Save Time - Boost Productivity with Knowledge Base Software

by Anne Sych

Published on this site: August 24th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

Even in an era often referred to as the "Information Age"keeping track of information can be a daunting task. Companies are moving away from traditional paper documentation for internal policies, references and documentation. We are also seeing a growing trend for companies to provide their customers access to information with online self help tools. Organizing your information for easy retrieval is essential to be competitive in this marketplace.

The IDC, a leading global intelligence marketing firm recently studied the issue of knowledge management. They found that knowledge workers, some of the industries highest paid workers, spent about 20% of their day looking for information. In the American workforce, that translates to about 400 hours per year/per worker. The IDC further noted that about half of that time spent searching resulted in the workers (employees) still not being able to find the information they were looking for. Imagine"¦ 200 hours per worker (per year) of wasted time, or put another way, your employees wasting about 10% of their workday.

The blessing and the curse of the "Information Age" is that managers now have at their disposal a wealth of information. Organizing, storing and retrieving this information effectively requires a strong knowledge base system.

Knowledge base systems can typically be used for internal and external support. Internal support systems store company knowledge to be retrieved by management and staff. Administrator settings that are easily configured allow for optimum functionality such as flexible permissions controls, workflow, article review, etc. External support systems for customer self help should integrate with your existing web site and be easy for your customers to navigate. Ease of use, advanced search capabilities and the ability to rate articles are essential system features.

Knowledge base software systems are usually priced based on the number of administrators who will be managing the system. It pays to research the many features that are available to ensure you will not soon outgrow your system. Up front spending for functionality must be weighed against revenue lost for wasted employee time. A robust knowledge management system will save your employees search time and boost their search productivity.

IDC Research; January 2005; http://www.idc.com/