How To Create a Knowledge Management Program That Won't Fail

You've heard the expression "knowledge is power." But you can only leverage the power of your knowledge if you have a centralized, integrated system. With a fail-proof knowledge management program, you can harness this power and use it to drive your business. But customer support managers, IT service professionals, and business leaders often struggle with establishing an effective system.

However, you can establish a knowledge-oriented culture if you know how to structure a successful knowledge management program. By carefully aligning with the right metrics, you can put your knowledge to work and make more effective business decisions.

An effective knowledge management program involves collecting, documenting, and using business knowledge. The sources of knowledge are often diverse. They can range from human resources activities to insights gained during the research and development process to intelligence from customer support regarding best practices when fostering relationships.

This is why a knowledge management program is an effective tool for breaking down the systems that keep valuable thought resources out of reach for decision-makers.

Seventy-nine percent of leaders believe a combination of knowledge management and insight is either very or extremely important for meeting business goals. [1] Here are the steps you can take to establish a fail-proof knowledge management program, one by one.

Allocate knowledge management program staffing

Your knowledge management (KM) program staffing structure should consist of three groups of people:

1. Service leader: A service leader is a manager within your organization who assumes responsibility and accountability for the success of your KM system. This could be someone who reports to the Chief Operations Officer (COO) or someone else in charge of facilitating effective processes.

2. KM program team: Your program team consists of stakeholders responsible for ensuring that each facet of your program fulfills its promise. It should have a program manager at the top who would manage a team of people in charge of projects, communications, business analysis, and training.

3. Operational team: The operational team has a knowledge management coach at the helm. This person serves as a guide as each team goes about identifying and collecting insights in your knowledge management software.

Depending on the size of your organization, you may condense roles, combining two or more so one person can have more of an impact.

Plan consistent communication

When it's time to change a process or program, your team should be consistent in communicating the reasons clearly.

From a team leader's perspective, persistent communication involves weekly or biweekly newsletters, team meetings, and coaching reports. These can showcase new discoveries, techniques learned, process updates, and how team members—and the program itself—are meeting milestones based on metrics.

Measure program success metrics

Metrics provide measurable goals used to gauge and celebrate success. These are essential for the success of a KM program because they add tangibility to artifacts that could otherwise be seen as "just ideas."

Adoption metrics

Metrics are particularly important for a KM program because they help drive team members as they generate useful KM articles. Here are some things you can use to develop effective adoption metrics:

• New articles create novel, helpful solutions

• Teams update existing articles with new information or solutions

• New or revised articles get published according to your established schedule

• The team avoids creating duplicate, redundant articles

These metrics make it easy to set and reach goals while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of your KM program.

Metrics for leadership

Metrics for leadership may consist of higher-level objectives as opposed to those that revolve around specific articles.

For example, leaders can assess how much money the KM program is saving different departments.

Leaders can also assess how the KM programs impact your customer effort score, which quantifies the amount of effort a customer has to exert to complete a process or have a successful experience.

Employee satisfaction can be another useful metric. Leaders can gather this data from employee surveys, comparing pre-KM implementation numbers to those gathered after employees have used KM-based improvements.

Metrics for your knowledge management program team

Your knowledge management program team can build metrics around:

• The ability for employees to provide more support thanks to KM-based improvements.

• The rate at which people can self-serve.

• The time it takes to resolve issues.

Service agent team metrics

To motivate your service agents, you can highlight metrics such as:

• How often people view knowledge articles.

• Customer click-through rates.

• Times when a user clicks on a support article and doesn’t initiate a support ticket, which attests to the value of the article.

• Employee satisfaction trends.

• Customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score improvements.

Implement a knowledge management recognition program

A knowledge management recognition program can be a powerful motivating force because it shines a healthy spotlight on all team members and their efforts. When you publicly acknowledge those who build KM articles, you reward them apart from those connected with the metrics highlighted above, which builds momentum.

Like all initiatives, a KM program is susceptible to pitfalls. Here are some of the traps you’ll want to identify and avoid as you craft your KM system.

Poor implementation or onboarding

Poor implementation often results from not giving your KM program adequate resources. This includes human, financial, and organizational resources.

For example,, suppose you decide to undertake a KM program and put a single person in charge of generating your articles. This individual collects insights from different departments by interviewing team members or by studying notes regarding their processes.

Regardless of how talented or hard-working this person is, there’s no way they can generate sufficient articles in a time-efficient way. If they were to create an article used to help customers self-service a software installation issue, that may take a week. But, at the same time, you have customers that need content to guide them through other common hang-ups, like the first steps after installation or the difference in workflows when working with different operating systems.

To avoid this mistake, it’s best to follow the staffing structure outlined above. In this way, you have enough people, and they have well-defined roles.

Lack of cultural or executive buy-in

Unless those in your company see tangible evidence that your KM makes it easier to generate more money, you may face significant pushback. Overcoming this obstacle is fairly straightforward: Document every success and quantify your wins.

Quantifying wins involves attaching numbers to the ways people use KM articles to improve their experiences. For instance, if a customer spends an extra three minutes on your website reading a KM article, this improves your site’s engagement stats. This can, in turn, boost your rankings on search engines. By documenting engagement numbers, you can highlight tangential benefits—significant bonuses that may be more tangible than those that the customers experience.

Lack of defined KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) in the context of a knowledge management program consist of quantifiable benchmarks that encourage the creation and use of knowledge resources. Without these kinds of KPIs in place, your program could flounder because stakeholders don’t know what’s expected or don’t have tangible goals to shoot for.

By following the steps outlined here, you can create a systematic KM program that boosts buy-in and encourages a smooth implementation.

The steps outlined above can serve as your foundation as you build your KM program, truly turning knowledge into power. You can create a fail-proof system with the right staffing, approach to communication, metrics, and a recognition program. Whether your KM program is aimed at customers, employees, or both, you can grow it into a revenue-supporting, efficiency-boosting resource.

The next step is identifying software you can use to facilitate a smooth, effective KM program. Here are some resources to help you get started:

• Knowledge Management Category Leaders Report

• Knowledge Management Software Buyers Guide

• Knowledge Base Software

• Knowledge Management Software