According to a study by KM Insitute, 50% of knowledge management initiatives fail. In all these steps, there is a common point of failure in the whole process: human commitment.
Faced with such situations, companies often seek help and advice. The main obstacle for employees in implementing knowledge management is change. It is usually difficult to change the habits of the people in a company. It follows that in order to ensure the success of knowledge management in your company, you need to support your employees in managing change. There are solutions that can be implemented gradually to maximise the chances of success of your knowledge management.
In this article, we provide you with five effective measures to successfully implement knowledge management in your company.
The question of timing is critical to success. When is the right time to launch the knowledge management project? The problem is that most knowledge management projects are launched when the company's processes are already broken.
You may have already noticed "red flags" such as :
- Delayed integration of employees into the company
- The use of Slack as a place to tap each other on the shoulder
- Or shared links in spreadsheets
Knowledge management tends to start organically, and it is up to you to guide it into an accessible and organised final form, and that means starting as early as possible!
Before you start, you need to step back and analyse your knowledge management challenges. Well-designed and thoughtfully implemented knowledge management delivers measurable improvement and productivity. Specifically the value and added value your organisation expects.
Knowledge management deployments fail when stakeholders do not buy in: a classic case of having to believe in the 'product' to make the sale. Assuming that buy-in happens automatically is a common management fallacy. You will have to work to gain sustainable support. Also, not all stakeholders are equal in terms of influence and importance. Take time to understand who your stakeholders are and what their roles and responsibilities should be.
Ask questions such as .
--> Who creates the content?
--> Who are the consumers of content?
Your answers, if given honestly, will help you to win over stakeholders in a meaningful way.
For knowledge management to be successfully implemented, you need the support of C-levels (senior decision-makers). These people have the ability to approve a budget and end users are more likely to follow them.
But how do you get them interested? Point out the benefits of knowledge management to them:Ā
For example, saving time on research and document creation for your employees will increase the time spent on their task and improve their productivity.
In order to promote the continuous growth of your company, the implementation of knowledge management is necessary. The IT department has an essential role to play in knowledge management. It must be able to support the technical and security implementation of the platform used for knowledge management.
Training your employees to use this platform will be essential for its proper functioning and use. This will require time and various internal resources, but these costs will be recouped.
Your knowledge management must have an effective payback period for it to last. Without communicating the benefits of knowledge management to your employees, its success can be compromised. One of the important metrics to monitor when implementing your projects is time-to-value. The value to be gained from the project will start to materialise when your employees quickly reach their goal with the knowledge management solution.
When setting up a project, it is important to define key performance indicators. And in the implementation of your knowledge management, they will assess the real value of your knowledge management. There is no single key performance indicator to represent the success of your project, you will need to monitor several measures to improve it. Compare new results with old ones, note where and when performance has improved, and identify useful variables to isolate. And set measurable targets.
You'll be surprised at the result!
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