The KM comeback: How IT leaders can optimize a knowledge-driven business future

Knowledge management (KM) -- a concept first established in the 1980s -- is now witnessing both a rapid comeback and a transformation. A perfect storm of factors is contributing to these trends, including the shift to remote and hybrid work; dramatic changes in customer and employee perceptions; "The Great Resignation" that took place in 2021 and the wave of tech company layoffs that followed it; and most notably, the continued explosion in the amount of unstructured content -- scattered across a growing number of siloed applications.

Knowledge Management has made its way back on the CIO agenda as one of the most important initiatives for business resiliency in the years ahead. And, now IT leaders assess how best to implement technologies that discover, cultivate and protect the collective knowledge of an organization and seamlessly disseminate it to employees where and when they need it. This new version of KM promises that the latest technology can help tame content chaos; however, doing that successfully means addressing a number of challenges.

Top KM Challenges   

Application splintering and digital friction: The proliferation of specialized applications -- while designed to achieve efficiencies and optimize workflows -- creates other challenges. As the quest for task efficiency expands, so does the number of apps an employee must learn and use. This "app splintering" exacerbates information silos and creates digital friction through constant app switching, moving from one tool to another to get work done. Today the average knowledge worker accesses up to 40 applications a day, each with their own (often suboptimal) search experience. According to a recent Gartner survey, 44 percent of users made a wrong decision because they were unaware of information that could have helped, and 43 percent of users reported failing to take advantage of important information because of receiving too many notices or the volume of information.

Findability issues:  Remote and hybrid work environments make finding and sharing information more difficult. Research from APQC shows that employees experience confusion over where information is stored, and 45 percent say there are too many disconnected systems. Without physical proximity and spontaneous in-office interactions, employees are less likely to ask for help and guidance, so they are more reliant upon what they already know and whatever is easy to find -- without having to undertake a deep knowledge dive -- from systems they are already familiar with.

Unstructured data explosion: According to research company ITC, the volume of unstructured data is expected to grow from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to 175 zettabytes (or 175 billion terabytes) in 2025. Unstructured data from emails, social media posts, presentations, chats, and collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams and SharePoint are collectively invaluable. If this information isn’t readily findable and accessible, it’s the same as not having it – and organizations miss out on opportunities for competitive advantage. Organizations can’t benefit from simply capturing that content; to put it to use, they must extract value from it, and with so much to process, it must be automated. In other words, they must use technology to automatically classify, sort, analyze, retrieve, and share it with the right people at the right time. 

Loss of institutional knowledge: Staff turnover is not only about losing good talent but also about losing the invaluable tacit knowledge and organizational intelligence that departing employees take with them. Ensuring the right automation and tools align to maximize KM best practices will ensure that information is findable and retrievable, reducing the reliance on what’s stored inside the heads of individual employees.

Practical advice for IT leaders and CIOs

The trend of the past decade has been to move from a "push" model (sharing information via email) to a self-service "pull" model (e.g., visit SharePoint or Salesforce for the latest status). While well-intentioned, this has created content chaos and has simply shifted the burden from wading through emails to bouncing from portal to portal, with no context.

Now, technology is smarter, so look for opportunities to move from pull ("I have to stop what I’m doing to go look for what I need") to the right kind of push -- a synchronous, contextual approach that proactively surfaces insights when and where they’re needed, right in the flow of work.

Leaders are under pressure to deliver maximal success. Here are some target areas that I’d recommend leaders put front-of-mind if they wish to stride into a Knowledge-Driven future.

• Be prepared to make changes to your organizational structure to better support KM. Explore the pros and cons of elevating knowledge and learning services roles within your organization to ensure they get the right focus -- and leadership support. Over the past two decades, the role of Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) came in and out of vogue. Titles aside, the increasing need to address the challenges above is causing CEOs and CIOs to reconsider a strategic leadership role -- CKO or otherwise - to make the most of their corporate knowledge.
• Create a culture of knowledge sharing. A good way to start is a shift in thinking from a closed to an open model. Instead of asking people to share their knowledge, adopt a "share by default" mentality, then let advanced search solutions figure out what’s relevant to the task at hand. Tech and tools, particularly those with AI, can now glean knowledge from content that exists in corporate systems.
• Ensure content management processes and tools facilitate information creation and sharing, without placing a burden on workers to classify, categorize or tag content; instead, automate curation with entity extraction and content analytics. Intelligent search can ensure findability while honoring security and permissions, even across multiple applications.
• Don’t spend time integrating disparate systems and information silos – that’s a losing battle. You’ll have even more apps and information stores tomorrow. Procure smart tools that connect the information contained in different systems, such as intelligent search and knowledge graphs.
• Make collaboration frictionless -- or at least as frictionless as possible -- for those both inside and outside the office. Adopt tools and encourage practices that foster digital and virtual interaction (both synchronously AND asynchronously) to increase knowledge sharing and empower employees to make their best, fully informed contributions.

Knowledge drives innovation. But sadly, with too much content scattered across too many applications, it’s impossible for employees to know and find everything they should to be effective at their jobs. The move to remote work has exacerbated this problem by increasing the reliance on tools for information access. When employees struggle to find what they need across the scattered information landscape, frustration grows, which can increase turnover. Without a strategy to address the difficulty of finding information, it only gets worse as a smaller team must hunt through a myriad of disconnected apps for what they need.

Rightly applying corporate knowledge is the key to sustained competitive advantage. But the trends of information growth, app splintering, and hybrid work aren’t going away. Organizations that leverage their knowledge effectively will own the future. Those that align a knowledge-sharing culture with intelligent KM tools to dynamically harness knowledge in the flow of work will lead the way. 

Image credit: lightsource/depositphotos.com

Jeff Evernham is Vice President of Product Strategy at enterprise search provider, Sinequa. His 30-year career spans data analytics consulting, professional services, sales, and engineering roles at multiple software and management consulting firms. He holds a Master of Engineering degree from MIT.