Members and teams of the company collaborate and communicate to each other to make the business work. Imagine this: Your product development team creates an innovative new solution, but the marketing team doesn’t fully understand its features. As a result, their campaigns miss the mark, sales underperform, and competitors gain an edge.
This is just one example of how poor knowledge management (KM) can hurt productivity, innovation, and revenue. In fact, research by Panopto reveals that businesses lose $2.7 million annually due to inefficient knowledge sharing. So, what exactly is knowledge management, and why has it become so critical for modern businesses? Let’s dive in.
This short example demonstrates the critical relevance of knowledge management in all organizations and businesses. In this post, we will highlight aspects that, while not immediately obvious, have a significant impact on macro decisions, the sales process, and overall productivity. Read this article to discover more about the word knowledge management and how to improve it in companies and enterprises of all sizes.
If we want to comprehend what knowledge management is, we must first understand Organizational Knowledge.
What is Organizational Knowledge?
In a nutshell, organizational knowledge covers all of the information and experiences that build within a company or organization, from formal documentation to unwritten information communicated between employees during daily interactions.
Project management
Let's imagine your team is working on a complicated project. If team members do not share their knowledge and experiences, someone may spend hours troubleshooting a technical issue that someone else on the team has already addressed. These reworks not only waste valuable team time, but they can also lead to confusion and a lower project quality.
As demonstrated in this example, attention to organizational knowledge, in addition to management and supervisor performance, is linked to each employee's daily responsibilities and has a direct impact on them.
Customer Support
We've all experienced that when we call customer service, the response we get is totally dependent on the operator's knowledge and expertise. If the support staff lacks the knowledge and skills necessary to tackle frequent problems, the client may ask the same question repeatedly and receive a different response each time. This problem confuses both the customer and the operator, resulting in unhappy clients and a loss of trust.
Product Design Process
If the marketing and product design teams do not share information, the end products may not meet the market's needs. To boost customer happiness, client comments and experiences should be directly integrated into the product design process.
In today's competitive environment, innovation has become particularly important. One of the most difficult issues in innovation is that teams must constantly draw on each other's experiences and knowledge, so to speak, to push the frontiers of knowledge and generate creativity and innovation through integrated and multidisciplinary processes.
What is knowledge management?
Knowledge management is the systematic process of capturing, organizing, and sharing an organization’s collective knowledge to improve efficiency, decision-making, and performance. It includes:
- The documented knowledge found in manuals, databases, and process documents
- The unwritten expertise that lives in employees’ minds—the tricks they’ve learned, the customer insights they’ve gathered, the shortcuts that aren’t in any training guide
When these elements flow freely across teams, magic happens: projects move faster, decisions get smarter, and innovation thrives. But when knowledge gets trapped—in isolated departments, in outdated files, or in the heads of employees who eventually leave—the entire organization pays the price through duplicated efforts, missed opportunities, and avoidable mistakes.
Why Knowledge Management Matters More Than Ever
1. Eliminates Costly Redundancies
When teams don’t share knowledge, employees waste time solving problems that others have already tackled. For example, a software developer might spend hours debugging an issue that another team member fixed months ago—simply because there was no shared repository for solutions.
2. Enhances Customer Experience
Inconsistent knowledge leads to inconsistent service. If customer support agents lack access to a centralized knowledge base, they may give conflicting answers, leading to frustration and lost trust. A well-managed KM system ensures that all teams—from sales to support—deliver accurate, up-to-date information.
3. Drives Innovation
Breakthrough ideas often emerge when different teams collaborate. If R&D, marketing, and sales don’t share insights, product development may miss key market needs. Companies like Google and Apple thrive because they foster cross-departmental knowledge exchange.
Proposed strategies for improving knowledge management in organizations
To address the issues we highlighted, the following solutions are proposed in knowledge management of companies:
Using online collaboration tools: Using tools like Microsoft Teams or Slack to share information quickly and effectively between teams.
Creating a knowledge base for customers: Setting up an FAQ or knowledge base to answer customers' frequently asked questions.
Holding regular meetings between teams: exchange ideas and experiences through meetings between different teams.
Documentation of processes and training: Create training documentation and online learning systems to accelerate the learning process of new employees.
Continuous training in the face of changes: conducting workshops and training courses to adapt employees to new technologies and processes.
Creating clear communication channels: Setting up effective communication systems between different departments to accurately convey information to senior managers.
The comprehensive solution of the TatbiqIT company
TatbiqIT company offers a comprehensive solution to cover all these issues in the field of knowledge management. With Organizational GPT, you can easily collect, document and share organizational knowledge to improve efficiency, reduce costs and increase employee and customer satisfaction. Our solutions include online learning platforms, accessible knowledge bases, and internal collaboration tools, all of which will help facilitate knowledge management in your organization.
To learn about these services, do not miss the following articles.
In the following articles, we will give a complete introduction to the enterprise GPT and how to personalize it based on the specific needs of your business. Stay tuned:
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