What is a knowledge management system?
A knowledge management system(KMS) is an application that is designed to capture important and relevant information within an organization and make it easily accessible to the employees at any given time and location. In simpler terms, a KMS can be described as an information hub that aids content creation, organization, and redistribution through search tools and lets users find answers to their queries quickly.
KMS comprises several software modules, served by a central user interface. Some of these features allow data mining on customer input and histories and are also used for sharing electronic documents. Moreover, an efficient knowledge management system can help companies with staff training and orientation, support better sales, or help business leaders arrive at critical decisions.
A knowledge management system helps companies to turn important information into ‘knowledge’.
What are the critical benefits of a knowledge management system?
A knowledge management system helps companies to turn important information into ‘knowledge’. Here are some of the key benefits of employing KMS include:
Information accuracy and consistency
By using KMS, everyone in an organization gains equal access and contributes to a comprehensive internal knowledge base. This ensures an improved quality of information. Furthermore, a knowledge management system also ensures that employees are provided with information that is targeted, useful, and timely without drowning in a sea of data.
Faster decision making
A good KMS provides the basis for making good decisions through structure, search, subscription, syndication, and support. Also, by reusing knowledge in the repositories, employees can make decisions based on actual experiences and practical lessons learned from larger sample sizes. This, in turn, enables them to ensure that no mistake that has been committed earlier is repeated.
Facilitate project management
Experience and lessons learned from previous projects, including cost estimating, risk management, and problem-solving benefit several aspects of project management. When companies utilize a KMS to capture project information, it helps new project managers to learn their craft more efficiently. KMS also facilitates the communication of relevant information among project team members, especially in the case where the teams work in multiple geographic locations.v
Improved customer services
A KMS helps track helpdesk and customer service information. This aids in identifying similar problems and offers successful solutions based on customer feedback. It adapts to user’s questioning style by applying information-expansion technologies such as ontologies. Several companies are also expanding their help desk functionality to cater to customer queries by creating an automated knowledge management system.
Faster-employee onboarding
For most companies, employee onboarding proves to be a tedious task. With the help of knowledge management, this can be overturned. KMS gives new employees the wealth of information at their fingertips. This means that they can immediately start finding answers to the many questions they have without having to wait for another person to explain it to them.
