What Can Knowledge Management Systems Do For Your Business?

By Author: Julia Bennet
Total Articles: 1401
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When it comes to business, every edge that you can have over your competitors is welcome. Knowledge management systems play an integral role in decision making. One can make a positive choice from an educated standpoint and that is why you have to have a system that allows you to do that.

The thing with decision making nowadays is that it has gone more horizontal as opposed to vertical. Earlier on people had to depend on one person to make all the final decisions for them. This opened the process of decision making open to abuse and mismanagement. To this end, many organizations are adopting the more horizontal type of decision making. These systems that companies are adopting are geared toward ensuring that people are accountable for their choices. This is where knowledge management comes into play. Knowledge management is a system that ensures that people are accountable for their roles in the decision making process. However, the problem with collective decision making is that most people tend to hide behind the group if the choices are detrimental to the business or the attainment of the business objectives.

If ...
... you have adequate knowledge, it is expected that decision making will be much faster and more informed. However, times will always be there when you are looking at people who make irrational choices that lead nowhere. It is to be expected considering that to err is human.

Knowledge management systems should be designed in a way that they are easy to use and one can get the knowledge very quickly. When you have knowledge management software in place it is expected that you will create a repository of information. There is this phenomenon called corporate amnesia where companies have no recollection of their history and past decisions. By learning past decisions, you can get rid of corporate amnesia and as well provide a more informed and reliable decision.

Suppose a newbie comes into your company and does not have access to information from which they can reference the history of the company, it is hard for them to move in the direction that you want the company to go. Companies that have implemented these software in their firms have had very easy time staving off corporate amnesia and orienting new staff in the direction that they want the company to go. With that in mind, it is important to highlight that since you want a system that helps you out, shopping for decision making software is critical. You are looking for the right source of information so that you can get started as soon as possible.

So what makes or breaks a knowledge management software?

Ease of use. Some systems are very complex and take ages to use. This in turn hampers the decision making process. The system should be very easy to implement so that people can get to working as soon as possible.

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