What is process documentation?

Process documentation is a structured note that entails all the steps and descriptions for each task that are followed in real-time in an organization. An organization must implement it as a mandatory task for an employee to document every step that led to the launch. All these factors contribute to the success of the business process.

When employees complete tasks, each step should be documented through proper process documentation to help everyone understand what works and does not work. There are various kinds of process documentation formats, such as tutorials, onboarding documents, handover documentation, visual maps for processes, training manuals, and whitepapers.

Standard operating procedures, customer support guides, and employee onboarding checklists are common examples of process documents. Process documentation is key to ensuring operational efficiency and clarity, including training purposes or compliance.

What is the purpose of process documentation?

Process documentation is pivotal to boosting organizational accountability and performance. It is one of the best methods to avoid mistakes in the work environment. These mistakes can make simple tasks costly and more complicated.

For example,  A software development team is asked to develop a new feature; the process documentation will include coding standards, code snippets, protocols, and deployment steps.

It is all about the road map for your organization that enables you to identify processes and how best they could be improved. Therefore, just like highly qualified professionals work with checklists that direct each step, process documentation offers a consistency that allows for monitoring the progress of processes. Some major benefits of process documentation are:

• Improves operational efficiency
• Provides improved customer retention through high satisfaction for customers and employees.
• Eliminates money and time wastage
• Encourages efficient use of resources
• Helps to preserve organizational knowledge
• Improves consistency
• Enhances employee efficiency by providing access to detailed knowledge bases.

Features to look for in process documentation software

Version control

Many workspaces are agile environments that require regular changes to be done in their processes. Through version control, users can follow the changes made to any document at one time without confusion. This allows everyone to grasp the evolution of the process and quickly determine who altered any component of the document.

For instance, team members can easily access the timeline of changes in a firm’s customer onboarding process to ensure clear objectives within an organization. Another benefit of version control is that it promotes a collaborative working atmosphere because many team members can readily add to process documentation. People working independently and software merging changes automatically accurately represent the process.

Workflow management

Some sort of workflow management is required to get a coherent view of the document lifecycle from point A to Z. For instance, proper workflow management in a marketing department can help ensure that all team members know the different steps involved in their respective market strategies.

This allows transparency since every user can see how the documents are created and reviewed from submission to approval. Workflow management refers to the practice where specific team members are assigned various tasks, and they understand that they will bear responsibilities related to some aspects of workflow.

Export and import function

The export and import function enables the mapping of process documentation in various formats such as Word and PDF. This refers to creating portable and shareable files outside the platform from within that process documentation software. The import function allows external documents to integrate with the software easily.

This is particularly important for project managers who must share a project timeline from the process documentation tool with stakeholders outside of that platform. The manager can then download this later with updates to synchronize the document with recent changes. The export and import function also encourages collaboration across various platforms without limiting usage to the process documentation software.

Mobile friendly

Any software for process documentation that promotes accessibility on the move through your mobile device is considered to be a mobile-friendly one. Thanks to the mobile-friendly interface, users have a higher degree of flexibility in use because it is possible for them to access and review process documentation from their smartphones or handy devices.

This will enable several team members to access critical information on documentation while in transit, including field technicians who require urgent information about maintenance procedures during equipment operations.

The mobile-friendly process documentation software also promotes real-time collaboration as users can respond to changes promptly. This usually includes offline access, which team members and employees can enjoy in remote areas where there is an unstable internet connection.

Easy collaboration

Collaboration is a big deal in the world of process documentation. With easy collaboration, multiple users can edit a document simultaneously in real-time. This ensures that the process of creating documents has little or no delay.

Easy collaboration is also characterized by features such as feedback tools for suggesting changes within the document and live editing without requiring a download for users. This should include versioning to identify changes made over time.

Team members should also have the privilege of using features like role-based access control in which a facilitator defines various permissions that team members have to specific documentation. With this, only authorized individuals can carry out some changes. Lastly, this should involve timely notifications to alert users about their important tasks.

Searchability

Would you like to waste several minutes searching for an important document in a stressful situation? Nobody loves this and that’s why searchability is one of the primary things to consider when choosing a process documentation software. Searchability makes it possible for users to find information from a large set of process documentation without any stress.

With this, users can find the necessary information from large documentation libraries using particular keywords or metadata for accuracy. This is especially useful when a customer support representative needs to quickly find troubleshooting steps for a customer and uses keywords. This improves customer retention as they will appreciate the prompt response to issues.

Integration and Extension

No process documentation software should exist on an island. Integration features ensure that users can work seamlessly with other tools within the organization, thereby improving their workflow efficiency. Integration with tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams allows team members to collaborate on process documentation without the hassle of switching between different tools at various points.

This enhances teamwork and better workflow management. Also, process documentation tools that provide APIs allow organizations to create custom integrations, which ensures that the software is tailored to the specific needs of the company.

8 Best Process Documentation Tools

1. Document360

Process documentation with Document360 is easier than ever. Users can take advantage of AI features to create standard operating procedures, employee handbooks, technical guidelines, internal documentation, and more. The massive advantage here is, that the content creator can take the help of Eddy – AI Assistant for content structure and consistency in tone. Also, it recommends titles, tags to organize the article, SEO meta description, and more. It comes with built-in Markdown and Advanced WYSIWYG, which is designed for people with no coding experience to master creating documentation. This is a documentation software specifically designed to help companies of all sizes document their processes and workflows.

Seamlessly integrate with various platforms, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zendesk. Document360 has all the features for the perfect process documentation software and more. Its intuitive interface is another huge plus, but the downside is that this tool provides limited features in the free version.

2. Confluence

Atlassian’s Confluence is a great process documentation tool for creating files, editing, and collaborating across a single dashboard. With its seamless third-party app integration, users can leverage confluence to use other workspace tools like Slack, Dropbox, and Trello within the same interface without worries.

Meanwhile, it also supports several users editing a document as there is page versioning to track and view change history. Users can also track views and comments using engagement analytics, and this valuable data helps to make informed decisions. While this tool helps to improve process efficiency among team members, the UI takes some time to get used to as it’s challenging to learn.

3. Gluu

With Gluu, you can create interactive guides and knowledge bases that will seamlessly transfer knowledge while making workflows easier. This process documentation tool has a built-in process designer that helps you get started creating schedules, assigning tasks, and mapping processes without getting lost within various complex interfaces.

It’s difficult for any team member to get lost during collaboration, as there are periodic notifications to ensure everyone stays informed at all times. Meanwhile, team leaders can also delegate effectively through various permissions within the tool. However, this tool is best for streamlining internal processes as its features don’t support external sharing of knowledge bases.

4. Bit.ai

 

Bit.ai is a process documentation tool that enables teams in the working environment to collaborate without difficulty. It is meant to simplify project documentation via features like client portals, interactive tutorials, and wikis. The interactive nature is the major strength of this process documentation tool. This implies that an array of users access different forms of media ranging from videos to documents simultaneously.

Although this distraction-free editor can be regarded as one of the top process documentation tools, its cons include that formatting and design options may not correspond to user needs. Also, there is no free plan for files that are more than 5MB.

5. Lucidchart

One of the first things you notice about Lucidchart is its user-friendly interface. No one wants to spend more than a few minutes stumbling around a complicated interface for their process documentation. Therefore, users will love the drag-and-drop builder which is useful for creating various degrees of technical diagrams, from the more complex ones to simple flowcharts.

