Remote operations
Marc Prempain
15 April 2024
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Today’s business landscape has become increasingly competitive. Through the continued evolution of technology and the growing globalization, modern businesses have been able to make their strategies more effective and bring forth a new landscape of competition.
In order to survive and thrive in the competitive business landscape, enterprises need to be driven by data. Through data, businesses can better understand, verify, and quantify their strategies and plans. According to research by PwC, highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely to report improvements in decision-making compared to those that don’t utilize data as much. Indeed, being data-driven can help businesses make more informed decisions and reduce the risk of making poor choices that could hurt their operations as a whole. But, how exactly can businesses place data at the core of their organization?
One of the best ways businesses can use data to effectively deal with changes, increase their productivity, and work towards innovation and development is by applying knowledge management initiatives and strategies. Through knowledge management, businesses can empower themselves and create a data-driven culture where every move and every decision can be guided by quantified and qualitative variables.
In this post, let’s discuss what knowledge management is and why it is key in building a data-driven business.
In a nutshell, knowledge management is a selection of methods, practices, tools, procedures, and desired behaviors that inspire a business to become more productive. In addition, it is also a discipline that promotes a blended approach to capturing, retrieving, sharing, evaluating, and identifying a business’ information assets. These assets may contain documents, databases, procedures, policies, and the formerly unquantified experience and expertise of a business’s employees.
Knowledge management promotes learning and innovation across an organization. Through effective knowledge management, a business can take a small piece of information and package it in a way where it intrigues people and piques their interest. In order to better understand what knowledge management is, it is important that we explore the different types of knowledge. Knowledge can be categorized into two main types: tacit and explicit. By learning how to manage, access, and strategically share these types of knowledge across their teams and departments, businesses will find it easier to find success in today’s competitive business landscape.
However, the methods of distributing these two types of knowledge within an organization largely differ. For one, tacit knowledge needs regular interaction and extensive personal contact. This kind of knowledge is developed through time by learning from experienced co-workers, mentoring sessions, or training programs. On the other hand, explicit knowledge can be easily articulated, stored, and acquired. This kind of knowledge is easy for co-workers and departments to share and exchange, as it comes in the form of company handbooks, how-to videos, sales scripts, and learning modules. Properly managing these types of knowledge is key if businesses want their knowledge management initiatives to be more effective and impactful.
Businesses can greatly benefit from having an internal method of sharing, reusing, collaborating, and innovating information and data. In this section, let’s take a closer look at what effective knowledge management can do for businesses.
Knowledge management enables employees to be more efficient and productive. Because of this, the value of the products and services offered by a business increases. In addition, knowledge management allows those in customer service to stay informed with the inner workings of the business and answer customer queries with ease.
Because knowledge management allows everyone in the company to freely share ideas, collaborate with each other, and make use of the latest data, a culture of innovation is promoted in the organization. In line with this, businesses that employ effective knowledge management will also see a shift in internal culture where everyone is driven by meeting the changing business needs.
A lot of businesses today spend a chunk of their budget on efficiency efforts and tools. Indeed, no one likes spending their time doing something over and over again. Eliminating redundancy is especially important for higher level business executives, as this would allow them to focus their time and energy on more important tasks. Through knowledge management, businesses can successfully eliminate effort duplication and streamline their operations.
Having access to the knowledge each department holds can help businesses accelerate and improve their decision-making process. The success of the decision-making process also improves greatly if the data used is precise and accurate. Through knowledge management tools that facilitate collaboration and allow for a successful exchange of ideas, businesses can make better decisions that have a positive impact on the entirety of their organization.
As we’ve mentioned, the success of knowledge management initiatives will only be guaranteed if the data used are accurate and precise. In this regard, businesses should strive to be data-driven if they don’t want their knowledge management efforts to go down the drain.
One way for businesses to have a more compelling knowledge management system is by employing the services of a skilled data analyst. As one of the most in-demand careers in data analytics, data analysts work with large data sets and databases to determine patterns and generate insights that can be extremely useful for the organization they work for. Data analysts are trained to develop key skills in statistics, analytics, creativity, and communication — all of which are needed to streamline a business’ knowledge management efforts and make sure that the data shared across departments and employees are presented in a way that is easily digestible and understandable.
Moreover, knowledge management application tools can help ensure that a business uses the data they gather to its fullest potential. For example, customer relationship management (CRM) systems allow businesses to track established business leads, monitor the performance of a sales team, and oversee how well a business is doing. The data stored in a CRM can then be used to boost the decisions made in other key aspects of an organization. In addition, the success of knowledge base systems relies on highly informative and insightful data, as whatever information you deposit in this tool will be distributed evenly to future employees and will be preserved as institutional knowledge.
Knowledge management strategies, tools, and initiatives rely on precise and insightful data. If businesses want to have an easier time handing over information to future employees, nurture a company culture that values collaboration, and make decisions that are highly influenced by data, they should first establish a good knowledge management system.
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