Knowledge management has become an important aspect of almost every business nowadays – and it’s clear why. But what could be challenging to some knowledge managers is keeping their systems in check. This is when technical writing can be incredibly useful, so here’s everything you need to know about the importance of technical writing in knowledge management.

What Is Knowledge Management?

To put it simply, knowledge management allows businesses and organizations to identify, create, capture, acquire, share, and leverage information and knowledge. In this case, the said information or knowledge is viewed as a valuable asset. Knowledge management is mostly performed with the help of knowledge managers and knowledge management systems.

Knowledge management systems help categorize, capture, use, and analyze knowledge used within your business for different processes as well as for decision-making. This kind of knowledge transfer lets you easily share information between your departments and teams. With a knowledge management system that is set up correctly, you can train employees more effectively, make your activities more cost-effective, improve productivity, and so on.

What Is Technical Writing?

Technical writing is a style of writing used mostly for formal or official documents, instructional manuals, policies, business procedures, and more. In other words, it is a very broad term, but at its core, technical writing is about gathering the right technical information and writing it down for documentation and other purposes.

Jean Cornish, an expert from the writing services reviews site Trust My Paper, says, “Some businesses make sure to have at least one in-house technical writer while others think that anyone can do the job. This is far from reality. Technical writing requires certain skills to be done correctly. Moreover, it plays an important role for businesses of all kinds as it allows companies to keep documentation in check, organize business processes, and more.”

How Are the Two Connected?

So, how exactly are knowledge management and technical writing connected? Both work with information or knowledge, so both technical writers and knowledge managers often have to perform extensive research to collect relevant data that they can then use. But beyond that, technical writing is essential for successful knowledge management.

AI and machine learning allow knowledge management systems to develop into more accurate and highly-functioning programs. However, categorization is still often lacking in quality, especially considering that there are new laws and policies being introduced every day (e.g. GDPR, privacy regulations). This is why technical writers are so important for knowledge management.

These are professionals who can use their skills and experience to provide more comprehensive descriptions and instructions than a machine ever could. Technical writers use techniques such as the Pyramid Principle to create more accurate documentation for knowledge transfer. With more high-quality documentation, your overall knowledge management will improve too.

What Are Some Best Practices to Follow for Technical Writing?

Harris Park, an expert from the custom writing reviews site Supreme Dissertations, explains, “Ideally, you will want to hire at least one technical writer to work on your knowledge management. However, if you don’t have the resources to do so just yet, you can start learning technical writing skills yourself.”

To help you get started, here are some technical writing best practices to follow:

• Outline Your Text: Before you start writing, it’s a good idea to first make an outline of the text you are about to write. Structure is extremely important for technical writing, so the best thing you can do is organize all of your information beforehand. You can also format your text for easier readability with the help of paragraphs, subheadings, bullet-point or numbered lists, and so on. Also, keep in mind the layout you might have to follow depending on the type of text you are writing.
• Be Reader-Oriented: Always put your reader first and foremost. Don’t expect your audience to have prior knowledge on a particular subject unless this is very basic knowledge. If you refer to particular concepts, explain them or link to resources that explain them. Don’t skip steps in instructions or guides. And, of course, use simple and clear language that your audience can understand. Too much jargon can be intimidating and confusing.
• Combine Text with Visuals: Though you are a technical writer, you still need to consider situations when you will have to supplement your text with visuals. In some cases, it’s simply not enough to have just the text. This is when you will have to combine text with visuals (e.g. photographs, illustrations, infographics, schemes, or even videos). If a process you are describing is particularly complicated or nuanced, a visual you include might be better at explaining it than your text.
• Review Your Text at The End: One thing you should always do when you have finished writing your text is review it. Check that all of the necessary information is included and that it is structured in a logical and clear way. Make sure that there are no grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors and that your wording and word choice are all right. Make the final changes before you submit your work to your organization’s knowledge management system.

Conclusion

To sum up, your knowledge management strategy can definitely benefit from technical writing. Use the information in this article to help you get started and begin implementing technical writing into your knowledge management by hiring qualified technical writers.

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At its core, the field of knowledge management is focused on connecting people with the knowledge they need to work successfully. A big part of that is improving productivity, which is a win for both businesses and employees. 

According to Forrester Research’s Employee Experience Maturity Assessment, “What matters most for employee engagement is being able to make daily progress in the work that they perceive matters most.” In other words, employees want to be productive and feel that they are having a tangible impact on their organization. And to be successful, they need access to tools and resources to help them make informed decisions, overcome blockers, and meet their goals. 