Lucidchart offers real-time collaboration with flexible sharing options that make multi-level communication among diverse team members a breeze. If you’re not sure if this is the perfect fit for your organization, you can take advantage of the free plan to get familiar with the interface. However, for more advanced functionality and collaboration features, you need to opt for the paid version.

6. Process Street

Process Street is designed to make it easy to manage repetitive workflows and processes without errors. With this process documentation tool, you can describe a workflow and manage tasks seamlessly, while collaborating easily with other team members.

It also provides tracking features to stay updated on all running processes within your dashboard. The built-in Zapier support allows seamless integration with other collaboration tools. The hundreds of pre-built templates cover many workflows, such as social media marketing and blog writing. Nevertheless, team leaders cannot prevent access per task since it has fewer options for limitations and security.

7. Tango

Tango is a browser extension with which you can create user guides, how-to guides, and standard operating procedures such as employee handbooks and training guides as you work. All it requires is a few process-documentation steps. This involves screenshots of different processes, real-time capturing processes, cropping and zooming screenshots automatically, and document organization with workspaces shared folders.

Take advantage of Tango for your product documentation efforts with its ability to manage different document types and its advanced customization features. However, this tool doesn’t export to Microsoft PowerPoint.

8. Scribe

For a process documentation tool balancing functionality and aesthetics, take Scribe. One of the biggest advantages that this tool provides is an automatically generated step-by-step visual guide with just your desktop app. You can simply go through your process while Scribe does the heavy lifting.

Along with its easy drag-and-drop interface, Scribe gives several options for editing and customization. Other notable features include page templates and annotations. Despite this, custom branding is only available as a part of the premium plan, which may be quite expensive for people.

What is Work Instructions Software?

Work instructions software is a tool that allows businesses to document their processes, allowing teams to communicate and collaborate on their documents. It’s a step up from using static files and folders, enabling you to create a dynamic knowledge base that keeps employees informed about exactly what they need to do.

When you choose work instructions software, you can benefit from multimedia support, version control, and complex workflows for creating content. While it’s possible to document a process in a common application such as Microsoft Word, businesses that want to enhance productivity and improve processes opt for work instructions software.

Creating a centralized portal containing every work instruction for your business is essential for the smooth running of your operations. Work instruction software is vital for ensuring that every employee understands how to complete each process by following the official instructions in complex industries such as software, manufacturing, and healthcare.

Understanding Healthcare Processes

A healthcare process is something that underpins the proper functioning of the organization. It is a set of repeatable steps that affect patient outcomes, the success of which is influenced by the management of knowledge. If healthcare professionals understand how to perform a particular set of tasks and why, that process will succeed as long as they have the right resources.

Improving the healthcare process will ultimately come from more investment, but in the meantime, other process improvements can be achieved through better knowledge management. By more successfully guarding and utilizing the knowledge of healthcare institutions, we can improve patient outcomes and cut costs to improve the proper functioning of the organization.

Processes are also related to the management of patient information, such as their data, which must be protected but also made available to anyone involved in the delivery of care. Since data is important and precious, using the right tools to manage this data, as well as any other knowledge contained within the organization, is critical.

Even small improvements in repeatable processes will result in large gains for the organization. Adopting the proper tools, such as knowledge base software, enables the proper management of knowledge to significantly improve processes, resulting in the conservation of time and money.

How to Improve the Healthcare Process

Since health outcomes in countries are directly tied to economic growth, there is no good reason to avoid investing in healthcare infrastructure and care. Improving the healthcare process is ultimately determined by how well you manage the information within your organization, and many gains can be made by simply enhancing how you use and share information.

Centralized Information/Knowledge Hub

First of all, you’ll want to create a comprehensive knowledge base that serves as a centralized repository for medical guidelines, procedures, and best practices. When information is held across the organization in different repositories, the experience of accessing knowledge becomes fractured, and healthcare staff often fail to find the information that they need to care for patients.

Individual staff members may understand how to perform certain processes, but if they leave or become temporarily unavailable, you need that knowledge documented in a centralized hub. When assessing standards and determining quality, repeatable processes arise from the constant availability of knowledge.

IT managers may be concerned about general security, but if you choose a knowledge base that is SOC2 compliant and hosted on a private cloud server, then you don’t need to worry. If all your information is centralized, you have to worry about fewer points of vulnerability for data breaches.

Ongoing Training Initiatives

When healthcare staff are continually trained to do their jobs, you can improve healthcare processes. Standards and bodies of knowledge are always changing, and what is considered sufficient care today may not be tomorrow. Documenting knowledge and ensuring access even after training means staff are always well-informed, and patients can benefit.

When healthcare staff have a chance to progress in their careers, the standard of patient care improves. Clinicians’ job satisfaction is directly related to patient care quality because they are more engaged in their work and more alert to patient needs. You reduce the risk of brain drain to other countries or sectors when clinicians are satisfied.

More than one staff member can be trained to carry out a particular process, which means you always have a backup. Knowledge shared gives greater flexibility to your processes, and staff become empowered to suggest improvements.

Streamlined Workflows

Streamlined workflows supported by the right information mean that healthcare workers can achieve patient outcomes more effectively. Going through the process of documenting knowledge helps you uncover gaps and identify opportunities by tinkering with your workflows. Increased insight into your operations makes you more efficient when helping patients.

Repeatable and consistent workflows result in a better worker and patient experience because you remove excessive steps. When lobbying for more budget, having documented workflows means you can justify improvements because you know exactly where resources are being wasted or under-utilized.

Process improvement is directly tied to streamlining workflows because you can’t have a process that isn’t part of someone’s daily responsibilities. Processes become more relevant and purposeful when healthcare staff are held accountable and freed from completing unnecessary tasks.

Enhanced Collaboration and Communication

Even within the same department, team, or division, siloes can develop which prevent effective collaboration and communication. This is to the detriment of the patient experience since healthcare professionals are failing to share knowledge and pass on best practices about patient care.

Even activities that are not directly related to patients, such as administration and facilities, need healthcare workers to share knowledge, document guidelines and procedures, create training manuals, and more. Each cog in the machine of the healthcare organization must work together to help patients, improve health, and save lives ultimately.

Processes are more effective when participants regularly collaborate and communicate, preventing different departments from working independently and duplicating work. Process improvement can spread through the organization using established communication channels and effect wider change.

Telehealth Support

Telehealth support refers to the more efficient allocation of resources and improved access to care through talking to your care provider live over the phone or video chat. This method of accessing care removes the need for vulnerable patients to travel potentially long distances, which can be costly, tiring, and time-consuming, and allows health professionals to see more patients within the same space of time.

The old process of requiring patients to visit the healthcare organization is not in line with the trend toward remote and hybrid working. For example, if the physician cannot meet, they can still conduct consultations through phone or live chat and avoid any disruption to patient care. Implementing this new process may disrupt patients at first, but it is ultimately more efficient for everyone.

Giving patients wider access to care is a key goal of healthcare process improvement and is the ultimate aim of any healthcare institution. Telehealth support helps clinicians serve more patients and improve outcomes.

FAQs and Troubleshooting Guides

FAQs and troubleshooting guides are on hand to help professionals deliver patient care and complete administrative or facility tasks. A doctor might be tasked with diagnosing patients, but if the patient database containing records refuses to work, then their role will be compromised. Troubleshooting or finding answers to common FAQs is crucial to running the organization.

