How to Implement an Effective Knowledge Management Program?

A successful knowledge management system in an organization helps employees utilize the knowledge to increase productivity, improve work quality, and ensure consistency in deliverables. Many companies are capitalizing on knowledge management software for data mining, document management, community forums, and blogging. However, they don’t consider defining their objectives and the ways to manage their knowledge assets for achieving long-term goals.

To develop an effective knowledge management program, an organization must consider certain essential elements like people, technology, structure, processes, and culture. An organization must determine the ways to boost the efficiency of staff, to create best practices for recognizing, regulating and dispersing accurate knowledge, to select tools for automating knowledge management, to transform business structure for promoting awareness, and to establish a knowledge-based culture.

Here is a step-by-step process of building an effective knowledge management system in your company.

1. Identifying Knowledge Management Needs
   The first step is to identify what type of knowledge you need to document for developing and executing a successful business strategy. You can establish both long-term and short-term program objectives to facilitate the business drivers.


2. Determine the Knowledge Assets
   The management must identify and plan to get maximum returns out of competitors, government agencies, technology, suppliers, processes, products and other knowledge assets of their organization.


3. Analyze the Type of Content
   You may conduct cross-functional research to gather qualitative insights on problems that customers are facing. This will help you decide what type of content needs to be included in the knowledge management program.


4. Define the Process and Structure
   Knowing how knowledge is gathered, categorized, managed, and disseminated will help organizations utilize the full potential of their knowledge management system. A high-end knowledge management process will help in an effective management of your company’s knowledge assets.


5. Implementing a Knowledge Management Program
   The program can be established through knowledge assets and by making situations that need the emergence of a learning organization. Converting a raw information into knowledge can be highly useful to achieve business goals. Moreover, emergent conditions make individuals’ knowledge available for business purpose.


6. Storage, Utilization & Distribution of Knowledge 
   A well-defined knowledge management system includes knowledge repositories to preserve and acquire knowledge, to utilize knowledge for making business decisions, and a collective knowledge access to all the members of the organization.


7. Measuring Knowledge Management System
   How will you check the effectiveness of investment in Knowledge Management Software and the significance of knowledge management program? You need to measure the impact of a program on organizational performance and forge techniques for improving the system.