How Knowledge Management Impacts Productivity 

Modern knowledge management involves centralizing the collective intelligence of an organization and making this knowledge searchable so that all employees can benefit from it, no matter where they’re working.

Easy access to the knowledge that exists across the organization gives employees the resources they need to make meaningful daily progress. They are able to take institutional knowledge and learnings from their peers and apply it to their work, whether they are assisting customers, troubleshooting internal processes, making product decisions based on research, or anything in between. And greater access to knowledge translates to faster and more confident decision-making, fewer errors, and more successful outcomes overall.

Below are a few examples of ways that knowledge management can improve productivity:

• Minimizing disruptions in the flow of work. On average, it takes knowledge workers 25 minutes to get back on task after an interruption. When employees can find the information they need through a quick search, rather than stopping what they’re working on to search multiple repositories or track down a subject matter expert (SME), they experience fewer disruptions and get more done.
• Minimizing repetitive requests to subject matter experts. SMEs often have to field the same questions from different employees, causing unnecessary disruptions. When SMEs can document the answer to a question once and share it with all employees who need that information, they get more time back to concentrate on meaningful work.
• Getting answers to customer questions faster. For customer-facing employees, or employees who work with internal stakeholders, providing timely answers to customer questions is crucial. When employees can perform a keyword search and quickly surface an answer, they can help customers more efficiently and provide a more positive customer experience.

How Knowledge Managers Can Improve Knowledge Access and Productivity 

As a knowledge manager, you can play a key role in improving knowledge access, productivity, and the overall employee experience. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind as you build or refine your organization’s knowledge management strategy:

Start by making knowledge searchable.

There’s a reason why “Google” has become a verb: people are used to performing a quick online search to answer the questions that come up in their daily lives. Employees should be able to benefit from the same convenience in their work lives, which means that all company knowledge must be documented and made searchable within a centralized platform.

When evaluating knowledge management platforms, look for solutions that deep index all content—not just titles and tags. This will help employees find relevant content even when they don’t know the title or exact match keywords. It will also help employees discover information across different file types, including slide decks, videos, and audio recordings. 

When all company knowledge is searchable, employees spend less time digging through old email threads or navigating complicated mazes of shared folders and more time applying that knowledge to their work.

Account for the different ways people search.

While search should be at the core of your knowledge management strategy, it’s also important to consider the different ways people look for information. Think about the experience of online shopping: you might start by performing a keyword search but then narrow down your results using filters such as price point or color. Employees expect to be able to navigate your knowledge management platform in a similar way. They also expect their search results to match their intent, not just their exact keywords. For instance, if they are interested in content on “telecommuting,” they are likely interested in content that contains the term “remote work” as well.

Look for a knowledge management platform that supports synonym searching and the creation of customizable filters so that employees have multiple paths to get to the information they need. This will allow a wide range of platform users to work more productively without having to predict the exact keywords that different content creators used in their documentation.

Package knowledge in digestible formats.

Before employees read a lengthy article, watch a recorded training session, or parse through a detailed research report in a slide deck, they want to know the content contains the key information they are looking for. You can help them identify relevant content faster by providing some quick context clues with all contributions. 

Adding thumbnail images to all contributions provides a great visual shortcut for content consumers. The human brain can process images in just 13 milliseconds, meaning that seeing a thumbnail can help employees gauge what a piece of content is about faster than they could from just reading the document title. Thumbnails can also be used to visually group together related content (for example, all product updates could incorporate a thumbnail with the same color). 

Short descriptions or summaries at the top of a document can also help employees determine if it makes sense for them to keep reading. Because it can be time consuming for content contributors to add a summary to every piece of content they share, it’s worth looking for a knowledge management solution that can ingest text-based documents and automatically generate a description and summary.

Look at search trends to identify knowledge gaps.

Arming employees with a powerful search engine is just half of the equation for improving productivity: you also need to ensure that the information employees are searching for is documented and available to them when they need it. 

If your knowledge management platform provides built-in reporting, you can look at the most frequently used search terms to better understand what employees are looking for and whether there are existing resources that meet their needs. From there, you can build a list of new knowledge assets to create and collaborate with the appropriate subject matter experts to add them to the platform. 

Make Knowledge Accessible On Demand.

As the ways we work change and organizations increasingly shift towards remote, hybrid, or flexible work schedules, the role of the knowledge manager is becoming more important than ever. By establishing a knowledge management system that helps employees access knowledge on demand, no matter where and when they are working, you are setting them up to work more productively and make more meaningful daily progress. And that’s something that’s worth celebrating for both businesses and employees.