Even from the patient side, the ability to find FAQs and guides relating to the delivery of their care can improve the experience vastly while waiting for access to a healthcare professional. Long wait times and overcrowding endanger patient satisfaction and their health or survival, but documenting answers to common questions helps patients take charge of their own care.

Data Security and Privacy Measures

We’ve all heard the horror stories of healthcare organizations compromising patient data, which is usually from vulnerabilities in outdated systems or the mistake of a human agent. If you invest in the latest software and observe data security and privacy rules, you have very little to worry about regarding patient data.

Taking care of patient data means using the latest information technology to improve patient outcomes and eliminate loss. Manually storing paper patient records, for example, is both wasteful and unsustainable in the long term. You can also choose the best software solution for data security and privacy that complies with the most stringent standards.

Check out our video, AI-Powered Healthcare Knowledge Base:

How Document360 Can Help in Healthcare Process Improvement?

Document360 can help you with your healthcare process improvement by documenting key knowledge efficiently and effectively. You can create a medical knowledge base for your healthcare organization easily and quickly with Document360 and instantly publish an article without extensive support from your IT department.

If you want to document a troubleshooting guide, training manual, internal guidelines, Standard Operating Procedures, and more, Document360 can help you. With an easy-to-use interface and the ability to improve patient information access 24/7 across the globe, Document360 enhances the patient experience as well as makes it far easier for healthcare professionals to do their jobs.

For healthcare organizations searching for reliability, uptime, accessibility, and compliance, Document360 should be your first choice. As a knowledge base tool, you can easily create content, organize it, and create different versions to enhance the patient and worker experience.

Consider these top features of Document360:

• Analytics – gain insight into the nature of your knowledge base visitors and understand article performance
• Workflow – improve how articles are published by creating a workflow and assigning a status
• SEO – articles can be indexed by search engines for greater visibility online
• Integrations – integrate with top tools in the ecosystem such as the help desk, chatbot, or commenting tools
• Drive – store your knowledge base files securely in Drive and manage, delete, or remove files
• Health check metrics – check the health of your articles with readability metrics and keyword optimization

Also Read: How is knowledge management used in healthcare?

How Document360 Helped Better Life Partners: A Success Story

Better Life Partners found Document360 as their right tool, mainly because it meets all their needs. Emily-Rose, who is a Product Manager at Better Life Partners, mentioned that with Document360, she can publish articles, share them with team members and update them as needed. It is also easy to export the articles to PDF and print them whenever there is a need.

Enhanced Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is all about how much your employees are willing to put into your organization, specifically in effort and commitment. With an effective onboarding process, you can communicate the mission and vision of your company clearly. This is usually accompanied by that shared enthusiasm for the growth of your brand.

With this, employees are more likely to become engaged and give more than a hundred percent each day because they genuinely care about meeting your organizational goals. Through an effective onboarding process, you can demonstrate how much your organization values your employees. In return, they will become more engaged with a genuine drive to see your company succeed.

Accelerated Productivity

It’s no secret that engaged employees are productive employees. Effective employee onboarding is so important because it has a spiral effect on how your employees regard working within the establishment.

By helping them to acclimatize and engage with your products and services, there is a higher chance that they will understand what these entail and the best methods to improve company growth. An employee who doesn’t have to worry so much about how to get integrated into a new environment will spend all that extra time on positive activities.

Retention Improvement

Onboarding is super important because new hires who quickly settle into a company’s work culture and environment are more likely to stick around. Job security is a big deal, and no one will be willing to leave a company that helps them settle in quickly. This improves the level of retention of employees and saves the company significant costs.

Hiring a new person can be as high as thousands of dollars, depending on the position. This doesn’t take into account all the knowledge and experience from old employees that have to be transferred yet again to a new hire. No organization will want to incur such loss due to high turnover. You can eliminate the chances of this by paying extra attention to onboarding processes.

Compliance and Legal Requirements

Another significant importance of effective onboarding is that it ensures legal compliance. This encompasses all the vital information about the legal requirements, procedures, and company policies, including employment laws and safety regulations.

Through a great onboarding program, you can provide clear guidelines that help new hires understand what the company expects in terms of behavior and performance. On the flip side, they are also fully aware of their rights and responsibilities, thereby encouraging a healthy working relationship. Overall, this minimizes risk as the organization operates in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

Customer Satisfaction

An effective employee onboarding program can also impact customer satisfaction. Properly onboarded employees are usually equipped with all the necessary training manuals and resources they need to provide exceptional service to customers.

With customers gaining access to high-quality service from employees, this will significantly improve their overall interaction with your organization, leading to higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Use an effective onboarding program to create a culture of excellent customer service delivery, and this will build a positive image for your brand.

Benefits of Product Knowledge for Customer Service

Arming your customer service with deep product knowledge builds trust, fosters confidence, and helps them deliver more personalized and effective support to users. Having informed the customer service representative does more for a company than just empowering customers. Here are some benefits of product knowledge for customer service.

Employee Confidence Building

One of the main advantages of product knowledge in customer service is that it makes employees more confident. When your customer service professionals have an in-depth understanding of the product for which they offer support, they develop a level of authority as they communicate.

They can support customers with credibility and more effectively. Product knowledge further equips your customer service professionals with the tools to navigate complex customer inquiries.

Building Customer Trust by Providing Factual Information

Customers buy from trusted companies or brands because trust is an invaluable currency in customer service. They can trust you more when you consistently provide reliable and accurate information regarding your product. This includes delivering precise answers to customers’ questions and providing help with the issues they face.

Customers who are satisfied with your service are more likely to recommend you by word of mouth. It’s no news that positive word-of-mouth recommendations can help you reach new audiences and improve your brand reputation.

Enhance Customer Retention

Customer retention is critical because it will cost you more to acquire a new customer than it would to retain existing ones, and product knowledge plays an important role in improving customer retention. Customer service professionals equipped with a deep understanding of the product can proactively address and resolve issues.

Due to better product knowledge, your customer service team can provide personalized support or help tailored to each customer’s needs. Addressing these individual concerns and offering unique solutions for customers’ circumstances makes them feel more valued and prioritized. This, in turn, reduces churn and increases customer retention.

Increase Your Upsells

Product knowledge is critical in providing good opportunities for customer service professionals to cross-sell or upsell complementary products. They can recognize when an additional offering will benefit customers and suggest it to them. This way, they can start conversations about these complementary services and products that align properly with the customer’s needs.

Upselling also increases customer engagement because they can see more value in your brand and products. Sound product knowledge implies that customer service personnel can leverage trust and contribute to business growth through upselling.

Increased Efficiency and Effectiveness

Exceptional customer service stems from effectiveness and efficiency. To achieve these goals, you need product knowledge, which helps service representatives offer solutions or information with precision. Comprehensive product knowledge helps your customer service team identify the root of customer problems swiftly, which reduces customer wait time and improves efficiency.

Also, in-depth product knowledge helps streamline support processes to anticipate likely customer questions and create resources such as troubleshooting guides, scripts, and templates in advance. This approach leads to smoother customer conversations and effective service delivery instead of inaccurate information and improvisation.

The Negative Consequences of Inadequate Product Knowledge

Inadequate product knowledge has more than a few adverse effects. When customer service professionals lack the proper understanding of a product’s features, details, benefits, and uses, they will struggle to address issues and other customer inquiries. Let’s explore some of the negative effects of inadequate product knowledge.

