Table of Contents
Introduction
When an organisation is small, it is easy to organise and present valuable information to the right people in the right circumstances. However, as the organisation expands, the volume of information also balloons exponentially. It becomes increasingly difficult to manage all the knowledge in an optimum manner. Moreover, as departments build and grow, knowledge starts to get more and more siloed, being dispersed on a need-to-know basis only. This may seem organisationally rational, but from a wider perspective, it can narrow the vision of the company and severely handicap their ability to make contextually correct decisions.
It becomes necessary to put an effective knowledge system in place that can resolve such issues effectively. Assima In-App Search has proved to be one of the most intelligent platforms one can try for efficient knowledge dispersion and presentation in the digital adoption and training domain. Our innovative features are geared to help companies ensure smart knowledge sharing with trainees so that fewer mistakes are made in the process.
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Is Inefficient Knowledge Management a Serious Issue
What is the Impact of Inefficient Knowledge Management
Increase in operational expenses is not the only downside of inefficient knowledge management. There are certain hidden costs that often go unnoticed. This is because the best way to detect these lapses is through data analytics, but here, knowledge management, including data analysis, is the component that’s hit. Here are some of the hidden costs in areas where organisations are hit the worst due to faulty knowledge management.
Loss in Productivity
When knowledge is poorly managed, it is harder to access the right information at the right place and time. As a result, employees often expend a lot of time, effort and resources either coming up with solutions themselves or extracting the missing or faulty information. This cuts down their productivity greatly. The frustration resulting from jumping all these hoops demotivates the workers and reduces their efficiency even further. The cumulative effect of this on the entire workforce is a reduction in turnover and return on investment (ROI).
Wastage of Time
When it is difficult to access information readily, employees will either try to cross all the red tape to get to it or try to find their way around a task themselves. No matter what the choice is, it makes the process they are trying to operate take a longer time to complete. This creates a backlog of tasks that keep piling up as the number of wasted hours keeps accumulating. With hindered time management, the bottleneck can sometimes become so restrictive that they bring operations completely to a halt until comprehensive change is effected.
Low Customer Satisfaction
Opportunities Unrecognised
When employees work with limited knowledge, they often fail to see the potential in things that could have greatly benefitted their company. Knowing important data and insights allows employees to provide targeted service to customers and manage their tasks in a manner that they are confident will benefit the agenda of the company. But without such informational support, it would be impossible for them to know how something could pan out if the situation is leveraged correctly. The outcome is lost potential for success for both the employee as well as the company.
Lost Resources
When you operate on restricted knowledge, it is but natural that you will be working at a lower than optimum level of efficiency. Moreover, it would also result in more resources and raw materials being consumed as processes become unregulated, mistakes require repetitions of tasks and output quality gets affected. If your resource consumption ends up becoming higher than your turnover, you will officially be facing losses because of the disordered knowledge management process utilised by your company.
Uninformed Decisions
Without access to complete knowledge, it can be challenging to understand the big picture regarding any aspect of your operations. Thus, when you are dealing with any situation, you can only judge it and make decisions based on the incomplete information that you can access. This inevitably leads to judgements that do not reflect the true nature of the circumstances. In such a case, the decision-making process might no longer be in the best interests of the organisation and its people.
Increase in Errors
The biggest repercussion of defective knowledge management is the increase in how many errors are introduced in daily operations. With limited information, employees have to make a lot of assumptions and predictions. The probability of them being accurate every time can never be a hundred percent. Hence, errors that can be anything from simple to highly complicated can arise and accumulate over time, creating even more inaccurate information that will further mislead other workers.
Poor Employee Collaboration
Inefficient knowledge management may, in some cases, lead to reduced employee collaboration. Often, knowledge silos create the ground for poor knowledge management as we mentioned before, which in turn, isolate and strengthen these silos even more, usually overflowing onto the employees. Reduced motivation gives rise to a reluctance to involve others in attempts to retrieve the necessary information, lest even more restrictions crop up. Workers end up relying on themselves and making do with whatever they can find.
Higher Attrition
Besides the usual immediate effects of deficient knowledge management systems, there is also the more delayed but cumulative effect of lowered employee morale. Insufficient information leads to constant frustration, greater exhaustion in handling even minor matters, and the notion that the company does not trust you or your skills enough to entrust you with the information you need. As discontent and vexation breeds, employees feel that they might find better opportunities elsewhere. This promotes attrition, which ends up costing the company even more.
Conquer the common issues of knowledge management in employee training and onboarding with Assima In-App Search. Find out how.
How Can You Fix Inefficient Knowledge Management
The bad news is that once your knowledge accessibility and availability issues cross a certain threshold, they can become nearly impossible to fix. The good news is that, as long as you do not go beyond that point, simple measures are enough to smooth out the wrinkles and create an efficient system for knowledge management. Here are some steps that you can take in that direction:
Research & Strategise
Come up with a thoroughly researched and planned knowledge management strategy tailored to cater to the requirements of your organisation, customers and employees.
Involve & Inform
Involve all members necessary for an operation in the decision-making process. That way, all required personnel will always be up-to-date on the things they need to know.
Update Compliance
Ensure that the compliance and security policies of your company are not outdated. In this age of readily available, globalised information, it makes no sense to unnecessarily restrict access to knowledge that can be usefully applied.
Knowledge Management System
Utilise a knowledge management system geared to help your company achieve its goals without jeopardizing any data. A dedicated platform would be much more effective in managing information than humans.
Analytics & Feedback
Utilise data analytics and feedback from employees and customers to identify problem areas in terms of knowledge management. Once you know what you have to fix, half your work is done.
How Does Assima In-App Search Tackle Inefficient Knowledge Management
Final Words
Frequently Asked Questions
Let’s Answer Some of Your Questions.
Thorough research and product comparisons will help you choose the right system for knowledge management in your organisation. Make sure the features of the platform align with your goals and objectives. You should request demos and trial runs of your shortlisted options to make sure your final choice is the most suitable one.
Some of the symptoms of inefficient knowledge management include unbreachable information silos, recurring requests for low-value data requiring convoluted compliance checks, employees frustrated with knowledge access red tapes, fear of losing the most knowledgeable employee on a team, frequent halts in even simple processes due to inadequate information, etc.
Yes, it can cripple workflows for even the simplest of tasks. As much of an exaggeration as it may seem, inefficient knowledge management can be detrimental to your company. Imagine someone sewing in a dimly lit room. They will take longer to complete their work, make more mistakes and get frustrated easily. It is the same with information, which can be compared to the light in the room.
Yes, information overload is also a result of inefficient knowledge management. If a person has to go through pages of information just to get to the right one because of a disorganised knowledge structure, giving rise to overload, it is the fault of poor knowledge management.
You can simply compare efficiency scores, work progress and other KPIs relevant to your work from before and after installing the knowledge management system. Assima even has an ROI calculator that can help you observe the benefits of using the system with facts and numbers.
