Develop Your Own Knowledge Management System and Save Money

Your staff’s ability to access the data they need to do their jobs is paramount to the success of your business. Are you serious about making it as easy as possible for your team to get the information they need, or is this responsibility an afterthought?

Knowledge management is the efficient handling of information within an organization, and the most proficient companies in each industry do this well. In the days before every worker had a computer connected to a network of shared information, businesses would keep their information in metal file cabinets, and knowledge management systems would get fairly elaborate--sometimes involving ladders and brightly colored file folders.

Then computers came along and digitized all of those file cabinets, effectively improving knowledge management. For many organizations, an unfortunate side effect of relying on computers is that the art of knowledge management is lost. Instead, many modern businesses simply rely on the basic folder structures that could be more than a decade old. By not actively seeking out better ways for your employees to access mission-critical information, you’re overlooking one of the easiest ways to improve operational efficiency.

Here are two tips on how your business can improve its current knowledge management system.

Assemble Your FAQs in One Easily Accessible File
The whole idea behind FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) is to save everybody time. If you don’t yet have a FAQ document for your staff, then you're overdue to have a meeting that creates one. Believe us when we say that the time spent creating a FAQ document will more than be offset if people actually use it. Although, herein lies the key; in order for a FAQ document to be of value, members of your team must actually be able to find, access, and share it.

Therefore, the location of this document needs to be clearly communicated to everyone in your organization. Also, keep in mind that a helpful document like this can only be accessed if your company’s network is operational. Nothing has the power to derail the knowledge management process quite like an inaccessible network, so the proper management of your IT is critical to prevent downtime.

Implement a Knowledge Base
If your employees can’t quickly and easily find the information they need in order to do their jobs, they’re going to waste a lot of time tracking it down (and this lost time will really add up and cost you a lot of money). By implementing a knowledge base, your staff will gain a single point of reference to find the knowledge they’re looking for. A knowledge base like this can be achieved with software that indexes your document’s keywords and topics, making your company’s information searchable.

Prime Knowledge Base Features to Look For:

• It’s intuitive to use and easy to search.
• Employees can access it from all locations, and off site if needed.
• It needs to be scalable to your needs.
• The knowledge base needs to be secure and properly locked down.

To find the right knowledge-base software that’s right for your company, and to make sure that your company’s network is operating at maximum efficiency so that employees can easily access a knowledge base thats customized to meet their needs, have a conversation with SMART Services today at 586 258-0650 .