Frustrated Customer and Lost Sales

One of the consequences of inadequate product knowledge in the customer service team is customer frustration. It’s typical for customers to expect accurate information and timely solutions from service representatives.

However, when they don’t have enough knowledge of the product, they fumble through interactions and cannot provide adequate guidance. This only compounds the customer’s issues, leading to dissatisfied, unheard, and frustrated customers.

Frustrated customers mostly translate to reduced sales opportunities or lost sales because how a customer feels about your company affects their purchasing decision. Offering subpar support due to poor product knowledge makes customers less interested in the company, negatively impacting business growth.

Also, Check out our article on product knowledge for sales

Damage to the Company’s Reputation

A company’s reputation is arguably its most valued asset for various reasons. Its sales are hinged on it, as is the customer’s level of trust in the brand. Inadequate product knowledge can severely damage a company’s reputation.

When customers are fed incomplete or incorrect information from customer service representatives, it negatively affects their trust in your company. It presents the company as unreliable, and this perception is bound to spread easily, especially in today’s digital age.

The Risk of Compliance and Legal Issues

Strict regulations govern different industries to ensure consumer safety and product efficacy. Poor product knowledge can lead to serious compliance and legal risks. When your customer service team doesn’t have comprehensive product knowledge, they may provide incorrect information regarding safety precautions, product usage, and warranties.

Due to this wrong information, customers may use the product incorrectly, or it may lead to more issues, which can cause some legal problems for the company.

How to Improve Product Knowledge for Customer Service Professionals

Improving product knowledge for your customer service team helps position you to deliver remarkable support to customers. Start by establishing training programs that contain comprehensive product details.

Here are some helpful strategies to ensure your customer service representatives are well-equipped with deep product knowledge.

Establish Training Programs and Standards

One of the ways to arm your customer service team properly is to develop extensive product training programs and establish standards for customer service knowledge. This can include adding product documentation to your customer service training manual to help service representatives learn about product features, usage, and benefits from the onboarding process.

Also, regular training programs instead of one-off events will ensure that customer service team members are well-versed and informed about product changes and updates.

Standards also ensure a consistent framework for knowledge acquisition. This implies that in the company, every service representative must have a level of proficiency and understanding of product features, troubleshooting, and usage. These standards will become a yardstick for evaluating knowledge and measuring the performance of customer service team members.

Utilize a Knowledge Base or Repository of Information

Creating and maintaining a central knowledge base or repository containing product information is another strategic approach to improving product knowledge for your customer service team. This resource is a major hub where detailed product documentation, troubleshooting guides, and other information are readily accessible.

With an updated knowledge base or information repositories, service representatives can respond to inquiries and customer issues precisely. This way, they can avoid time-consuming research and minimize the chances of giving out incorrect information.

It also empowers customer service professionals to be more self-reliant. They can analyze queries and customer concerns without constantly needing supervision.

Document360 allows you to store all your product documentation, FAQs, tutorials, and other knowledge resources in one central location. This ensures that all information is easily accessible and up-to-date.

Spend Time with Product Teams to Understand Features/Benefits/Uses

Direct interactions with product team members are essential in getting firsthand insights about product use cases, features, and benefits. This direct communication facilitates an in-depth exploration of the intricacies and functionality of the product.

Customer service representatives can provide users with more accurate and detailed information by collaborating with subject matter experts responsible for both the development and product design. This goes beyond what’s available in the product documentation and user manuals.

Gather Customer Feedback

Another fundamental practice that helps improve product knowledge for customer service professionals is gathering customer feedback. This involves getting insights and inputs from customers about their concerns, experiences, and questions relating to the products. Direct feedback is a valuable source of information that can point service representatives in the right direction regarding areas in which they need improvement.

When you seek customer suggestions and feedback, you follow a customer-centric approach that helps the team give more accurate information. It also shows your commitment to customer satisfaction.

Quantitative Vs. Qualitative Analysis of Customer Tickets

There are two forms of analyzing your customer tickets, and these include qualitative and quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis investigates customer interaction to understand customer sentiments, the type of queries, and the accuracy of the information given.

Quantitative analysis, on the other hand, accesses data metrics, including ticket volumes, rate of query resolution, and response time. Both methods help the customer service professional understand customer needs and highlight areas that require attention.

Prepare for Practice Demos

It’s important to stimulate real customer interactions and scenarios to enable customer service professionals to improve their methods and ability to communicate product information. Practice demos provide a hands-on approach that helps service representatives strengthen their product knowledge.

They gain more practical experience handling troubleshooting queries and customer inquiries and providing appropriate solutions. Members of the customer service team can improve their communication skills.

What is product knowledge?

Imagine stepping into a store where you want to purchase computer hardware but have questions about the available product. Unfortunately, the sales rep doesn’t have an answer to any of your queries, and it’s possible you know more about computer hardware than they do. How would you feel about such an interaction?
The blatant display of poor knowledge about the products in that store would be customer experience. Now imagine that the reverse was the case and the sales rep answers all your questions convincingly enough to help you make the best decision for that moment.

This comprehensive response about the product in real-time and with much confidence discussing it in detail shows that they genuinely care about customer satisfaction. This is what product knowledge entails. Product knowledge is all about understanding everything there is to know about a product, from use cases to benefits and features. Every member of a sales team should have this. Anyone who needs to interact with investors or customers should have this skill. It can determine how much profit the business makes.

Types of Product Knowledge

Product knowledge encompasses different types, and here’s a look at them.

Price/ROI

Sales team members should understand the cost implications of their products and the return on investment (ROI) for customers. Customers will want to know if buying a product will be worth it, as the amount of value derived from the product will help justify the amount spent on it. Customers are often looking for products or solutions that provide a positive ROI. By discussing the cost and potential ROI, the salesperson shows that they understand the customer’s objectives and can help them achieve a favorable outcome..”

Customization

The power of a sales rep is in how much they can sell successfully. A successful sale hinges on how well you can make customers understand how well the product fits their vision and expectations. Research findings (McKinsey) indicate that embracing personalization frequently leads to a 10% to 15% revenue boost. The actual increase in revenue varies from one company to another, typically ranging from 5% to 25%, and this variance depends on factors such as the industry and the company’s proficiency in leveraging data to enhance customer understanding and closeness.
A customer-centric approach means the sales rep is trained on how products are customized for certain customer situations. Therefore, no matter what product you’re selling, you should understand how it can work for a diverse category of customers, whether individuals or businesses.

How to use it

If the sales rep needs help understanding how to use a product or how it works, how can they convey this information successfully to customers? Therefore, sales teams should be armed with ample information, including examples and case studies, on the step-by-step use of products. A sales rep for a car company should have information on the level of car sales within a specific region and the typical longevity of the cars before there’s a need for replacement.

Features

You need to understand the features of a product or service to discuss it convincingly or answer any questions from potential customers. That’s pretty much just you shooting in the dark. Every sales rep should be able to answer basic questions about their products.

If you’re a sales rep for a company that owns a booking app, you should have answers to questions like, “Can I incorporate live video interviews into the booking app?” or “Does your booking app offer reporting and analytics?” If you don’t have the answers to these basic technical questions, there’s a high chance you won’t be closing that sale.

Finding questions or support

Sales reps should help guide customers toward getting the correct answers to their questions. This also includes providing support when they need assistance or clarification on issues. Therefore, this type of product knowledge for the sales team aims to find answers to questions and provide all-round support to prospective and long-term customers.

