As we all know that nothing worth doing ever comes easy, but is your team constantly reinventing the wheel to get things done? Consider building a smarter way to share what you already know.
Businesses run on shared knowledge: How things work, what’s been tried, and what actually delivers. But when that knowledge isn’t documented, mistakes repeat, and progress slows. Inefficient knowledge sharing impacts businesses across the board, costing large businesses an average of 47 billion annually.
Employing smart Knowledge Management Strategies (KMS) can help solve this problem. The right IT solutions keep your team aligned, speed things up, and stop repeat work before it starts.
What are the knowledge management strategies?
These strategies help you outline and implement a solid way of harnessing your knowledge and intellectual capacity in a way thatproduces a smarter, faster workflow. Start with these steps:
Ask the Right Questions
Prior to diving into solutions, stop and ask: What knowledge gets lost around here?
Examples might be onboarding feels slow, or questions keep coming up, or steps get missed, or customers ask for help more than they should. These may be the result of lost knowledge.
Survey your different departments about what they need access to but can’t seem to find. These are your starting points and the identify the gaps your knowledge hub should address first.
Selct the Right Tool - Not the Flashiest One
While many tools act as knowledge hubs, including wikis, folders, and messaging apps, what really matters is keeping it simple, searchable, and easy to access.
Rather than opting for something completely new, try building on tools your team already knows. Work with IT solutions that create a system that grows with you, without adding unnecessary complexity.
Stay Focused and Logical
After you establish a space to store knowledge, it’s important to organize it. People should be able to find what they’re looking for within a few clicks or keywords.
Some common categories include:
How to work: company policies, remote work protocols, expenses, etc.
Operational processes: sales scripts, order workflows, client onboarding steps
Efficient help: login steps, device troubleshooting, how to use tools
Resources: training guides, meeting templates, contact info
It’s best to use broad categories and tag items with keywords. As your library grows, structure becomes increasingly important, so lay a solid foundation early.
Create Content That’s Actually Useful
It’s human nature that people want quick, clear answers that solve the problem, so keep it simple and add visuals or steps whenever they help.
Separate Internal From External Knowledge
Certain knowledge should stay internal, like hiring processes, while other content can live on your website as a customer resource.
An external KMS could include:
Product how-tos
Feature overviews
FAQ pages
Support guides
Setup tutorials
This lowers the volume of support tickets and empowers customers to find answers on their own.
Your internal KMS acts as your team’s go-to playbook. Keeping these systems separate but equally well maintained is a smart move for growth.
Designate Responsibility and Ownership
Select a clear leader. A common reason knowledge hubs fail is that no one’s in charge of keeping them up to date.
To this end, appoint a ‘knowledge czar’ or a small team to oversee the system. Their role isn’t to write all the content, but to:
Encourage team contributions
Review new articles for clarity
Update outdated information
Archive or remove what’s no longer relevant
It’s also advisable to set reminders (quarterly works well) to audit content and ensure everything is still accurate. If your business works with an IT services partner, they can help set up these review cycles automatically.
Establish Easy Contribution
This is critical: when someone figures out a better way to do something, it should be easy for them to share it with the team. That’s how your knowledge hub grows into a truly valuable resource.
Here are some ways to make this happen:
Adopt templates for adding new content
Let people suggest articles or updates
Create a ‘request a guide’ form
Always recognize contributors in meetings or company chats. It encourages paticipation.
When someone isn’t comfortable writing, they can walk through a process on a call while someone else turns it into a clear entry for the hub.
Celebrate the Contributors
When someone finds an answer in your hub instead of asking around, you save valuable time, and those savings add up quickly.
Congratulate the contributor and highlight the progress:
“This article saved five support tickets this week.”
“New hires completed onboarding 3 days faster.”
“Josh wrote our most-used guide in Sales.”
Integrate it Into the Work Flow
Make your knowledge hub a part of the workday. It’s something you should use daily and not keep stored in some folder. Bringing it up in team meetings, onboarding sessions, and even linking it to tasks helps make it more useful and part of everyday workflows. The more people use it, the more it benefits everyone.
Monitor What Works
A solid KMS will evolve based on what’s actually helping people.
Here are important things to track and measure these:
Which articles are viewed the most?
What are the subjects of frequent searches?
Are there repetitive support questions that should have guides?
IT solutions often come with built-in analytics to track article performance and feedback. If not, just ask! Your IT support team will tell you what’s missing or unclear, and those insights can shape your next update.
Make Sure Your Knowledge Hub is User-Friendly
The golden KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) rule: It’s no good if it’s cumbersome to use. Once you establish it, you’ll find that a knowledge hub doesn’t just save time, it also helps your team work smarter. It gives your people quick answers, improves collaboration, and makes onboarding easier for every new hire. Even your customers benefit, with faster support and clear guidance.
It doesn’t need to be huge to make a difference. Start small, with just a handful of helpful articles, and let it grow as your business does.
Would you like some help? Call IT Support LA today! We’re here to help, and we can walk you through the setup, recommend the right tools, and make sure everything runs smoothly, so your team always has the answers they need, right when they need them.
Knowledge is a supremely valuable asset. Turn your everyday know-how into something powerful. Let us help you build a smarter, stronger, and more connected business. Get in touch today and start building a knowledge hub that benefits your whole team.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best knowledge management tools?
As with most tools, this depends largely on your specific needs. The People Managing People website offers up their Top 24 HERE.
Their Top 5 are:
1. Project Flow by Milient — Best for architecture & engineering knowledge
- TruPeer — Best for automated content creation
- Trainual — Best for mobile access (this is what IT Support LA uses)
- Sift — Best for searchable profiles.
5. iSpring LMS — Best for company training
What are the six key functions of knowledge management?
In no particular order, they are: people, governance, content, process, technology, and strategy, each playing a crucial role, so that knowledge flows seamlessly across an organization.
What does a good knowledge base look like?
Again it depends on how you structure it to suit your needs, but it should look like a centralized, well-organized library, where everything you need right is where you can easily find it. It's a self-serve support system that lets employees and customers troubleshoot issues, find answers, and learn the ins and outs of a product without waiting on hold or sending an email.
How is a KMS different from a cms?
The main difference is that Knowledge Management (KM) is more multidimensional than Content Management (CM), as it enables the search for, capture, update, and maintenance of relevant information within a single platform. While a CMS is primarily used for publishing external content, a KM platform can house both internal and external content.
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