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There are many companies out there with employees who don’t see Human Resources as their friend, especially when they have to reach out to them for help. For example, an employee may reach out to HR for clarification on a policy and not get a response for days. Or, within the HR team itself, members may find themselves obtaining the same information repeatedly from employees because they don’t have a central system to refer to.

If these struggles sound familiar and you’re ready to mitigate the harmful effects on your team’s productivity, collaboration, and communication, knowledge management can help.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept, experts say that “HR knowledge management is the practice of centralizing all HR documents, policies, information, and knowledge, and making that vital information easy for anyone in the company to access and update from anywhere.”

HR departments can use knowledge management to keep everything HR-related in the same place and accessible, which, in turn, betters the workflow across the organization. 

Let’s explore seven reasons why HR teams need to utilize knowledge management.

Standardize HR Policies and Practices

First, knowledge management can help you regulate HR policies and practices. You can keep your HR team on the same page with how they conduct themselves and go about their specific job roles.

Also, you can keep all of your company’s HR policies in one place and make them accessible to all employees. That way, when they need to refresh themselves on a specific policy or find out if a particular policy exists, they can access accurate information about those things.

Better Communication Practices

Unfortunately, there are various reasons why employees don’t share knowledge. For instance, they simply don’t have the time to get the information out because they’re busy with their primary job responsibilities.

Or, there isn’t a designated platform for sharing knowledge, which results in employees spending way too much time searching for information they need, so they just scrap looking for it altogether.

However, with knowledge management, you can create an environment that encourages better communication practices. You can set a standard that information sharing is not only encouraged but required for the effective communication and collaboration of the team.

Better communication practices make it easier to share information and develop a strategy for sharing knowledge across your organization effectively.

Get Information Faster

Knowledge management allows you to find the information you need faster. For example, employees don’t have to wait for a response from HR to find out information. Instead, they can access the same data themselves and find the answers they’re looking for whenever they need to. 

Also, a quicker turnaround can be especially beneficial for fully remote or hybrid teams as we trend in that direction for all workplaces. These employees don’t have the luxury of stopping by HR to get a quick question answered. So, knowledge management becomes that much more critical to how well your team works together remotely.

Learn More About How Employees Use HR Information

With knowledge management, HR teams can learn how employees are accessing and using HR information. For example, you can find out what kind of information they’re seeking the most and how they get to that information. 

Also, studying how employees use HR information can give you insight into which functions and features employees aren’t using, but should be because it would make their jobs easier. Armed with information like this, you can highlight opportunities for further training. 

Highlight Opportunities for Further Training

When you see how employees navigate your knowledge management system, you can pinpoint where more support and training may be beneficial.

For example, let’s say you’re getting consistent requests for information readily available in your knowledge management solution. You can then create specific training for finding this information in the system and offer it to all employees.    

Simplify the Onboarding Process

These days, a packet of information about their job responsibilities and your company’s history just won’t do for the employee onboarding experience. Instead, HR can improve the onboarding process by moving it to a knowledge management system.

Adding and updating employee information is a lot easier. Employees have access to all of their HR documents and information should they need it. They can also complete any paperwork, pieces of training, or provide any other necessary documentation right in the platform, minimizing the time and money spent on the onboarding process. 

Improve Employee Well-being

This benefit probably doesn’t come to mind right away, but a knowledge management solution can improve employee well-being.

For instance, burnout is real, especially during the holidays. It’s so easy to get consumed with completing projects before the year’s end and keeping up with customer demand during this time. But, with knowledge management, you can identify employees who’ve yet to use their vacation and sick days and encourage them to do so to avoid burnout and better the chance of them having good morale when they return.

You can also find out more about the personal lives of your employees through knowledge management. You can use what you learn about their passions, interests, family background, and other information to improve their motivation and, ultimately, their productivity.

For example, if you find out an employee’s been having a tough time, you can decorate their office space with motivational quotes, beautiful artwork, office plants, and other decors that they would love to lift their spirit.

Conclusion

HR teams need to utilize knowledge management to encourage consistent communication and accurate knowledge sharing across the organization. Knowledge management can also help you define how your teams work together and streamline their efforts.

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A reactive approach to running a business is just not enough. Instead, you need to actively find new ways to provide value to customers. This is why a proactive approach must be adopted. One of the ways you can be more proactive is by combining your knowledge management system and CRM. 