Product road mapping

How well is the sales rep keyed into the lifecycle of the products? Sales reps need to be fully aware of the product’s evolution over the next few months or even as long as a year. Therefore, your sales team should know if you have a new product on the way and then mention this to customers to keep them as engaged as possible.

Also Read: Knowledge mapping within Knowledge management

Importance of public documentation in the digital age

In this digital age, you can’t underestimate the power of public documentation. With several Knowledge base solutions available, you can create valuable information that reaches a global audience within a record time.

Sharing important information that’s not limited by geographical location has impressive benefits. These include enhanced customer experiences, an opportunity to continuously improve products and services, efficient communication, and encouragement of knowledge sharing.

Unveiling HR Management: A Strategic Approach

Did you know that 58% of new hires who go under a structured onboarding program are more likely to stay with the organization even after completing three years?

As astounding as this sounds, a lot of organizations fail to reach this retention rate. Understand that onboarding is a crucial milestone for new employees. This is where they learn about the organization, their role, and how they will contribute to the existing process. If an organization fails to communicate these aspects during the onboarding stage, employees are likely to feel less interested and ultimately leave.

With a human resource management approach, you can streamline the onboarding process and ensure that there is less attrition and an improved retention rate. But that’s not all HRM helps your organization with.

HRM simplifies and streamlines the recruitment and hiring process for the organization. Other than that, it helps the HR department plan and execute a training program for new hires that educates them about their roles and responsibilities at the organization.

However, a strategic human resource management approach takes these efforts to the next level. SHRM helps you attract the right talent, hire promising candidates, streamline the development process, and even helps you create competency-based reward plans for employees.

The reason why it is gaining more base among HR leaders is because this approach helps the company bring together all the employees and help them work as one unit. That means every works towards one objective. And when everyone works towards one objective, the results are likely to be positive for the organization. The success rate increases drastically.

With the SHRM approach, you can monitor and analyze the performance of each employee. Moreover, SHRM helps your organization with:

• • Identifying the growing need for a new workforce at the office that meets the changing demands of the competitive market
  • Building short-term and long-term goals for organizational growth and success
  • Enhancing the existing work operations and processes to capture the best employee output
  • Ensuring that the company adheres to all the rules and regulations as per government laws
  • Identifying the ever-evolving technological shift in the market and bringing in the right set of tools that enhance employee productivity

Due to these and many other reasons, SHRM is becoming a crucial approach that organizations must adopt in the workplace.

The Significance of HR Knowledge Management

Crucial research from Deloitte states that:

75% of organizations agreed that creating and preserving knowledge across their evolving workforces was important for their success over the next 12 months. However, less than 10% felt their current knowledge management system was up to the job.

If you are not in that less than 10% of companies who feel their knowledge management system has documented everything for the employees, it is time you start now. With HRM in place, several processes and information must be documented for employees, managers, admin staff, and even for the HR team.
With a knowledge management system in place, you can ensure:

HRs become more productive

Your employees can have multiple questions about absenteeism policy, compensation and benefits, key performance indicators, roster management, and others. And these questions can occupy a significant amount of productive time from an HR’s routine.

But with the knowledge management system, you can ensure that questions around different policies and concerns are covered so that employees can refer to the self-service solution and get answers faster. As an outcome, you can ensure that HRs are taking part in admin activities and remain productive at work.

A holistic repository for all

With an HR knowledge management system, you ensure that all the information around employee hiring, employee onboarding, and lifecycle are documented in one place. Neither HRs nor employees have to delve into multiple sources to extract information. This all-in-one repository can help everyone find the required process data in one place.

Smooth optimization of current knowledge

Using the right HR knowledge management system from the start, you can ensure that all the articles around employee payroll policy and benefits stay updated regularly. Tools like Document360 will allow you to update and track all the changes made to the articles. You can also revert the changes if your company plans to avoid any policy updates. That means everyone in the organization gets access to the latest information on rules, regulations, and company policies.

Other than these benefits, there are other critical applications of HR knowledge management that one must know of. Let’s explore them in the following section.

Critical Applications of HR Knowledge Management

Tailored Access Control and Customized Permissions

Only some can access your HR knowledge management system at work. Only those with access control and permissions can change to the existing articles in the system.

Tools like Document360 help you provide customized permissions for team members who can edit or write knowledge repository articles.

With the Access Permission option, you can keep track of all the people who are able to make changes to the current repository. You can also track who all have portal roles and content roles. 

Enhancing Employee Onboarding

58% of organizations confirmed that their onboarding program is mostly focused on getting the paperwork done and giving a brief idea of the processes at work.

But we all know that an onboarding process encapsulates more than this.

From completing the paperwork to meeting all the other team members and managers in person, there is a lot more that one needs to cover during the onboarding period. Sometimes it can go on for days.

However, a knowledge management system can summarize and detail all the activities new hires must look forward to during their onboarding period. And if you have a knowledge management tool like Document360, it can become more detailed for all the users.

You can add a TOC that helps new hires systematically complete their onboarding. You can even add a video from the founder so that new hires get to understand the vision and mission statement of the company.

Including such minute details in the documentation ensures that the onboarding process gets enhanced yet simplified for new employees.

Curbing Redundant Efforts

No more answering the same questions multiple times when you have HR knowledge management in place. You can help your HRs avoid repeating themselves to different employees for the same worries. All employees must do is visit the self-service repository and search for answers to their concerns about company policies.

Documentation tools like Document360 help users find answers to common questions with their search bar functionality. Users will find the search bar on the home page and across the repository articles. If they have subsequent questions, they can search for an answer using a relevant search term.

Users also get the option to conduct an advanced search if they are looking for some answers in particular. You can add filters like categories or tags to find more relevant information faster. This in return saves time for both the HR and employees.

Mitigating Errors

Want to ensure that no information gets miscommunicated to employees?

If it’s a yes, you need to focus on building clear documentation consistently. If you have any new updates, add them to the existing articles in the knowledge management system. Create new articles in advance if you plan to roll out new rules and regulations. This will help you educate employees at an organizational level and avoid explaining them one by one.

This approach will allow you to avoid mistakes while sharing information with employees and keep everyone on the same page regarding company policies and regulations.

Informed Decision-Making

From identifying possible issues with the current policies to potential risks that may lead to attrition, a knowledge management system can help you do it all. It is not just a repository that offers information to everyone in the company about various policies.

An HR knowledge management system also lets you understand how many employees have frequently accessed the repository to find answers. You can narrow down the common queries and accordingly create in-depth articles or revamp the existing ones to cater to such queries.

Standardizing Processes

Help all your employees find the same answer to the same question. Rather than creating multiple sources of information, it would be best to maintain one repository that offers answers to all the questions. This way there won’t be any discrepancies in knowledge distribution.

All you have to do is share the link to the internal wiki with the employees during the onboarding process. This will ensure that they always go back to the same source of information in case they have other questions.

Enhancing Employee Experience

Faster answers to questions result in satisfied employees.

Employees like it when the companies are transparent about their policies and offer detailed answers to their questions. From avoiding the wait time to ensuring they too have understood the policies from scratch, employees end up becoming more productive and build positive feelings for their workplace. This encourages them to stay engaged with the team and other organization activities.

Enhancing Knowledge Management in HRM

We’ve understood the growing yet crucial role of knowledge management in HRM. It is safe to say that we cannot rule out the implementation of knowledge management to further enhance the performance of the HRM process at your organization.

