The use of knowledge management in the company

Good knowledge management ensures that individual knowledge is located, documented and distributed - after all, there is a lot of expert knowledge slumbering in your employees that could significantly benefit your company if it were available to everyone.

In addition to the introduction of a central knowledge platform, growing companies are faced with the task of coordinating the increasing number of employees, departments and locations. If a central knowledge management system that serves as a basis for all participants is missing, there is a risk that the company will develop its own processes and procedures. This can lead to major misunderstandings and problems, for example by softening standard-compliant processes or, in the worst case, inadvertently forgetting them, thus jeopardizing the workflow.
Therefore, uniform knowledge management is indispensable so that all stakeholders can access it and compare their own processes with the company standard, so that both autonomy and compliance with important processes are guaranteed throughout the company at the same time. Finally, all employees, departments and locations can share their knowledge, learn from each other and contribute to the company's success.

If knowledge is organized centrally and presented in an appealing way, your employees will feel invited to familiarize themselves with new areas of knowledge on their own responsibility. In this way, they further qualify themselves and your company gains access to new competencies, which gives you a competitive advantage.

In terms of turnover rates, without successful knowledge management, you risk losing important expert knowledge when employees change, which can delay processes.
With the right knowledge management tools, on the other hand, the loss is mitigated because the employees' knowledge has been stored and can be retrieved if necessary, so that important information and processes are not lost and are easier for successors to reproduce. In this way, potential downtime costs in the company can be minimized.

A decisive advantage is that necessary information is available to employees more quickly and can be accessed at any time and from anywhere with digital knowledge management. This proves particularly helpful for companies that have different locations or offer home offices. Regardless of whether they are long-time managers or new employees, from the office or home office - all employees are given secure, location-independent access to company-specific knowledge. And all this without having to search for information in a cumbersome way.

Whether it's job-specific issues such as company procedures, product questions or simply how to operate the new computer - employees are constantly spending a lot of time on time-consuming searches for information, whether it's in their own documents, from colleagues or on the Internet. As a result, efficiency decreases.
Structured knowledge management not only minimizes the time and effort spent on research, but also prevents the risk of incorrect information by enabling employees to find all the answers they need quickly and in an appropriate form through a simple search in the corporate knowledge platform. Above all, this avoids duplication of effort, as once answers have been found, they are documented in the same place for all to see, instead of different employees having to search for specific solutions in parallel. This ensures greater security and a more efficient working day.

Employees are confronted with an ever-increasing number of applications, conditions and processes that are constantly changing, even within an industry. It is important that these are implemented in the company as quickly as possible - however, this is a major challenge without knowledge management, as quite a few briefings and meetings with employees are often necessary to inform them of the changes.
With a central knowledge source, such problems occur much less frequently, since knowledge can be easily "updated" within the system and processes can be presented in an orderly fashion. Much more, employees always keep track of spontaneous changes and do not risk implementing the process in the outdated way. Thus, as a company, you ensure not only knowledge acquisition, but also knowledge development.

Without effective knowledge management, new employees are completely dependent on their colleagues, which usually puts a lot of strain on them. In this context, familiarization turns out to be particularly difficult if the new position could not be filled early on and the new worker has to acquire all the required knowledge independently and thus laboriously.
Knowledge management offers immense added value here, as the new employees can access a central database and, for example, read up on all the important information via a targeted search or receive training by means of explanatory videos. Colleagues no longer have to explain all the basics, but can refer to relevant content and thus save resources.
Knowledge is therefore retained for successors and both the quality and speed of onboarding are increased. At the same time, uncertainty decreases after onboarding, which leads to increased employee enablement.