Stay ahead of the game in the ever-evolving business world with the latest knowledge management trends. From AI-powered platforms to employee empowerment, discover the innovative techniques and tools revolutionizing the way companies harness, retain, and utilize their most valuable asset – knowledge.
Knowledge management can help your business enjoy a range of advantages. It can improve efficiency, cut down on costs and offer a positive employee experience. While it is a great concept, there are certain KM challenges that can reduce its effectiveness however implementing best practices can put you in a good position for the future.
Following up with the latest KM trends in addition to the creation of the best suited strategy for your business should be on top of your priorities to accelerate innovation and allow employees to share their knowledge and help each other for the ultimate sake of productivity and business growth.
The knowledge management trends in 2024 are:
#1- Wider adoption of Artificial Intelligence
The integration with AI can be seen clearly in different technologies. Knowledge management systems are no exception as the majority of the digital transformation tools currently on the market have begun to empower their solutions with cutting-edge cognitive technologies to make them smarter and more effective.
We can easily foresee more and more integration with AI to make the knowledge management process within organizations more efficient and less time-consuming including categorization, tagging, classification, content analysis, and so on.
40% of knowledge managers believe knowledge management will adopt an AI-driven search for organizational communication
#2- Social and collaborative technologies
Organizations should encourage their employees to share their knowledge gained from their daily experience on internal social networks, wikis, forums, and other digital tools. This will help other employees that might be facing the same issue to directly find answers which will improve productivity.
These technologies are becoming vital components to KM as it helps to have one single platform which consolidates experience gained and collaboration among team members.
#3- Knowledge automation
Automating knowledge management (KM) related practices is considered a key element in knowledge management trends because it allows organizations to improve efficiency and effectiveness in their daily operations.
Automating knowledge-intensive tasks can help to:
- Reduce errors: The risk of errors decreases, and the output quality increases when manual tasks are automated without human interference specially in the event of retaining knowledge.
- Improve accuracy: When manual knowledge tasks are automated, organizations can expect the same level of consistency which will assist improving the accuracy of knowledge being shared.
- Increase speed: Automation will speed up the execution of a business operation, improving the organization’s performance overall.
- Scalability: Automation can help to handle large amount of data and repetitive tasks, this can be a challenge for human to perform.
#4- More integration with business systems
KM systems will become more powerful when being integrated with other systems used within organizations. This will help with the overall digitalization plan as more and more workflow automation can be implemented in addition to creating a holistic view of customer and organizational knowledge.
We also anticipate an increase of the out of the box integration connectors that will align with your overall KM strategy. The goal is to reduce wasted time, declutter opened tabs and applications, and improve employee experience.
#5- Cloud-based solutions
According to Gartner, 82% of companies plan to allow employees to continue working from home for the foreseeable future.
One of the most critical knowledge management trends is the migration from on-premises solution to cloud-based ones. This will help reduce costs related to hardware and maintenance. In addition, it is easier to scale up or down depending on your organization’s business needs.
In order to free up employee time and resources, organizations may find that outsourcing specific tasks and responsibilities is an effective strategy. There are several benefits to outsourcing hardware, software, and maintenance schedules, including access to specialized expertise and increased scalability.
#6- User experience (UX) is king
No matter how advanced the KM software you are using, if it isn’t providing the best user experience, your employees will not be going to use it. This fact is well known by solution providers and one of the most critical knowledge management trends is to provide the smoother user experience possible.
Employees will be able to quickly find the required information, easily navigate the portal, and collaborate with other team members in the most effective way when the KM system is simple to use.
A good UX design can help improve usability, increase user adoption, facilitate knowledge sharing, increase user engagement, and enhance user satisfaction.
A successful KMS must, in general, provide a positive user experience for users to be able to access, search for, and use the information within the system efficiently.
#7- Intelligent search
52% of organizations have three or more ECM/DM/RM systems and 22% have five
or more systems.
As more and more organizations are adopting different systems to be used across departments, these systems are directly or indirectly creating their own repositories. Having so many information silos in your organization can have extreme negative effect on how your employees will access information and the time needed to locate it.
To give employees more accurate and personalized search results, Intelligent search employs AI technologies such as machine learning, computer vision, semantic search, and natural language processing. It breaks down data silos in businesses, allowing information to be extracted from potentially any data source.
Search intelligence can deliver smarter results faster and provides a single point of access to enterprise content sources, allowing data to be enhanced, searched, and analyzed in both structured and unstructured formats.
#8- Discussion forums
Discussion forums are becoming extremely essential in any KM initiative as it has the capacity to foster collaborative learning and information exchange. Forums provide a digital workplace for employees in an organization to share insights, experiences, and expertise in a structured manner.
In addition, they offer a centralized hub for knowledge sharing and retrieval which allows everyone to get easy access to the knowledge accumulated by other colleagues in order to drive innovation faster.
#9- Full customization
Personalized interfaces and functionalities enhance user experience, promoting greater engagement and productivity among employees. In a world where one size fits all systems are becoming old fashioned, customization empowers businesses to deliver an exceptional digital journey that will make your employees feel empowered to share their expertise.
#10- Personalized notifications
In this world where we are receiving too much information in a way that our brains can’t handle, tailored notifications are helping us to stay informed about what really matters for us. Most KMS nowadays provide a way for us to select which notifications we would like to receive based on different criteria such as role, preferences, and context.
This will help encourage us to know when a certain reply to our question is available to enable quicker decision making.
#11- Powerful tagging
Effective tagging provides a structured and intuitive way to categorize and retrieve knowledge assets. These tags enable users to assign metadata, keywords, and contextual information to content, making it searchable, discoverable, and highly relevant.