But how can one enhance the existing HRM knowledge management system to reap more benefits?

Here are four practices one can adopt to strengthen the role of knowledge management in HRM.

Ensure HR data is not siloed

Your first step towards building a solid knowledge management system is to ensure that the data never gets old. Your role doesn’t end once you create KMS for your employees. You need to ensure that it gets updated regularly in case new policies get introduced or there are new updates to the existing ones.

This way you can ensure that employees stay up-to-date on upcoming or recently introduced policies of the organization. This practice helps you build trust in employees towards the organization and increases loyalty.

Integrating Knowledge Capture into Talent Management

Captivate the expectations of team managers around all the positions to understand what roles and responsibilities do they see each team member performing once hired. This way the information is coming from a credited source. What’s more, the employees will also stay on the same page as their manager and accordingly perform their roles.

But that’s not all you can do in terms of knowledge capture.

As HRs, you can also capture all the latest information from employees and add them to the knowledge management system. In case the existing resource leaves the company, the new resource can go back to the data captured in the KMS and seamlessly start the work process where it was left off.

Optimizing Internal Communications for Knowledge Management

Another best practice you must adhere to is streamlining the communications for knowledge management. One, decide who will be responsible for building and maintaining the HR knowledge management system at your organization. This way, you can avoid any miscommunication and ensure the right data is added to the repository.

Two, ensure that all the authorized writers, editors, and admins have customized access to the knowledge repository. That means they can only perform certain tasks that are added under their role.

And three, ensure that they get to collaborate while building the repository to avoid confusion or miscommunication. Document360 serves as a collaboration tool with other team members working on the repository through private notes.

These private notes help you make sure that information is verified and added to the repository. What’s more, you can make private notes accessible in the WYSIWYG editor as well.

Cultivating a Knowledge Management Culture

Document every change whenever it takes place to ensure you build a knowledge management culture at the workplace. But to make this happen, you need to create a plan for knowledge management and how it needs to be executed.

Other than that, factors like channels should be sorted out. With the right channels, you can take the internal wiki live and decide how employees can find it whenever they have a question. You must also work on a workflow for the knowledge management system to ensure it doesn’t get outdated and can be updated whenever new information gets added.

With these four best practices, you can enhance knowledge management in HRM.

Implementing Actionable HR Knowledge Management

While the understanding of enhancing the existing HR knowledge management is clear, we have yet to assess how to implement an actionable KMS from scratch.

Here’s how you can go about it in quick and easy phases.

Phase 1: Ideation

Choose the themes you want to cover in your HR knowledge management. This can include covering questions from payroll, leave policy, and roles and responsibilities for various positions in the company to talent management and acquisition. You can also collect employee feedback to understand what possible queries they will most likely seek answers for. This will help you collate more topics to be added to the repository.

Phase 2: Creation & Publishing

Once you’ve identified the possible subjects you’ll give answers to, your next step would be to create and publish the knowledge management. First, you need to develop a detailed TOC where you have identified topics and sub-topics you plan to write articles.

It may look like this:

1. Leave Policy

• • Sick Leave
  • Paid Leave
  • Non-paid Leave
  • Floating Holidays
  • Marriage Leave
  • Maternity Leave
  • Paternity Leave
  • Bereavement Leave

2. Wellness & Employee Benefits

• • Bonus Structure
  • Health Care Benefits
  • Work From Home/Flexible Work Conditions
  • Stock Option Plans

And the list can go on. You can create different articles that will answer these questions rather than adding the information for all the sub-sections in one article. You can also add examples to help employees understand how these benefits or leave policies can be availed. A quick video from the HR team explaining each benefit will make the articles more engaging for employees.

Once ready, you can take your repository live using a knowledge management system like Document360.

Phase 3: Monitor Performance & Upgrade

This is an ongoing final phase of implementing an actionable HR knowledge management system for your business. This is where you need to track:

• • How many employees have used the repository?
  • Which articles are the most commonly read among employees?
  • Which articles have the highest bounce rate?
  • What is the average rating left by employees for each article?
  • How many terms qualify as highly searched keywords?

Tools like Document360 allow their users to add the feedback option to each article to see if readers found them useful or not.

Based on the feedback collected, you can identify possible areas where your knowledge management can be upgraded for a better experience. You can update your existing articles or use the highly searched terms in the search section to identify new topics that answer employee questions.

In these three phases, you can implement a successful HR knowledge management system for your organization.

Overview of Knowledge Management

According to Tom Davenport, 1994:

“Knowledge Management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge.”

This is KM’s original definition; a lot has remained the same. You may be surprised to hear that e-commerce businesses can benefit from Knowledge Management. Still, any organization that better manages its resources is in a stronger position to succeed.

Knowledge can be about customers, about products, or about the organization itself. When you take charge of your knowledge, you treat it as a valuable asset in the same way you would your human resources or your intellectual property.

There are three main types of knowledge that you will come across in Knowledge Management:

Tacit knowledge

Tacit knowledge is the knowledge that is embedded in your employees’ heads, such as the best way to approach an upset customer. It may be hard to quantify and share, but it is bound up in the skills and experiences of your most knowledgeable team members.

Explicit knowledge

Explicit knowledge can be easily codified and communicated, such as the data concerning the exact number of sunglasses your customers buy within a given period. This knowledge is relatively easy to interpret or share and usually concerns data or text within the organization.

Implicit knowledge

Implicit knowledge is similar to tacit knowledge except that it is more easily codified – it concerns the nature of an organization’s processes and has yet to be made explicit. Implicit knowledge is made up of information that employees already know but hasn’t fully articulated in a way to make it worthwhile.

Benefits of Knowledge Management in the E-commerce Industry

Customers buy products for many reasons, primarily for a delightful customer experience. The benefit of Knowledge Management is to improve CX in many ways, from enhancing the support quality to reducing operational costs, which can result in the budget being reinvested back into the customer.

Enhanced Customer Support

When you have more profound insight into customer behavior, needs and wants, this results in enhanced customer support because can better able to provide customers with the experiences they are looking for. You can offer support across the customer’s preferred channels and access personal information about the customer, which results in personalized support.

Improved Product Knowledge

Knowledge Management helps you improve product knowledge both within your team and among your customer base. If customers inquire about the best type of running shoe, your representatives have access to the relevant expertise to provide a coherent, insightful, and helpful answer.

Reduced Operational Costs

When you’re not making the same mistakes repeatedly because you have some record of past decisions, this can reduce operational costs and allow you to reinvest back into the customer experience. Knowledge Management enables you to stop wasting money on initiatives that won’t work and refocuses your attention on those winning strategies that convert more customers.

Increased Customer Base and Retention Rate

Customers who feel cared about and understood by your business are more likely to be retained over time. It’s critical to store customer knowledge and make it easily accessible by those team members responsible for making decisions that impact the customer experience.

Improved Efficiency in E-Commerce Platforms and Systems

Removing redundancies from your e-commerce business improves efficiency among your platforms and systems. When you use your knowledge better, these systems are operating at total capacity since they provide you with essential insight into customers and the products they are buying.

Challenges of Implementing Knowledge Management in the E-commerce Industry

Although there are numerous benefits to using Knowledge Management principles in the e-commerce industry, there are also some challenges you might struggle to overcome.

Data Complexity and Volume

As online businesses, the sheer complexity and volume of data within the e-commerce industry may result in a struggle to obtain useful insights. You certainly know a lot about your customers, but what are the most important areas to focus on? You need dedicated experts to manage your data and help you turn it into knowledge.