Integrating knowledge management (KM) with CRM has become a necessity. It allows organizations to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. When it comes to managing customer relationships, every bit of information is important. The worst mistake that you can make is overlooking issues.

A robust KM and CRM integration will support your business in ways that you cannot even imagine. Besides, around 89% of customers expect businesses to provide the best experience. Read our guide to find out how integrating knowledge management and CRM can prove beneficial.

What is a Knowledge Management System?

Before we cover what a KM and CRM integration can do for you, you must understand the purpose of a knowledge management system. It is an IT system that stores and retrieves knowledge for improving collaboration, understanding, and alignment.

Not only can a KM system be used by teams within the organization, but it can also be used to center the knowledge base for customers.

What Is A CRM?

CRM stands for customer relationship management. It is a tool that helps businesses establish long-term relationships with customers. It assists with developing, acquiring, and retaining customers.

The software ensures smooth and efficient interaction with consumers to increase overall profit. It gathers customer data from various channels to provide detailed information about customers to make the right decisions.

A popular CRM that you might have come across is the Real Estate CRM. It is a powerful tool that can be integrated with your KM system to provide outstanding results.

How Can Knowledge Management and CRM Can Support Your Business In 2021?
1. Increases Productivity

One of the ways KM and CRM integration can support your business is by increasing productivity.

The integration will enable your employees to access company information and commonly asked answers directly from the KM system when responding to customer requests in CRM.

It would help eliminate research time and the need to conference with other employees, which would significantly increase productivity. Besides, switching between applications would only require customers to wait longer, which would frustrate them.

2. Reduces Redundant Tasks

Another way a KM and CRM integration can provide support to businesses is by reducing redundant tasks. The CRM system will update the information learned during every resolution, whereas solutions for repetitive issues can be converted into an article on the knowledge base.

As the world of business evolves, you must eliminate redundant tasks to stay ahead. Otherwise, your company would become redundant altogether. Keeping up with the latest innovations is the only way you can compete with major players.

3. Improves Customer Satisfaction

By integrating KM and CRM, you get to provide your customers with self-service capabilities which they can use when they visit your website. They can easily browse through the FAQs online and find a solution for the problem that they might be facing.

Moreover, if there is no answer or resolution for the issue, your customers would be instantly routed to a live agent who can take over things from there. New cases would be automatically generated by the system, which would alert agents. Thus, you will benefit from improved customer satisfaction.

4. Increases Effectiveness

Keep a complete track of the questions, emails, and calls with the help of the integration. It will ensure that you benefit from a clear measurement of Effectiveness. Find out how well your team is doing to ensure accountability and improve Effectiveness.

Besides, you also get to find out which issues are the most repetitive and active for making sure that you can resolve the issue for good. Only when you monitor each issue extensively will you be able to provide real value to customers.

As you respond to customer needs, you will be able to build knowledge where appropriate and track Effectiveness. This would allow you to monitor the productivity of customer-facing employees and motivate them to work harder.

How to Integrate Knowledge Management and CRM?

Integrating KM and CRM is not easy. However, it is possible by following the steps mentioned below.

1. Source the Information for the Integration

The first thing that you need to do to integrate the two systems is to know what knowledge to document. Find out which problems, questions, and issues customers face the most and how you can document their answers.

Make sure to involve the CRM team to determine which issues customers frequently face. There are different pieces to the puzzle. Hence, you must ensure that every piece is integrated to cover the entire customer experience.

2. Organize the Integration

The next step that you need to take is to organize the integration. Here is how you can do this.

• Chunk articles into topic categories.
• Determine the most frequently asked questions.
• Create a separate page for knowledge management on your website and integrate it with supplementary resources like live chat.
• Measure the Effectiveness of the integration by including a feedback mechanism.
• Use different types of media such as text, images, and videos since people learn differently.
• You should also consider leveraging Google Analytics for developing advanced customer education training.

3. Continuously Optimize the Integration

Finally, you have to continuously optimize the integration to keep customers satisfied. Analyze customer success and track metrics such as conversion rate and bounce rate to make necessary improvements. Make sure to evaluate customer feedback to keep track of every minute detail. Then, you can proceed with the changes to provide greater value to customers.          

Takeaway

KM and CRM provide extensive support to businesses. By integrating the two, you can take your business to the next level. Our guide aims to provide you with a foundation on the topic. Always remember that a proactive approach is the best way forward.

