{"id":54,"date":"2017-10-24T04:22:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T04:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/?p=54"},"modified":"2017-10-24T04:22:45","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T04:22:45","slug":"why-traditional-knowledge-management-doesnt-work-in-the-digital-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/24\/why-traditional-knowledge-management-doesnt-work-in-the-digital-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Traditional Knowledge Management Doesn\u2019t Work in the Digital Age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Knowledge management<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014the efficient handling of information and resources within a commercial organization\u2014is not a new concept in business. In fact, it has been around since the \u201990s. But even as businesses are still trying to get a handle on knowledge management practices, the concepts and processes developed back then are aging to the point of becoming obsolete.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other words, knowledge management as we know it is not destined to survive the digital age. The issue is that digital technology has, far from making management easier, contributed to the explosion of available information.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To survive the digital age, organizations will need to start thinking, instead, in terms of knowledge automation.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proof that Knowledge Management Falters in the Digital Age<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Knowledge management grew out of a realization that large organizations needed to organize their information in a more holistic manner. This meant capturing and retrieving needed information from a variety of sources: databases, documents, policies and procedures, and even the expertise and experience implicit in the practices of individual employees.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This sounds like just the sort of thing that should be easy with cloud technology and better integration tools. But consider:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A typical employee is inundated with information; on average a worker receives <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sciencetech\/article-1355892\/Each-person-inundated-174-newspapers-worth-information-EVERY-DAY.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the equivalent of 174 newspapers worth of information<\/span><\/a> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">every single day<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The average worker <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/industries\/high-tech\/our-insights\/the-social-economy\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">spends approximately 20% of their time locating information<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to help them do their jobs. Sales teams spend one-third of their time searching for information they need to sell; service teams take three times longer than needed to resolve issues because they are searching for information.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That said, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kmworld.com\/Articles\/Editorial\/Features\/The-high-cost-of-not-finding-information-9534.aspx\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">40% of corporate users report<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that they can not find the information they need to do their jobs on their intranets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only 11% of organizations <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.tsia.com\/blog\/top-reasons-knowledge-management-programs-fail\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">have a formal process for capturing \u201cbest practice\u201d and \u201clessons learned\u201d content<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> at the end of each project or engagement.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sales teams fail to use around 80% of the content created by marketing teams, even when that content <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/contentmarketinginstitute.com\/2015\/02\/moneyball-content-sales-team\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is generated specifically for sales enablement<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fortune 500 companies lose roughly $31.5 billion a year <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shrm.org\/hr-today\/news\/hr-magazine\/pages\/0504covstory.aspx\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by failing to share knowledge<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kmworld.com\/Articles\/Editorial\/Features\/The-high-cost-of-not-finding-information-9534.aspx\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One simulation<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> determined that the time spent looking for (but not finding) information could cost a large organization a total of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">$6 million a year<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. That doesn&#8217;t include opportunity costs or the costs of reworking information that exists, but can&#8217;t be located.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Information is everywhere in organizations. But employees are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find just the information they need, when they need it. As the information in an organization grows, this situation gets worse, and management of that information itself because an ever greater task.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other words, knowledge management has led to better collection of, and access to, information\u2026but it has failed to make the retrieval of pertinent knowledge faster or easier.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What Knowledge Management Promised<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Still, the original needs that knowledge management was supposed to address will not go away. In an ideal world, proper knowledge management would enable things like:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rapid data-driven decision-making<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fast dissemination of relevant information across siloes<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Minimization of duplicate efforts<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Broadcasting best practices and solutions in a timely manner<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Better utilization of existing knowledge assets, both formal and informal<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Better leveraging of SMEs\u2019 knowledge<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Better use of SMEs\u2019 time<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Standard and repeatable processes, procedures, techniques, and templates<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More accurate and timely information for sales teams<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More rapid response by customer service and support teams<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Notice that these benefits are about speed and relevance as much as anything. But these are exactly the areas where traditional knowledge management has been slow to develop.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even more disheartening is the cost burden that knowledge management has brought, without realizing return on those investments. Improper planning, design, support, and evaluation can easily lead to a lack of widespread contribution, which further erodes usefulness, relevance, and quality. And, even when moderately successful, using older knowledge management system is costly to maintain and difficult to scale because of their dependence on \u201ctop down\u201d knowledge management rather than \u201cself-building\u201d knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From Knowledge Management to Automated Knowledge Curation<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cKnowledge automation\u201d is becoming a popular way to describe how machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to automate more of the knowledge management process. (\u201cAutomated knowledge curation\u201d is another, although less popular. It means much the same thing.) <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Much of the knowledge within organizations is generated by the activities of your people. They email questions and answers back and forth. They use informal communication tools like Slack. They produce wikis and sales sheets and blog content. All of this knowledge is there in the organization\u2014it just needs to be curated and made automatically available with the touch of a button.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is the idea behind \u201cself-building\u201d knowledge: knowledge that is already present in an organization and that is continuously curated instead of \u201cmanaged.\u201d Knowledge automation creates access to self-building knowledge, rather than relying on \u201ctop-down\u201d management.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After all, information itself is cheap; as the list above shows, it exists in many ways, and in many different forms. That information only becomes knowledge <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">when the right slice of information can be applied in the right situation.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, suppose a prospect has a question about a particular feature on one of your newer products. Your sales team <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/11\/two-real-life-ai-use-cases-for-sales-productivity\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">should be able to answer that question<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> without wading through a pile of sales sheets and development wikis\u2014or worse, waiting for an answer from a SME halfway around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another example: A customer has an issue and reaches out to your organization via social media. Your customer service team <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/17\/two-ai-use-cases-for-customer-support-and-services\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">now has to query several separate systems<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in order to handle this: a case management system, an internal incident management system, a knowledge base, and several off-band communication channels. This would usually take a full day; imagine, though, if the relevant knowledge in these systems could be made available instantly, so that a reply could be made within the hour. (In fact. call center costs and volumes can decrease by as much as 30% when better search and automation tools are implemented.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are just a couple of simple examples\u2014you can follow the links for more detailed use cases. Still, they are good examples of why traditional knowledge management is not surviving the digital age. They also show why we developed our app, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nimeyo<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, as a way to automate the gathering of information across channels. It is a knowledge automation solution that brings both speed and relevance to those who need the right information at just the right time. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like Beanie Babies and dial-up internet, some things should be left in the \u201990s. It\u2019s time to update the way we access information in this digital age.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"linkedInShareButton\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/platform.linkedin.com\/in.js\"><\/script><script type=\"in\/share\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/24\/why-traditional-knowledge-management-doesnt-work-in-the-digital-age\/\"><\/script><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Knowledge management\u2014the efficient handling of information and resources within a commercial organization\u2014is not a new concept in business. In fact, it has been around since the \u201990s. But even as businesses are still trying to get a handle on knowledge management practices, the concepts and processes developed back then are aging to the point of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/24\/why-traditional-knowledge-management-doesnt-work-in-the-digital-age\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why Traditional Knowledge Management Doesn\u2019t Work in the Digital Age&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11,17,7,9],"tags":[30,31,27,32],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-search","category-human-generated-content-analysis","category-knowledge-management","category-pre-sales","category-self-help","tag-knowledge-automation","tag-sales-enablement","tag-self-help","tag-support-enablement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nimeyo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}