Every business is looking for ways to improve its internal policies and management of information. Each team has its team members and each of them comes with a set of values and knowledge that enrich the entire team process. Moreover, if you are active in your domain, you have already implemented some working policies and habits. Team members are probably already exchanging information in a variety of ways, so things are already moving. But how do the entire business and every individual team manage the information they come across or share?

Well, if your business does not have a knowledge management (KM) strategy implemented, building one as soon as possible is important. As the business will slowly grow, its employees will interact with more and more information on the products or services you offer.

At the same time, they will acquire more knowledge. But it is wise to think ahead about what will happen if one of the employees resigns. What happens to the knowledge they have on your business that must be passed on to the people they come in their place? A KM strategy helps you handle and manage efficiently all the knowledge that exists in the company. Here are the best practices for designing an effective KM strategy. 

Aim to Understand the Culture that Already Exists 

Until a KM strategy is built by a company, it has already started being active in its chosen domain. This means that even though you might not have many employees, they are already collaborating and working together. How do they do this? How do they share information and knowledge? It can be through emails, instant messages, Slack, Skype, Trello, or other apps. Are there any weaknesses in this process? Which are the strengths? These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself when trying to understand the culture that has already started to form within the business. It is essential to do this because you can build the entire organizational culture on what already exists. 

This is essential for designing a KM strategy because it has to take into consideration the cultural and organizational elements of your business. One of the roles of KM strategy is to address these weaknesses and hot points that already exist and to minimize them. Writers who write my assignment on organizational culture and management say that even though many of the risks you identify now will come only in the future, having a strategy to solve them is essential. 

Look at the Needs 

A KM strategy should be deeply linked to the organizational goals you have already set. If your business does not have any goals, it would be wise to set some SMART ones. They will help you measure your progress, but also work towards achieving the same things.

Every team that works on some products or services has needs. Your KM strategy should address these needs, especially the ones you think will exist in the future. And more importantly, this strategy should be aligned with the organizational goals. There are many activities you will perform to manage the knowledge within the business and these activities should be aligned with your goals for the future. 

Make Knowledge Sharing a Habit 

One of the most important things when working in a team is to share information and communicate effectively with your team members. In a team, a team member’s tasks could depend on the progress of other team members. Moreover, there can be more experienced members that could teach valuable skills and share essential information with their colleagues.

When everyone is informed and has access to the information they need, it will be easier to do their jobs and be productive. How is this sharing of knowledge already happening in your business? What do team members appreciate the most about the work of another team member? It is important to show everyone in the company the benefits of sharing knowledge. If this process is valued, the business will grow healthily. 

KM Strategy that Considers Knowledge Retention 

Many things need to be included in the KM strategy and one of them is that that addresses knowledge retention. Knowledge exists in many forms, such as documents, tools, apps, and many more. But the ones that acquire and use this knowledge are the employees. It is wise to assume that not all employees will stay with your company forever and many of them will resign sometime in the future. This is one of the natural things that happen in the working market and you need to be prepared for it. The employees that will retire or resign will leave with a lot of essential knowledge that needs to be passed on. So, it is important to understand what is the important knowledge in the organization and how to keep it. Knowledge retention is essential and it should not be left out. 

Understanding the External Relations 

A business is indeed working with its employees to deliver certain products and services. But external collaborators such as customers, other companies, or freelancers are also interacting with you. How is this process going? What knowledge is shared among the two parties? How can your organization or business help another one? External relations are efficient because they can help a business grow tremendously, but they can also help a business assess the knowledge it does not have and find ways to acquire it. 

Ending Note 

Designing an effective KM strategy is not an easy job, but it is a strategy that is much needed in every organization and business. As companies grow from year to year, the policies and processes within the business develop even more. It is essential to have a KM strategy that addresses future risks and needs, underlies how the sharing of information and knowledge is done, and also the organizational culture, goals, and knowledge retention. 

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In today's contemporary world, Knowledge Management Software works as a boon for any organization.
It provides a different definition to each corner of the performing body. Knowledge is the substructure that exhibits brand new concepts, ideas, and above all up to the minute innovative skills to the working fellas that the organization recruits based on the potentiality of the hired hands. Hence, the knowledge base software accommodates the organization with a method to assemble, oversee, and split the requisite knowledge to the whole organization. Knowledge management software helps companies or organizations to provide better product and service knowledge to their employees and customers who genuinely want to learn and solve problems related to the product on their own.

To have a firm stand in this increasingly competitive market, it is very important to keep abreast of the latest trends in software that will yield better productivity for them in the coming days.