By implementing the integration, you can expect to increase productivity, reduce redundant tasks, and increase Effectiveness. Hence, it is about time that you started planning the integration.

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It is said that knowledge is the king; it is entirely accurate, especially today, in this age of great advancement. People with knowledge are intellectuals, thus are an asset to an organization, and it is attributed to their aptitude that different organizations look for opportunities to rope them in.

While the aforementioned statement is hundred percent true, such people think that holding their knowledge to themselves makes them an asset, which is untrue. Knowledge acquisition is basic human nature.

The unique quality of the knowledge is that it can be preserved, improved, and transferred through reflection, application, and sharing.

The best way to preserve and spread knowledge for the collective well-being of an institution is through sharing and teaching. It is the institution's responsibility to manage and maintain a steady circulation of knowledge within and outside different groups, as it ensures personal and business growth. In this article, we will discuss how knowledge management (KM) can improve employee efficiency in a company.

First of all, What does knowledge management mean?

KM is a process of creating, using, sharing, and maintaining the organizations' knowledge and information. It is cherished as one of the useful strategies used in business sectors to use the knowledge assets to advance their growth and success. The core purpose of employing knowledge management strategies is to help those who seek knowledge meet with those who already have it.

Tom Davenport articulated the most precise and accurate definition of knowledge management as:

"Knowledge management is capturing, distributing, and effectively using  knowledge."

Why Knowledge management is essential to improve employee efficiency:

1.      Easy to access knowledge:

When all the employees from top to bottom have easy access to knowledge and the required information, they are able to complete their tasks on time. They can better examine a situation and come up with a solution. Not only this, they can produce high-quality work, as they will have their hands on every information needed to perform their job. Therefore, the organizations where the employees can easily access the relevant information and knowledge are more efficient and productive.

In contrast, if the workers are not given the opportunities to capture knowledge, they will struggle to complete their tasks. Even if they manage to do, they will not be able to produce competitive results. Therefore, the organizations that focus on making the information and knowledge available to their employees are most affluent and successful as their employees can produce impeccable results for the company.

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2.     Leads to innovation:

How do innovations take place? They take place where there are ideas: the more ideas, the better. A team that abounds with lots of information and knowledge can work efficiently and creatively, leading to innovation. The researchers have noted that the abundance of ideas empowers people to make innovations. The more the ideas, the more the innovations and the more will be a company's success. Therefore, gearing your teams with essential knowledge and information and offering them the opportunities to get indulged in carving the knowledge to develop new ideas and plans to execute is of sheer importance. For example, if a  marketing company has a number of marketing experts with wide knowledge and experience, who sit together with the market analytics in their hands, you can inevitably expect them to do some sort of innovations, helping your business grow by leaps and bounds. 

3.     Improves collaboration among the team:

The members of a team are the most productive when they are tied and integrated with each other. Do you know how? The essence of making the team is that each member strives to achieve a single goal. If all the members of the team are fragmented and do not collaborate, they will not be able to complete their job efficiently. It is the job of a team lead to bring all the team members together and use their abilities and knowledge effectively. The companies which focus on KM are well aware of the importance of teams collaboration for boosting the practice of sharing knowledge and using it effectively. In order to ensure the productivity of knowledge management, the employers tie the employees together, which strengthens their cooperation and cohesion.

4.     Helps find out the ineffectively applied knowledge:

Producing flawless work is not only about avoiding mistakes but reducing the mistakes that are already being made. When there is sufficient knowledge available to cross-check the assumptions or practices made by the employees, it can result in producing high-quality work. It can be said that the KM strategies help the employees identify the inefficiencies in applying their knowledge while making decisions or tasks that enable them to reduce redundancies. In essence, when the employees are aware of their mistakes in their judgments, decisions, or practices, they will avoid doing them the next time, which boosts their efficiency. 

5.     Improves well-being of the employees:

If you are really looking forward to increasing the efficiency and productivity of your employees, you must ensure their well-being. Work-related stress has serious psychological impacts on the employees, which cripples them from performing proficiently. On the one hand, they are pressured by the employers to complete their work, and on the other hand, the insufficient resources or an abundance of mismanaged resources makes them highly infuriated and disturbed mentally. The KM practices can ensure that the employees are supplied with the required information and knowledge. They are able to focus on what is important and complete their tasks easily, leading to their well-being.

Bottom line:

Curating knowledge management strategies in a business allows the employees to easily access the relevant information and knowledge to work seamlessly and efficiently in groups and individually for the accomplishment of their roles and success of the business.

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