Why is Knowledge Management still Overlooked in 2024?

Lee Healey
Aug 21, 2024
4 min read

Despite its proven critical role in IT Service Management (ITSM) and the practice being established for many years, the importance of Knowledge Management continues to be somewhat neglected in 2024.

Lets face it, most ITSM tools and IT organisations have some sort of knowledge base (or sometimes several!), but how the never-ending cycle of knowledge is managed and it's effectiveness measured, proves to be a constant challenge.

We work with a lot of organisations across all different sectors and in various stages of maturity, but one of the things that most of them have in common, is the lack of effective Knowledge Management. Let's delve a little deeper on why it gets overlooked:

1. Its perception as Non-Essential

- Focus on Immediate Issues: Many organisations prioritise incident and problem management over knowledge management because they are directly linked to service availability and user satisfaction. Knowledge management often seems less urgent.

- Underestimating Long-Term Benefits: The long-term value of a robust knowledge management system, such as reducing recurring issues and improving decision-making, is often overlooked in favour of quick fixes and immediate results.

2. Lack of Ownership and Accountability

- Ambiguity in Responsibilities: Knowledge management responsibilities often lack clear ownership. Without dedicated roles or teams, it can become a neglected area, falling through the cracks between various IT functions.

- Shared Responsibility Dilemma: Without a solid defined KM practice, when multiple teams contribute to and access the knowledge base, accountability for maintaining and updating content may become diluted, leading to outdated or incomplete information.

3. Challenges in Implementation

- Complexity and Time-Consuming: Setting up an effective knowledge management system is complex and requires significant time and resources. Building a comprehensive knowledge base, ensuring content is accurate, and organising information in a user-friendly way can be daunting.

- Difficulty in Content Management: Ensuring that knowledge articles are relevant, up-to-date, and accessible can be challenging. The continuous effort required to manage and curate content often leads to neglect.

4. Cultural Barriers

- Lack of Knowledge-Sharing Culture: In many organisations, there’s a lack of a culture that promotes knowledge sharing. Employees may hoard knowledge, viewing it as a source of personal value rather than a resource for the organisation.

- Resistance to Change: Employees may resist using the knowledge management system, preferring to rely on their own experience or informal communication channels like emails or direct conversations.

5. Perceived Low ROI

- Difficulty Measuring Impact: Unlike incident resolution or service availability, the impact of knowledge management is harder to quantify. Organisations may struggle to measure the ROI, leading to reduced investment in knowledge management initiatives.

- Cost Considerations: The upfront costs associated with implementing and maintaining a knowledge management system, such as software, training, and content creation, may seem unjustified if the benefits are not immediately visible.

6. Underutilisation of Technology

- Failure to Leverage Advanced Tools: While modern ITSM tools offer sophisticated knowledge management features, many organisations do not fully utilise them. This could be due to a lack of awareness, training, or understanding of how to effectively implement these features.

- Missed Opportunities with AI and Automation: AI and automation can enhance knowledge management by categorising information, recommending relevant content, and keeping knowledge bases updated. However, organisations may not yet be taking full advantage of these technologies.

7. Integration Challenges

- Siloed Information: In many organisations, knowledge is spread across different departments and tools, making it difficult to consolidate and manage effectively. Without proper integration with ITSM (or ESM) and other systems, knowledge management can remain isolated and underused.

- Inconsistent Data Standards: Lack of standardised processes for capturing, storing, and retrieving knowledge can lead to inconsistencies that make the knowledge base less reliable and harder to use.

8. Focus on Short-Term Performance Metrics

- Emphasis on Incident Metrics: Many IT departments focus heavily on metrics like Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) or First Call Resolution (FCR). Knowledge management, which contributes to these metrics indirectly, may be sidelined because its benefits are harder to directly correlate with performance targets.

9. Inadequate Training and Awareness

- Insufficient Training: IT teams may not receive enough training on the importance of knowledge management or how to use knowledge management tools effectively. This can lead to underutilisation and lack of engagement.

- Awareness Gap: Employees may not fully understand the value of contributing to and using the knowledge base, leading to low adoption rates.

10. Strategic Misalignment

- Misalignment with Business Goals: If knowledge management is not aligned with broader business objectives, it may be deprioritised. Organisations focused on rapid growth, innovation, or cost-cutting might see knowledge management as a lower priority compared to initiatives directly linked to those goals.

Addressing the Challenges

To overcome these barriers, organisations need to:

- Prioritise Knowledge Management: Elevate its importance within the IT strategy.

- Foster a Knowledge-Sharing Culture: Encourage and incentivise employees to contribute to and use the knowledge base.

- Leverage Technology: Use AI and automation to streamline and enhance knowledge management.

- Measure Impact: Develop metrics to quantify the benefits of knowledge management and demonstrate its value.

In our opinion, organisations that effectively address these challenges can unlock the full potential of Knowledge Management and will yield powerful and sometimes surprising results, from what is often pretty low down the priority list of many ITSM strategies.

Whether that's around de-risking super hero dependent support operations, providing a more consistent service, encouraging a shift-left ethos, improving user self help, reducing costs, improving customer satisfaction, improving service quality, and, well.. the list goes on.

So please dont overlook the power of effective Knowledge Management.. it should be front and centre of everything we do.

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What is ITSM?

