In today’s digital age, businesses store their data and information on digital platforms such as cloud services and intranets. Every day, companies generate large amounts of data, including customer interactions, internally generated data, reports, and documents such as SOPs. Every piece of data a company generates is uploaded to intranets and cloud services, creating a growing data pool. To organize this data pool and ensure that employees have access to the information they are looking for, you need to use knowledge management tools. If you don’t know what knowledge management tools are, we’ve got you covered!

In this article, we will explore what knowledge management tools are and examine how they can boost your business’s performance.

Ready? Let’s dive in!

TL; DR

  • Knowledge management (KM) enables an organization to collect, create, use, share and organize data.
  • The knowledge management process consists of data creation, knowledge organization and information sharing steps.
  • With knowledge management tools, you gain benefits such as faster decision-making, collaborative work, and increased employee productivity.
  • Your business needs knowledge management for benefits such as increased efficiency, access to reliable and up-to-date information, streamlining customer service tasks and internal communication.
  • If you are looking for an AI-driven knowledge management system that can both create new information and insight and keep all your company data organized, TextCortex is the way to go.

What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management (KM) is the process of collecting, creating, using, sharing with employees, and organizing an organization’s data. Knowledge management tools allow you to organize all your data and information and avoid outdated information or data pollution. Organized and easily accessible data and information allow your employees to quickly find the information they are looking for and complete their tasks without losing focus.

(by @smrvl via @DannyProl)

Knowledge Management Process

The knowledge management process aims to methodologically manage, organize, produce, share and use your business’s data and information. Although the knowledge management process includes different elements, it basically has three necessary steps.

  1. Knowledge Creation: The first step of the knowledge management process is to create the data and information required for the next steps. This knowledge may come from many sources such as documents, PDFs, SOPs, customer reviews, emails, reports, customer service chats, etc.
  2. Knowledge Organization: Knowledge collected from different sources should be organized according to your company’s needs, topics, departments, and dates. Thus, when employees want to access information, they can find it faster than a categorized list. Knowledge management tools offer advanced security thanks to both knowledge organizations and data access permission management.
  3. Knowledge Sharing: With knowledge management systems, you can share the data and information you collect and organize with your employees for various purposes and streamline their workflow. Moreover, thanks to AI-powered knowledge management tools, you can process your existing data and generate new knowledge.
Knowledge Management Process

Will Knowledge Management Improve Work Performance?

According to McKinsey’s research, businesses can increase their employees’ productivity by 20% to 25% by using knowledge management tools. As your employees’ productivity increases, your company’s profitability will also increase. 

According to a research, employees waste an average of 3 hours a day due to distractions. Most of these distractions are caused by a co-worker asking questions about data or the employee’s efforts to find the data they are looking for. Thanks to knowledge management tools that make it easier for your employees to access data and information, you can both increase your employees’ performance and your company’s efficiency.

Benefits of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management systems provide critical benefits for both employees and companies. Some of the benefits of knowledge management include:

  • Faster Decision-making
  • Easier Access to Data and Information
  • Increased Collaboration
  • Enhanced Communication
  • Improved Quality of Data
  • More Focused Work

Why Does Your Business Need a Knowledge Management Tool?

Knowledge management systems streamline company data and information, making it accessible and actionable for employees in the company. A high-quality knowledge management tool enables your employees to work more collaboratively and efficiently. Let’s take a look at the reasons why your company needs knowledge management tools.

Increase Productivity and Efficiency

Imagine your employees wasting hours looking through chat history, documents, and emails to find information. Moreover, suppose that when your employee finds the information they are looking for, they interrupt another colleague because they are not sure if it is correct or up-to-date. As a result, we have information that is not certain to be correct and two employees who have lost their focus. Fortunately, you can use knowledge management tools to avoid such scenarios and increase the productivity and efficiency of your employees.

Information Driven Decision-Making

Your employees and supervisors may have a difficult time making decisions about tasks or teams. Each employee should consult with an authorized person to check the accuracy of their decisions. However, this consulting chain will both reduce the efficiency of your employees and cause them to waste time. With knowledge management tools, you can create SOPs or workflows that will be decision-making guides for your employees and prevent them from wasting time.

Information Driven Decision-Making

Reliable and Up-to-date Information

Do your employees ensure that a document or information is reliable and up-to-date when they finally find it after searching for hours? To eliminate such a problem, you can integrate knowledge management tools into your company that organize all information and data according to the categories you specify.

Streamlined Customer Service

The most effective way to increase your company’s profitability and create a loyal customer base is to analyze your customer service data and make decisions based on this data. With knowledge management tools, you can organize customer service data according to specific criteria and make decisions that will increase customer satisfaction.

Internal Communications and Updates

Your employees will be more motivated and task-focused when they receive regular updates from higher-ups. According to a study, 85% of employees say they’re most motivated when management offers regular updates on company news. With knowledge management tools, you can create regular workflows for your employees and increase their motivation, enabling them to work more efficiently.

TextCortex – AI Knowledge Manager

TextCortex is an AI assistant that offers a variety of features for both individual and business users. With TextCortex, you can generate code/text/image content, access AI templates, experience conversational AI with web search, and streamline your workload. TextCortex is available as a web application and browser extension. The TextCortex browser extension is integrated with 30,000+ websites and apps to support your business anywhere and anytime. Moreover, TextCortex offers knowledge bases that can keep all your company data organized and use your data to generate AI-powered outputs.

ZenoChat – Knowledge Bases

TextCortex comes with ZenoChat, the only co-pilot your company needs. Featuring multiple large language models (LLMs), sophisticated retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), web search capabilities, custom personas, and the ability to generate text, code, and images, as well as knowledge bases, ZenoChat can address all the needs of your company and its employees.

ZenoChat includes knowledge bases where you can upload or connect all your company data. To integrate your company data into ZenoChat, simply follow these steps:

  • Create your free TextCortex account.
  • Head to the TextCortex web application.
  • Select "Knowledge Bases" from the left menu.

On this screen, you can manually upload your data or integrate your databases, such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Notion, with a single click.

Once integrated, you can create new insights and information that will enhance your company's efficiency by selecting the knowledge base you want to generate output from in ZenoChat's chat settings. See the results from one of our case studies:

  • TextCortex was implemented for Kemény Boehme Consultants as a solution to tackle these challenges and today employees report increased efficiency and productivity (saving 3 work days per month per employee on average).
  • AICX, an ecosystem partner of TextCortex, was integral to the onboarding and helped achieve a 70% activation rate of the team within the first weeks.
  • Employee confidence in using and working with AI increased by 60%.‍
  • The implementation results in a 28x return on investment (ROI).

Ready to explore more?

Click here to try TextCortex and see the difference it makes in improving your company's knowledge management!