Information Silos

Teams within your company may work within their silos and fail to share knowledge adequately across the organization. One knowledge project in an area of your organization may be duplicated by unsuspecting team members, which is a terrible waste of resources.

Knowledge Capture and Documentation

The knowledge may exist within your organization, but it’s hard to capture and document, maybe because no one knows whose responsibility it is. Knowledge slips through your fingers, and valuable opportunities to gain insight into your customers are lost because expertise isn’t documented. Proper application of KM principles has not occurred in your e-commerce business.

Change Management and Adoption

It may be hard for your team members to adapt to new ways of working as they need help implementing Knowledge Management principles into their daily practice. Taking time out to document their knowledge is something that employees may find hard at first because they only reap the benefits in the long term.

Technology Infrastructure

With the right technologies to implement your change management, Knowledge Management in your e-commerce business will succeed. For example, organizations can benefit from a dedicated knowledge base tool to help them capture and share their knowledge among their internal team or external customers, with the ability to control access dependent on the audience.

Use Cases of Knowledge Management in E-commerce

Here are some common use cases of Knowledge Management in the e-commerce industry.

1. Customer Support and Self-Service

As we’ve already mentioned, Knowledge Management can be very valuable in customer support for e-commerce businesses. KM allows you to provide tailored experiences for customers, even using automated self-service materials to help customers without the intervention of a human agent.

Documenting product knowledge lets you offer customers a self-service knowledge base that answers all their questions, including inquiries about important topics such as deliveries or returns.

Also, Check out our article on Product knowledge in Customer service

2. Product Information Management

Customers browsing your e-commerce site want to know as much as possible about the different products you have available. Making this knowledge accessible and explicit wins you more customers as customers don’t have to contact your team to learn more about particular products.

Giving your team internal access to even more detailed information about products is also important so they can become experts in your inventory. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable employees are key to great customer support experiences.

3. Employee Onboarding and Training

When you document your knowledge, new employees can be onboarded and trained more effectively. Knowledge about customers, processes, products, and more can be easily shared when employees have access to an internal knowledge base. Employees are more productive overall when they can find the answers they seek.

Policies and procedures that are documented mean that new hires can get up to speed much more quickly, assured that they are following the organization’s ways of working. Customers benefit from a more consistent experience when employees work from the same playbook.

4. Marketing and Personalization

Targeting products for your customers becomes much easier when you use Knowledge Management. Customers’ browsing and buying history can be used to inform marketing strategies and tailor deals that could incentivize them to buy since not all customers are quite the same.

By using customer profiling, you can increase the chances that your message will reach its intended target. You can offer customers discounts on related products to increase the share of wallet and therefore boost overall revenue. Better marketing campaigns decrease marketing costs and improve ROI for your strategy.

5. Inventory and Supply Chain Management

Knowledge Management means keeping track of the trends in your customers’ buying habits and, therefore, better managing inventory. You can ensure that you are less likely to run out of stock when you know customers are buying more barbecues for the summer months, for example.

Equally, you don’t want to overstock items that will have low uptake during certain periods. Making good use of your available inventory is key to running a successful e-commerce business, and ensuring that you can adequately serve your customers with the products they want to buy.

6. Competitive Intelligence and Market Research

Using your knowledge about your competitors and the state of the market will help you stay ahead of the curve. Knowing what your competitors are doing well will enable you to outcompete and offer customers a superior experience through budget-friendly prices or a more comprehensive range of products.

Differentiating your brand is critical to Knowledge Management since you can implement this knowledge throughout your organization. Stimulating fresh ideas is also more possible when employees have access to the latest research, helping you build upon past successes to attract more customers to your brand.

Realtime Examples of Knowledge Management in E-commerce

You can take inspiration from these examples of Knowledge Management in e-commerce companies.

Koorong

    

First, take a look at Koorong’s help pages, which is an e-commerce brand selling Bible and Christian-related products in Australia. They are also a Document360 customer, and they have used our very own knowledge base software to create this help site serving their customers. Koorong has created content relating to deliveries, ordering, and customer accounts, as well as pricing policy and about pages.

If you dig a little deeper, you can find Koorong’s articles and obtain detailed information on any customer-related aspect of their e-commerce business. Page layouts are clear and concise, while colors are used to draw attention to different elements of the page. The date of the article update is included, as well as the length of time to read the content.

Shein

Shein is another e-commerce brand that sells modestly-priced fashion for women and men. Naturally, customers ordering their products are likely to have questions so Shein provides a help center to supply answers.

There is a clean layout to the page, information is laid out in a clear table, and customers are never far away from returning to Shein’s e-commerce store. Shein knows that customers want information directly relating to their order, and avoids distracting customers with their help center.

Temu

Temu is a lifestyle e-commerce company that supplies affordable items to customers all around the world. Their Knowledge Management system is straight to the point and enables customers to track existing orders.

Temu offers bitesize help topics to enable customers to troubleshoot common questions themselves. Individual articles can be rated by customers depending on how helpful it has been.

Benefits of Implementing a Knowledge Management Strategy

With a successful knowledge management plan, you can reap multiple benefits for your organization. We’ve listed a few below to help you understand their growing importance.

Improves awareness of roles and responsibilities:

With an internal knowledge base, you can ensure that all your employees are aware of all their roles and responsibilities. Your HRs and managers can avoid answering repetitive answers around the same.

Secures ideas for the future:

It becomes a repository of ideas that your product team members can always go back to. Team members can store their ideas around your product as and when they come and share them with the organization.

Helps support team members become productive:

Your customer-facing teams, such as support and success teams, can benefit from a well-developed knowledge management system. They can find answers to common questions and focus on more daunting queries.

Encourages prospects to know your product better:

You can build a knowledge base for prospects to consider your brand. It will help them understand the number of features you offer and whether it matches their functionality needs or not.

Promotes collaboration within and across teams:

While knowledge sharing is the primary benefit of a knowledge management strategy, that promotes collaboration. Employees can update the existing information in the repository and ask other team members to pitch in as well. They can drop in comments to help others rectify the articles or internal documentation.

These benefits are quite encouraging for one to build and implement a successful knowledge management strategy at their organization. But before you dive right into the strategy development process, let’s take a look at the top 10 methods used for building KM strategy.

Read More: 7 Knowledge Management Challenges and Solutions

Top 10 Methods of Knowledge Management Strategies

You may wonder, “Why stress on methods for KM strategies?”

They’ll help you collate data from various teams or departments and even upscale employee productivity. That’s why you can skip directly to the steps of developing a KM strategy. You’ll have to follow through with these methods to ensure everything aligns with the strategy in the first place. Here’s a list of our top 10 methods to direct you in the right direction.

1. Incentive plans

Want to encourage your employees to offer that extra effort every time?

Build an incentive plan that includes rewards or better steps for recognizing their efforts for taking the right knowledge management actions at the organization.

2. Promote networking

We can all agree to the fact that collaboration is becoming the bread and butter of a thriving workplace.

Whether it is collaborating within the team or externally with other departments, it helps each employee brainstorm better ideas that benefit the organization. These benefits skyrocket when employees decide to collaborate with industry experts on social platforms—such collaboration results in innovative ideas that improve the product and brand visibility to a large extent.

3. Invest in Knowledge repositories

All the intelligence gathered needs to be stored and categorized in a way that it becomes accessible to the right audience.

