We all use email for business communications and have for at least 10 to 20 years now.  Email is a convenient and efficient method of communication. But email communications can easily get lost in someone’s in-box. If you’re not included on an email thread or a message doesn’t get forwarded to you, you may not be aware of the information shared or decisions made. And if someone leaves an organization, often times their business or client knowledge remains locked in their email archives.

My last blog referenced the term “knowledge era” and I’ve been thinking more about the idea of knowledge management. Many tools have emerged in recent years for the purpose of managing knowledge, including wikis, intranets, and blogs.

At Certain Software, our sales and client services teams use salesforce.com. It’s a client relationship management tool for logging customer cases, tracking sales leads, storing client contact information, etc. When everyone uses the application to track their communication with customers, the knowledge and history is accessible to all of the teams. If an account manager has a conference call with a client, they can use salesforce.com to find contact information as well as see if the customer has contacted our help desk recently.

Similarly, we use an enterprise wiki and an issue tracking tool from Atlassian to track product requirements, test plans, bugs, and so on. These tools allow our developers, quality assurance engineers, customer service, and program managers to share knowledge and track progress. Certain Software is also launching an intranet to help manage knowledge and share infrmation with our new divisions around the world.

So, how does knowledge management relate to training? Without good organizational knowledge management practices and tools, it is more difficult and time-consuming for a new hire to get up-to-speed. Trainers and curriculum developers have to spend more time with subject matter experts to gather information. Until an organization implements and uses knowledge management tools, this cycle will likely be repeated with each new hire.

Veteran staff also benefits from effective knowledge management practices. If you need to locate a document, get acquainted with a client’s history, or learn more about company policies, you can do so more efficiently and effectively using knowledge management tools.