Knowledge management is back on the menu. Early in my SharePoint career, knowledge management (KM) was a topic that was front and center in my conversations with internal stakeholders and later, as I transitioned to consulting, with my clients. As time went on, however, that changed.
Financial pressures and the difficulty of proving the organization’s return on investment for knowledge management projects eroded budgets and staffing to such a degree that many predicted the death of knowledge management. (Go ahead and do an internet search for “Is Knowledge Management Dead?”. You’ll see what I mean.)
Well, “everything old is new again,” as the saying goes. Withum’s Digital and Technology Transformation Team sees a significant uptick in clients and potential clients asking for help utilizing the Microsoft 365 platform (M365) in their knowledge management efforts. Why now?
- The Great Resignation – As large numbers of employees decided to retire or switch careers during the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations experienced “knowledge-leak” at an unprecedented scale. Many older, experienced employees decided to retire all at once, and many others – rethinking their priorities – changed careers looking for something more personally fulfilling. If it occurred at all, knowledge transfer was rushed, and organizations that didn’t already have a robust cloud-based meeting and calling software had to make knowledge transfer happen while simultaneously pushing out these new services. While proving the value of KM had been difficult when times were good, its value became painfully evident as critical project and process knowledge vanished in a matter of months.
- Hybrid Work – For most companies, hybrid work is here to stay, and although platforms like Microsoft Teams make chatting and calling with colleagues easy, most clients we talk to express how hard it is to train new hires and junior staffers in this new world of work. Robust and carefully curated knowledge resources aren’t a cure for lack of in-person mentoring, but they go a long way, allowing you to focus your “face-time” with new hires on what matters most.
- M365’s growing range of features – As someone who started her career with Microsoft products before SharePoint was called SharePoint (“I was there at the beginning…”), it has been so exciting to watch the platform develop and become what it is today. SharePoint is no longer the only game in town when it comes to KM in the world of Microsoft, but it is still a core player.
The features of M365 that we find most useful in knowledge management initiatives include:
- Modern SharePoint Experiences – Page tagging, modern search, drastic improvements in publishing features and the new visually stunning templates have taken SharePoint to a new level, and user adoption has never been better.
- The Power Platform – The Power Platform adds another set of KM tools to everything SharePoint offers, with the possibility of creating custom experiences using Power Apps and the ability to automate repetitive tasks and page lifecycles with Power Automate.
- SharePoint Syntex – Auto-classify content across all your SharePoint sites using the power of Azure Cognitive Services, helping you capture knowledge at the point of creation.
- Viva Topics – Auto-create “topic” pages that mine and aggregate content using the power of AI, but also give your knowledge managers the ability to refine further and curate them.
- Viva Learn – Provide employees with opportunities to consume learning content from third-party learning management systems or content your organization creates within the Teams platform, where they spend a large part of their working day.
Of course, I know that having knowledge management tools doesn’t mean you have a knowledge management program. Regardless of the tool you choose, having the processes and people in place committed to capturing, classifying, and curating the knowledge your organization produces is the only way to guarantee success. But more than ever before, Microsoft 365 has the tools to help you do that, no matter how large or small your organization and budget may be.