Information Technology Service Management processes include a range of activities designed to deliver and support high-quality IT services for your business. These can include incident management, problem management, change management, and service-level management. Additionally, ITSM involves continuous enhancement processes to improve service delivery, increase efficiency and reduce costs. By adopting strong ITSM practices, your business can improve service quality, customer satisfaction and achieve greater alignment between IT and business objectives. This holistic approach ensures that IT services are effective and integrated with your overall business goals. As ITSM focuses on aligning IT services with your business’s needs, you can ensure that IT processes and services support and enhance business operations. This is achieved through a structured approach to managing IT services, guided by best practices and methodologies such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). These models provide guidance on best practices for delivering and supporting technology and other enterprise services and can help companies align their capabilities with their business goals and strategic objectives.
What is ITIL and how does it underpin ITSM?

We adhere to the ITIL Framework in delivering our ITSM consultancy services. ITIL is a globally recognised set of best practices for ITSM that helps businesses provide consistent, high-quality IT services. By implementing ITIL processes and principles, we ensure that your IT operations are standardised, efficient and aligned with industry standards. ITIL4 is the latest version of ITIL, designed to help enterprises navigate the new technological era known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This version introduces a more flexible, modern approach to ITSM, emphasising its integration with other areas of business management.
What are the core practices and processes in ITSM?

Effective ITSM revolves around a number of processes. Whilst there are 34 practice areas in ITIL4, there are often a core set of practices that many of our clients are particularly interested in optimising. As understanding and implementing these processes can significantly enhance the performance and quality of IT services within your organisation. Incident Management Restores all service operations back to normal as soon as possible, minimising to lessen the impact on your operations. This process might involve logging, categorising, prioritising, and resolving incidents, ensuring which can help mitigate disruption to users and the business. Configuration Management Keeps an updated record of IT infrastructure - hardware, software, and network components - in a centralised configuration management database (CMDB). This database provides accurate data on configuration items (CIs) and their relationships. Change Management Ensures any changes to your IT services are controlled and coordinated. This process evaluates the impact of changes, approving them through a structured workflow, and ensuring successful implementation with minimal risk. Service level Management Defines, negotiates, and monitors service level agreements (SLAs) between the service provider and the customer. This process ensures that agreed-upon service quality and performance levels are consistently met. Asset Management Tracks and manages your IT assets throughout their lifecycle to ensure efficient use and cost control. You maintain an accurate inventory of hardware, software, and other IT resources through this. Problem Management Identifies, analyses and resolves the root causes of incidents. Proactively addressing underlying issues can prevent recurring incidents. This, in turn, provides improved system stability and reduced downtime. Request Management Handles the lifecycle of user service requests, such as access to applications, software installations or information enquiries. It ensures requests are managed efficiently to provide a streamlined approach that fulfils user needs and enhances satisfaction. Knowledge Management Captures, organises and shares knowledge to improve efficiency and support decision-making. By leveraging a centralised knowledge base, your IT teams can quickly resolve incidents and problems, and end-users can find the right solutions to common issues.
Why is ITSM important to organisations and their IT (and Enterprise) teams?

Implementing the right ITSM strategy and optimising your tooling can provide a range of benefits for your company, including: Improved Efficiency and Cost Savings By streamlining processes and automating routine tasks, ITSM can help your enterprise work more efficiently and reduce the time and resources required to deliver and support IT services. Good ITSM is a silent enabler of success across a range of organisational goals. Improved Compliance and Risk Management ITSM can help you ensure that your IT systems and processes comply with industry regulations and standards. It also ensures that you are effectively managing risks associated with your IT operations. This can help you avoid costly disruptions and legal consequences. Increased Productivity Effective ITSM practices can help your business prevent problems and fix them quickly if they do occur. This can help you lower costs—outages cost money—and increase productivity and employee satisfaction. Better Customer Satisfaction You can improve customer satisfaction and build stronger relationships by delivering high-quality IT services that meet customers' needs. Improved Service Quality ITSM ensures that IT services are delivered consistently and meet agreed-upon service levels, leading to higher customer satisfaction and better overall service quality. Business Continuity ITSM processes like incident and problem management ensure that disruptions are minimised and services are quickly restored to ensure business continuity. Strategic Alignment ITSM aligns IT services with business objectives, ensuring that technology initiatives support and drive business growth. This alignment helps you make informed decisions and prioritise projects that add the most value. Enhanced Collaboration ITSM promotes a collaborative environment where IT teams can work together more effectively, sharing knowledge and best practices to improve your delivery of services. Proactive problem-solving Through problem management and a proactive approach, ITSM helps your IT teams identify and address the root causes of incidents to prevent future issues and reduce downtime. Continuous Improvement ITSM encourages continuous monitoring and improvement of IT processes, allowing your IT teams to refine and enhance their service delivery regularly. Better Resource Management With ITSM, IT teams can manage resources more effectively, ensuring that personnel, technology, and budget are allocated optimally to support business requirements.
Do you provide ITSM tooling support and what tools do you specialise in?

The ITSM People are completely agnostic with ITSM tools and not tied to any vendors. Given the close relationship between ITSM related processes and ITSM tools, we often get involved in tool selection projects, or making recommendations on how to improve tools and get the best value from them. We work with tools such as ServiceNow, BMC, Jira, ManageEngine, Fresh, Halo and Xurrent.