Below is the list of the 5 best software that is accumulated from very extravagant websites such as GetApp, Capterra, and G2Crowd based on the honest reviews and ratings of the users. 

List of Best Knowledge Management Software Tools

 1. PeppyBiz: 

It's a platform with dynamic solutions for its users. It exhibits all your marketing scenarios across multiple channels under a single umbrella. It allures more visitors to your site with significant marketing software. Also, generate more traffic and convert your visitors by running all your inbound marketing campaigns with greater potential. Moreover, it introspects more opportunities to target prospects with productive service software. It also organizes the massive customer data all at one single roof without much hassle. 

Features that cater to its users:

• Quick and easy creation of articles
• Integrated management of knowledge with a well-structured hierarchy
• Power search option for users to get their content
• Understanding the customer needs in every possible way
• SEO-optimization of content
• Muti-lingual help content
• Chatting with articles
• Content organization and analytics

2. Freshdesk: 

Freshdesk is cloud-based customer support and knowledge management software that offers cross-functional team collaboration that businesses need in delivering exceptional customer service including numerous channel capabilities into one by integrating the platform. Freshdesk unites requests coming in across from all over sources and reprimanding to the customer needs. Works for business organizations be it small or mid-sized and resolves automated ticketing once appeared while customer support.

Attributes provided to the users:

• Cross-functional team collaboration
• Multiple integrating channels
• Customer management and support
• In-depth reporting
   

3. Zendesk: 

Zendesk, a knowledge management software that acts as a help desk, centre, live chat solution and provides powerful, and versatile customer service relationships and engagement platforms that meet all types of business requirements. It creates one single platform establishing meaningful and private relationships with customers and supports nearly 40 different languages in over 150 countries.

4. Knowmax: 

An Omni-Channel Customer Engagement and Experience Platform, Knowmax helps brands and labels attain their CX goals proving how important it is to share information. It, therefore, enables the flow of knowledge consistently across the assisted channels that are your contact centre field, retail, and Digital Channels such as websites, chatbots, and mobile apps.

5. ClickHelp: 

ClickHelp is a professional technical writing solution that allows companies to systematize their online documentation, and present it in a branded mobile-friendly portal in the form of online user manuals, knowledge bases, help files, and tutorials. Supporting multiple platforms, it needs no installation. The platform provides both an authoring environment where technical writers and documentation specialists can amalgamate on user guides and a hosting environment where users can publish-ready content. Ready documents can be exported in multiple formats and automatic synchronization is established. 

• Traits provided to the users:
• Professional technical-writing solution and integral mobile-friendly portal
• Online user manuals, tutorials, help files, knowledge bases
• Authorizing environment to collaborate on user guides and documentation specialists to publish-ready content
• Create multi-language document site
• Translation module for convenient translation process with automatic synchronization

6. Zoho Desk: 

Zoho Desk is a knowledge management system that helps agents, managers, and customers in all. It allows agents to become high-yielders, managers more poignant, and customers more satisfying. It is a fully specialized application and is easy to use. It allows businesses to focus on the customers and has the industry’s first context-aware help-desk software. It provides support teams with multiple support channels, and task automation to deliver fast and approachable support.

7. Confluence: 

It's a knowledge management software tool that erects, creates, and balances all the works of marketing, HR, finance, and project management. It is an open and inter-professional shared workspace for the teams of a company to bring in a higher level of potency and competence. Discussion boards, FAQ, a self-service portal, categorization, etc are some of its highlighted features. It allows users to get all the required information on a single platform.

8. Freshservice: 

Freshservice is a cloud-based knowledge management software tool that helps different organizations to focus on extraordinary service delivery and customer satisfaction. It is simple to use and has an easy UI with business functions such as HR, finance, marketing, and facilities. It provides users to connect sudden incidents to common problems, examines the root cause and suggests various workarounds, and keeps all the records safe in one place.

9. Litmos LMS: 

Litmos LMS is a knowledge management software built uniquely for mid-sized businesses and progressive organizations. It is an online training platform that helps in providing and delivering web and mobile training courses. It is fully expandable and has a robust API with distinct connectors.  synthesized learning, various language support, learner portal, synchronized learning, etc. are some of its top features.

10. ProProfs Knowledge Base: 

This simple yet powerful Knowledge management software tool is basically designed to help businesses create documentation, help sites, FAQs, user manuals, user guides, and more. Comprising unmatched features, smart settings, and integrations, the software is excessively helpful for minimizing customer support tickets, directing business knowledge, and simplifying easy access to it.  Click here to visit the ProProfs Knowledge base tool.

