The Ultimate Guide for Knowledge Management

Capturing, storing, and disseminating information is a competitive advantage in a knowledge economy. Businesses spend money on customer service, training, and research, but important information is frequently lost in old documents, email threads, or the minds of individuals. The discipline and resources needed to turn that dispersed data into easily comprehensible, useful insights are provided by knowledge management. This manual describes the foundations of knowledge management, its advantages, and how cutting-edge tools like ServiceNow can maximize the potential of organizational knowledge.

What is Knowledge Management?

The methodical process of gathering, organizing, disseminating, and utilizing an organization’s information assets is known as knowledge management. These resources include explicit knowledge (documents, manuals, frequently asked questions, and procedures) and tacit knowledge (experiences and insights retained in people’s minds). A knowledge management program usually consists of procedures for gathering information, selecting it for correctness and applicability, and distributing it to the appropriate individuals at the appropriate moment via a knowledge base or self-service portal.

Why is knowledge management important?

Customer service, employee onboarding, and continuous improvement are all aided by effective knowledge management. Employees waste time looking for answers or coming up with new solutions without it. Organizations benefit from reduced resolution times, increased customer satisfaction, and increased innovation when knowledge is easily accessible. According to ServiceNow’s research, adding a pertinent knowledge article to a case can cut down on resolution time by as much as 40%.

Types of knowledge

Here are the most common types of knowledge.

• Tacit knowledge: Experience-based personal insights and expertise are known as tacit knowledge. Interviews or structured approaches like Knowledge Centered Service (KCS) are frequently needed to capture tacit knowledge.
• Explicit knowledge: Information that has been documented, including best practices, procedures, policies, and troubleshooting manuals. It is simple to store and retrieve this knowledge.
• Implicit knowledge: Implicit knowledge is data that is not formally recorded but is frequently obtained from already-existing sources, like trends found in support cases. Through data analysis and trend identification, analytics and AI can reveal implicit knowledge.

Benefits of knowledge management

1. Improved customer self‑service: Better self-service for customers. Customers can find answers more quickly in a well-maintained knowledge base, which lowers the number of support tickets.
2. Enhanced employee productivity: Employees spend more time resolving issues and less time looking for information.
3. Consistent service: Standardized content lowers variability and errors by ensuring that customers and support personnel adhere to the same protocols.
4. Faster onboarding: New hires can access carefully chosen content, which boosts their output.
5. Lower operational costs: The cost per case is decreased by fewer support tickets and quicker resolution times.
6. Innovation: Across departments, tacit knowledge sharing and capture promote ongoing development and innovation.

The knowledge management process

1. Capture knowledge: Locate information sources (documentation, subject matter experts, and support interactions) and turn them into structured articles. Organizations can capture tacit knowledge during support interactions by using methodologies such as KCS.
   
2. Curate and update: Check articles for correctness, eliminate out-of-date information, and make them more lucid. ServiceNow advises retiring out-of-date articles and directing updates based on user feedback.
   
3. Organize and categorize: To make it easier for users to search, group content into categories and tag it. Strong search engines, like ServiceNow’s AI Search, highlight pertinent articles and cut down on case submissions.
   
4. Publish and promote: Make information readily available through chatbots, communities, or self-service portals. To prevent needless case creation, direct clients and staff to the knowledge base.
   
5. Monitor and improve: To find gaps, monitor feedback, and usage metrics. Use recommendation engines to promote knowledge sharing through communities and make article suggestions based on user context.

Knowledge management tools

Modern knowledge management platforms go beyond basic document storage. They offer powerful features like content authoring, version control, workflow approvals, advanced search engines, and analytics to streamline information management and sharing across organizations.

ServiceNow’s Knowledge Management solution, for example, includes a built-in AI-powered search—introduced in the Rome release—that intelligently suggests relevant articles to users. This not only helps reduce the number of support tickets but also enhances the self-service experience for both customers and employees.

Through a user-friendly knowledge portal, staff and customers can browse articles, access up-to-date resources, and share best practices. This collaborative environment makes it easier to find the right information quickly, fosters knowledge sharing, and drives overall productivity.

Use cases for knowledge management

• Customer Service: Boost self-service by offering a searchable knowledge base, allowing customers to find solutions and resolve issues without raising support tickets.
• IT Support: Provide technical troubleshooting guides and articles so users or frontline support teams can quickly address common technical problems.
• HR and Onboarding: Centralize policy documents, onboarding checklists, and FAQs, making it easy for employees to find information on company procedures, benefits, and processes.
• Product Development: Capture and share best practices, project documentation, and lessons learned from project teams to improve future product initiatives.
• Compliance and Audits: Keep policy and procedure documentation up-to-date to demonstrate compliance with regulations and simplify audit processes.
• Internal Collaboration: Enable teams to share knowledge, resources, and insights across departments, breaking down information silos.
• Continuous Learning: Provide employees with ongoing access to training materials and company updates for personal and professional growth.
• Remote Work Enablement: Ensure distributed teams can easily access and contribute to shared knowledge, maintaining productivity from anywhere.
  
  

Challenges in knowledge management

Implementing knowledge management is not without hurdles:

• Keeping content fresh: Maintaining original content is a challenge, as articles become dated without a systematic procedure. ServiceNow advises regularly removing out-of-date material and requesting user input.
• Capturing tacit knowledge: Employees may be reluctant to record their knowledge. The KCS methodology promotes knowledge capture as an integral part of case resolution.
• Search relevance: Users may abandon self-service if they receive poor search results. AI Search leverages machine learning to provide more relevant results based on user behavior and context.
• User adoption: Users often require support to use knowledge portals. Using recommendation widgets, encouraging community involvement, and guiding clients to the knowledge base are helpful strategies.
  

Best practices for implementing knowledge management

1. Adopt a recognized framework: Use established frameworks like KCS to integrate knowledge capture and reuse into your support processes.
2. Encourage collaboration: Promote cooperation by establishing a culture that rewards knowledge sharing. Encourage content creation from subject matter experts and acknowledge their efforts.
3. Leverage AI and analytics: Make use of AI Search and analytics to find gaps and areas that could use improvement.
4. Promote communities: ServiceNow recommends that users post questions and offer insights in community forums to encourage customers to share their experiences.
5. Solicit user feedback: Collect user feedback through portals or widgets, allowing users to suggest updates or new content. Incorporate these suggestions into future releases.
   

How DevTools can help

For ServiceNow Knowledge Management, we offer integrations, implementation services, and advisory support services. We can help your team with knowledge workflow setup, knowledge base integration with chatbots or virtual agents, and optimizing AI search. Additionally, we can also provide KCS training to your teams, guaranteeing that the knowledge capture process at any stage and reusability are guaranteed and integrated into routine business processes.

Conclusion

Supporting digital transformation and providing reliable, effective service depend on knowledge management. Organizations can enhance self-service, lower support costs, and unlock tacit knowledge with the correct procedures, resources, and culture. Customers and staff can find the information they need more quickly thanks to ServiceNow’s Knowledge Management solution’s robust search, AI-driven recommendations, and community engagement features.

FAQs

What is a knowledge base?

A knowledge base is an organized collection of articles, frequently asked questions, and protocols created to assist users in finding answers fast. Search, categories, and feedback mechanisms are frequently included.

How do we capture tacit knowledge?

Support agents are encouraged to record solutions as they handle cases by using a methodology like KCS, which captures tacit knowledge for later use.

Why should we invest in AI Search?

AI search employs machine learning to provide more pertinent results, boosting the use of self-service and lowering the number of customer tickets.