How do you make that happen?

Just onboard knowledge management software.

Even studies claim that more than 50% of companies offering web or mobile self-service have seen an increase in their website traffic. And so can you.

4. Assist and analyze

You’ve got all your organization or product-related information in one place – within your knowledge management portal.

That’s great!

But you can’t just use it for reference. Use the same repository to assist you in finding better facts or identifying solutions to an existing problem. Identify where your product lacks post-data analysis. You are likely to find areas where your product lacks and identify how that can be rectified.

5. Codification

You have intellectual property at hand that can benefit both customers and employees. But you’ve got to make it visible so it’s found easily in challenging times.

Here’s what you can do to make your articles visible to those in need:

• • • Add a search bar to your repository so people find relevant information faster
    • Add relevant tags that help users reach the desired article hassle-free
    • Create SEO-optimized articles using metatags like titles, descriptions, and alt-tags

Such codification will help you make the necessary information accessible to the audience.

6. Publicize

Let people know that you have a repository such as this in place. They can refer to it before reaching out to your support team or HRs at the organization.

How do you make that happen?

Here’s what you can do to promote your internal documentation system:

• • • Send out an email with a link to the repository
    • Make it accessible in the employee portal
    • Inform employees about it during orientation

Here’s what you can do to promote your external documentation system:

• • • Add a direct link to the repository in your website’s navigation bar
    • Make your articles SEO-optimized so they appear during normal search
    • Share the repository link via email with existing customers

7. Make inventions

Help your employees voice their ideas to bring the right inventions to life at your organization.

Encourage them to participate in brainstorming sessions. Even if their ideas aren’t feasible at the moment, don’t let them feel as if their idea is bad or they didn’t make a better effort. Explain the technical side of their idea so they know why it’s not possible to implement it right away.

Try to recognize employees in group chats when they share new ideas. This will set the right example among others and encourage them to voice their ideas as well.

8. Put into action

With the right ideas for invention in place, you can decide how they need to be put into action. Decide on a timeline for the planning and execution phase of the ideas. Loop in other teams to see how the idea will fill in the existing gaps in your product or work process. This way, the execution of the idea will take place seamlessly.

9. Develop demand-driven KM

Don’t just document what you feel is essential for your employees or customers. Build a knowledge management system that meets the existing demands and resolves never-ending common questions from your target audience.

10. Enhance

Never stop at building the first version of your knowledge management platform.

It needs to be upgraded every now and then so that your target audience finds the right information hassle-free. Find the common queries on a quarterly basis and identify the scope of their articles. When creating their articles, ask yourself the following questions:

• • • How much information needs to be added?
    • What should be excluded?
    • Can it fit into an existing article, or needs a standalone piece?

Based on these tried and tested methods, you can guarantee complete knowledge management in place.

What Are the Essential Components of a KMS?

While we are clear on what methods can prove to be beneficial for knowledge management strategy, we are yet to explore its essential components. Let’s take a look at them in this section.

1. People

One of the first components that you need to get right for your knowledge management plan is the people working on it.

You need to decide:

• • • Who will be responsible for documenting the information in the repository?
    • How many individuals can work on getting the information right in an article at a time?
    • Who gets to build strategies on knowledge sharing with the target audience?

Based on the answers to each of these questions, you’ll get to decide on the right people who get to work with the repository regularly.

2. Methodologies

Another crucial component of KM strategy is methodologies. From research to finishing each article, each stage needs to be taken care of using a specific methodology. You need to ensure that every member involved with the knowledge management process is well aware of the chosen methodology to avoid mistakes.

3. Explicit content

Avoid writing confusing content that makes information inaccessible to everyone. Your content needs to be direct and answer questions like:

• • • What?
    • Why?
    • How?

This will help you build a more approachable repository for people seeking answers or ideas for product innovation.

4. Ideology

Stick to one ideology around building your knowledge management platform.

If you plan to build an internal KM platform, make sure it answers all the questions that employees may have regarding their employment or job role.

But if you plan to create an external repository that is used exclusively by your customers, ensure to answer all the questions about your product and its functionalities. Avoid deviation at all costs.

5. Technology

Adopting the best knowledge management software is a crucial component of this process. Select one that gives you the freedom to build both internal and external repositories.

What’s more, it should also help you assign roles, add functionalities like a search bar and integrate with other platforms for improved performance.

Steps Involved in Developing a Knowledge Management Strategy

With methods and components in place, we are ready to explore the top 6 steps that are involved in the development process of knowledge management strategy. Let’s dive in!

1. Identify your goals and objectives

Understand what end goal you plan to achieve with this knowledge management platform in place.

With the help of other colleagues, identify what organizational difficulties you plan to resolve with this repository and how it can be made viable in the long run.

2. Perform a knowledge audit

With your goals in place, you can move forward to the next step which is performing a knowledge audit and identifying possible gaps that this repository can fill. If you lack collaboration during the information-sharing process, use this strategy to bridge that gap and involve every employee so they stay up-to-date on every piece of information.

Similarly, for example, you can perform an audit to identify the knowledge gap among customers around your product and its services. Based on that, you can identify possible questions that customers may ask frequently and build a knowledge repository accordingly.

3. Analyze business value and prioritize opportunities

Once your audit is done, your next step is to analyze the business value and prioritize opportunities. For this, you need to identify the value your KM strategy brings to your business and what type of opportunities it brings to the table.

For example, if you plan to create an external knowledge management platform, understand how it can turn out to be a marketing and sales asset along with a support resource for existing customers. By doing so, you prioritize its value for your business.

4. Prepare a Knowledge management framework

With the value out in the clear, it is time to create a knowledge management framework. This framework will be inclusive of the following:

• • • Ways to procure the information
    • Ways to validate the information collected
    • How it needs to be documented (set a template)
    • Who will be responsible for updating it regularly
    • Who will access the information (customers or employees)

These components will help you create a standard framework that employees can follow through and maintain the quality of the knowledge management platform.

5. Pick a knowledge management tool

You’ve sorted all the information collected, so it is time to add it to a platform that makes it more presentable. Use a knowledge management tool to make the collected information accessible to the target audience.

Knowledge management tools like Document360 will help you:

• • Document the information and allow you to make it accessible with its search bar and tag features
  • Add multimedia files such as videos, images, GIFs, and more to make the articles look more polished and self-explanatory
  • Secure the information stored using features like IP restrictions, SSO, security groups, and more!

6. Develop and share an action plan

Got the right information? Check

Have a knowledge management tool? Check

Now, time to develop and share an action plan on how the knowledge management platform needs to be updated on a regular basis. Understand how often the platform needs to be updated with new information. Identify ways to avoid knowledge gaps, such as updating an article when feature upgrades take place or when more search queries for common questions add up in the repository.

Best Practices of KMS

By far, we’ve covered methods, components, and steps to develop a knowledge management strategy. But now it is time to identify and reflect on the best practices. Let’s explore a few briefly.

• • Build awareness across the organization for all types of knowledge that is available to date.
  • Discuss the future plans for your organization around this strategy. Share your current position as a business and where you see yourself going in the future. Once you share your aspirations, discuss various ways to measure your goals.
  • Explore various ideas on bringing in new suggestions from every employee and how they’ll be rewarded for adding more value to the organization.
  • Identify the right sources who can help you expand this initiative and its implementation.

With these best practices, you’ll successfully build and implement your knowledge management strategy hassle-free.