Conclusion:

After summing up everything, it comes before our eyes that knowledge management is a very vital part of an organization. It does not just help the customers to find their way but also the employees. If you are looking to expand your organization, knowledge management is the way to go with PeppyBiz. It plays a huge role in merchandising with customers and pleasing them. After reading all the above-written features and advantages of each tool, one can easily figure out and can choose the right software undoubtedly. 

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Some companies conduct their business as usual, and their knowledge management solutions are accelerating their growth or sustaining their momentum. Cloud technology, the hybrid workplace, graph databases, artificial intelligence, and language processing solutions lay the groundwork of a robust knowledge management environment.

There is an increase in the adoption of these technologies because of the pandemic. However, many businesses have planned for their digital transformation even before COVID. The contributions of these initiatives provide solutions to the complex work scenario.

The Hybrid Workplace

Technology-supported collaboration experiences a dramatic increase, and the hybrid work environment will likely be the norm even if the pandemic subsides. Collaboration platforms are steadily growing, and COVID increases the rate of their adoption. For instance, from November 2019 to October 2020, Microsoft reported at least a fivefold increase in the daily active users of Teams. From April 2020 to October 2020, there was at least a 50% increase in collaboration platform usage.

The use of videoconferencing is also commonplace as a substitute for face-to-face meetings, one-on-one interactions, and industry conferences. Its usage experienced a 10-fold increase over the past two years. Zoom was the prevalent choice, although Webex said that its number of users doubled. Although there were some imperfections in online interaction, there were also unseen benefits in increased spontaneity, lower travel costs, and remote work.

Collaboration tools like intranets and file sharing, enterprise social networking, analytics, and project management are also part of the hybrid workplace. According to Mordor Intelligence, the enterprise collaboration market reached the $36 billion mark, and for the next five years, it will grow by 10.7% annually. On the other hand, Adroit Market Research anticipates a $45 billion market by 2025.

Cloud Technology

Cloud technology allows work-from-home employees who also buy college essays online to access the same information. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a cloud component offering online applications, while Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) supports application development and deployment. On the other hand, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provides storage, servers, and networking in the cloud.

Gartner reported that SaaS adoption would increase 16% or reach $117.8 billion this year, while IaaS and PaaS would grow by 27% each. According to writing services australia, Amazon is the market leader in the public cloud sector, followed by Microsoft, Google, and Alibaba.

In 2017, Gartner defined content services as a new category, and they are moving to the cloud. This type of service represents enterprise content management, including a set of capabilities such as search and metadata, records management, intelligent content capture, and process management. Research and Markets forecast about 24% annual growth for content services from 2021 to 2026. Data Bridge Market Research offers a slightly lower prediction of about 22% by 2026.

Artificial Intelligence

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), from 2019 to 2024, the AI market revenues, including hardware, software, and services, will grow by 17% annually and reach $300 billion by 2024. As of August 2020, the expected revenues for the year were $156.5 billion, or a 12.3% increase from 2019. The slight drop is attributable to the pandemic, but IDC forecasts a higher growth rate. Electronic records management (ERM) and customer relationship management (CRM) are the broadest categories, with CRM vendors offering both employee and customer experiences in the use of AI.

In 2020, IBM, Deloitte, Cognizant, Accenture, and Infosys held about a third of the AI services market with 80% of the revenues, while AI business services accounted for 20%. IDC correlates business analytics and intelligent automation programs with a fragmented and crowded services market with 150 vendors.

McKinsey & Co. conducted an AI use study with 2,400 respondents in several specialty areas. High-tech, assembly, and automotive sectors are most likely to report a high percentage of AI adoption. Inventory and parts optimization, customer service analytics, and pricing and promotion experience revenue increase as well. Warehouse automation, contact center automation, and talent management experience reduced costs because of their AI adoption.

Graph Databases

Graph databases, although developed decades ago, have become mainstream in the last few years. As an emerging technology, they have not reached widespread application, but about 90% of organizations say they will use these techniques within the next five years.

In some essay writing services reviews, reviewers note that businesses use graph databases because of their native ability to store process complex queries, store relationships of data ability, and increase processing speed. Fraud detection and recommendation engines use these graph techniques to detect links among entities. Supply chain transparency and regulatory compliance are some of the use cases that offer significant benefits.

