Trends for 2012- Knowledge Management

As we kick off the trends to watch for 2012, the list would certainly not be complete without the inclusion of Knowledge Bases or Knowledge Management. Seemingly every company I am working with today has some sort of initiative to overhaul how the customer service group or the whole company views knowledge.

There are any number of views on what Knowledge really is and how it should be gathered, stored, accessed and used. Some on one end of the spectrum believe that KM is really nothing more than a storage facility for information and Microsoft Sharepoint will do just fine. Others on the opposite end of the spectrum believe that KM is critical to the way a company needs to run it's business in 2012 and beyond. These folks argue that with the reshaping of the customer experience and the new dynamics of co creation with customers, there is a real opportunity to change the way that knowledge is created, used and stored that will fundamentally shift the KM space.

I am currently unsure of where exactly we are at in the KM cycle and mind set shift, but my sense is that we are somewhere in the middle of those views. From my conversations, there are a number of companies that are just starting to understand the value of having KM as a key part of their customer service strategy. While there seem to be just as many that already have some form of KM and are just trying to figure out what their strategy should be moving forward.

The one thing that I am certain of is that everyone is talking KM in meetings. They are talking about the desire to figure it out once and for all. They are talking consistency with their communication. They are talking about the single source of truth. They are working through models of how social customers impact their strategy. They are asking questions about a single stand along solution versus something that maybe comes as a part of a suite.

There are some very exciting technologies that exist in the market today for meeting the need you have as a company. The one caution that I would lay down for anyone looking to invest in knowledge is to try to think about how you can make knowledge come to life. Knowledge or information by its very nature is boring and static and certainly not sexy. Whether that knowledge lives in a data warehouse, a CRM system, a KM system or in a BI tool. The key will always be to take the time to figure out how to surface that information to the right person, in the right format, at the right time and in a way that will engage them so they will come back for more.

Yep, KM is a big hairy monster that many companies are just trying to grapple with. Take your time and make sure the knowledge lives and breaths......