
A few recommendations for your consideration:
- Appoint a Knowledge Manager – Appoint and fully support them as they work to improve you KM situation.
- Establish a KM Policy – Decide what your plan is, and who and how they will carry out the Policy
- Establish an Information Repository plan – this might include an ERP, CRM, SharePoint or Team structure, or some combination
- Conduct KM Training – Ensure that your entire staff understands their role in KM.
- Perform an information review
- Perform an info clean-up
- Make information maintenance a routine task