NLP and Text Analytics

Natural language processing (NLP) and text analytics include AI and use techniques to understand language. Text analytics is the technology behind intelligent search and analysis of large volumes of information. Scientists and pharmaceutical companies use it to analyze data about COVID-19 and its variants. Text analytics summarize findings, link articles to clinical discoveries, and uncover patterns.

Text analytics is also beneficial in analyzing content, emails, and social media to predict customer behavior, monitor customer sentiment, track compliance and detect fraud. Azure Cognitive Services include text analytics and speech-to-text services to allow companies to use these technologies.

Natural language processing (NLP) interprets the intent of written or spoken language through computers to respond appropriately. Researchers forecasted a slowdown in the market because manufacturing, consumer goods producers, and transportation and logistics industries experienced a downturn due to reduced customer interactions and supply chain issues.

Interactive virtual assistants and chatbots are predicting dynamic growth by producing benefits such as cost-saving. Juniper Research predicts an $11 billion savings across banking, retail, and healthcare by 2023. Mordor Intelligence estimates the global market for text analytics to be $5.5 billion in 2020, increasing by 17% annually over the next five years.

On the other hand, Mordor Intelligence predicts a growth of 20% per annum from 2020 to 2026 for NLP. On the other hand, Markets and Markets also have the same forecast.

Final Thoughts

The pandemic caused the onset of work-from-home initiatives, but some organizations have planned their digital transformation initiatives. Knowledge management technologies continue to move forward and evolve. Increased usage of these tools is steadily gaining ground and providing enriching opportunities to promote knowledge management.

Knowledge sharing at the workplace is essential for any organization that wants to grow and thrive. Successful organizations have a strong knowledge base due to teamwork support, continuous encouragement, and having an effective knowledge management system in place. While everyone in the organization is doing their best to achieve their goals, knowledge sharing can quickly change to knowledge hoarding.

The knowledge that employees share is an integral part of the knowledge-sharing culture. However, most people don’t realize this. Employees who have different perspectives on knowledge sharing will create huge problems for the organization in the long run because knowledge sharing will fail at its core. While the culture of knowledge sharing is developed to boost the efficiency and productivity of an organization, some employees are usually unwilling to share knowledge for different reasons.

Why hoard information?

While knowledge sharing sounds like a simple thing, it’s one of the hardest tasks for employees to perform. Most employees have no idea of the type of information they need to share. When they learn about the organization’s secrets, they tend to stop sharing information. They do this by hoarding the information they have. As we mentioned earlier, there are a couple of reasons that propel them to act in this manner.

1.     Lack of trust

One of the main reasons behind hoarding information is a lack of trust. Employees block and hoard information to stay ahead of their colleagues and receive rewards. To solve this problem, leaders need to focus on the goals and objectives of the organization. Employees need to be rewarded based on their progress. Also, leaders should encourage their employees to work together on projects to create an atmosphere of trust.

2.     Time management

Poor time management always results in failure and dissatisfaction. Every employee in an organization wants to perform their duties and achieve their long-term goals in the shortest time possible. This is why you’ll always find employees busy. With no time to spare, busy employees will have a hard time sharing important information with others. Instead of looking at information sharing as a separate task, leaders should encourage employees to delegate tasks to assignment writing services and include knowledge sharing in their daily tasks to make their work easy.

3.     Failure to understand knowledge sharing

While hiring new employees has its advantages, it’s quite difficult to find a newbie who understands the concept of knowledge sharing. Due to a lack of training on knowledge management and communication, they might fail to know what to do with the knowledge that they’ve been withholding. This problem can be eliminated if leaders find time to train newbies on sharing knowledge properly. Communicating with junior and senior staff regularly, and hosting in-house and web-based training will allow employees to learn more about the process of sharing knowledge. Apart from that, all webinar and training records should be easy to access.

4.     Lack of a common platform to share knowledge

Employees might feel vulnerable if they have to ask for information from upper management. A research study conducted by McKinsey and Company found that the average employee wastes 20 percent of his or her time searching for essential information or looking for a colleague who can help them obtain the knowledge they need. Leaders need to create a knowledge-sharing platform. Studies have shown that the creation of these platforms and using paper writing websites saves 35 percent of an employee’s time.

5.     Knowledge is power

Most employees know that knowledge is power. Therefore, the individual who hoards the most information is considered to be the most powerful in the workplace. Some employees will pile a lot of information in their heads while others lead them to get it. They hope to be treated in a special way for sharing information. Therefore, the management must identify and reward employees who share information and deal with those who hoard it.

6.     Considering information sharing as a non-important task

Some employees consider information sharing as a low-priority task and dedicate most of their time and energy to tasks that they consider beneficial and important. To solve this problem, the upper management should serve as an example to all employees. Leaders should find time to share knowledge with their employees and ensure that their employees do the same. They should also include knowledge sharing as an objective that has to be achieved by every employee in the organization.

7.     Punishing employees for sharing information

Some leaders and employees punish their colleagues for sharing information. As we said earlier, employees need to be trained on the knowledge sharing process to know the kind of information that they need to share. The knowledge-sharing process should be aligned with the goals of the organization.

8.     They think they are sharing information

Employees might be sharing information with their colleagues. However, they could be doing it the wrong way. They could be using the wrong channel or sharing the wrong type of information. Leaders need to show them how to share information using the recommended ways. Upper management also needs to ensure that their employees have the best tools and equipment to perform their duties.

Conclusion

When employees share knowledge properly, the organization will grow and thrive. Knowledge sharing nurtures teamwork, boosts productivity, and builds trust between employees and upper management. Leaders need to train employees regularly and encourage them to share information to promote themselves. Now that you know the reasons behind hoarding information, what are you going to work on today to achieve your goals?

In an age that is ushering in a more tech-focused society, smart cities are becoming standout initiatives for both governments and private sectors worldwide. In an effort to beautify cities, increase their accessibility, and improve general resources and sustainability in urbanized territories, cities are combining information and communication technology (ICT) with data infrastructure.

The ideal smart city, according to the IMD Smart City Index, balances “economic and technological aspects with humane dimensions.” Leading the field here on a global scale is Singapore, closely followed by Zurich and Oslo. Following the success of these cities, there is much to be gleaned from their data – and that is where the true benefit of knowledge management comes into play.

The Scope of Knowledge Management

But first, what is knowledge management? Knowledge management, as defined here by Zach Wahl, President and CEO of Enterprise Knowledge, is a process that “involves the people, process, culture, and enabling technologies necessary to capture, manage, share, and find information.” In community or team setting, this allows leaders to accurately assess public perception, address immediate needs, and make long-term predictions.

Because there is still room for growth in the arena of creating smart cities, the functionality of knowledge management works two-fold. On one hand, it allows local government units to efficiently approach the transition into a fully smart city via an expansive database. Currently, LGUs are able to assess the current state of their tech capabilities and accessibility then determine their strategy. As they start implementing initiatives based on this roadmap, any results from these can be studied and then added back to centralized database. This continuous chain reaction can be repeated an infinite number of times, so any new KM strategies will always be an enhanced version of its predecessor and so on.

Potential Applications in a Smart City

Effectively using knowledge management can greatly increase the success rate for developing smart cities and ensuring a smoother adoption. To further elaborate on the possibility of evolving knowledge management in smart cities let’s look at smart mobility. In a post on smart mobility by Verizon Connect, it states that it is an intelligent transport and mobility network, which is a core part of future smart city design. This is because of the influx in transportation infrastructure, on-demand ride sharing services, and shifts in consumer behavior. With the right data allocation and insight collection from knowledge management, a smart mobility ecosystem can be created in a timely manner. This can avoid the riskier pitfalls of progress, like increased pollution and congestion.

Remember, the core features of a smart city are its accessibility, connectivity, and sustainability. This is how it creates one big ecosystem that responds to its citizens and its resources seamlessly. By using knowledge management at their disposal, both governments and major players in the private sector can improve the quality of life for communities by promoting alternative modes of travel and developing infrastructure that supports these new modes, such as protected bicycle lanes.

A study featured in the IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC) reveals that context-appropriate innovations have seen the most success in different world regions shifting to smart cities. For instance, rather than implementing a generic sustainability plan, region-specific initiatives determined from knowledge management are more successful.

For instance, in countries suffering from urban air pollution and lack of safety in public spaces, such as India, the most pressing efforts are emissions and traffic. In fact, a Dalberg Advisors report in 2021 shows that poor air quality alone is a far-reaching issue that costs the country $95 billion annually. In response to these crises, data studies revealed that providing electric vehicles to combat carbon emissions, creating parking management systems to answer lack of parking and congested roads, and providing mobile apps to make public transportation payments and queuing more efficient were the most relevant solutions. The timelier and more personal the strategy, the more likely that initiatives will be supported and effective in building a smart city.

With a well-rounded approach, the application of knowledge management can also extend to health and social networks for emerging urban settings. With effective data handling, budget allocation, and consistent implementation, creating a truly smart city is a feasible reality for any region.