As an organisation, how do you find an effective way to collect existing knowledge within your organisation? And how can you deploy it quickly so that you can outsmart your competitors, for example?

In this article, we explain how good information management allows you to make the best use of existing knowledge in the organisation.

M-Files is a metadata-driven information management platform designed to address common knowledge management challenges. This is possible thanks to tools that capture, codify and reuse knowledge, so that knowledge can be used again and again for a variety of purposes.

One of the nice things about M-Files is that when you do searches, you can search in a way that makes sense to you and as a result you get documents back. Someone else can search those same documents in a completely different way. They search in a different way and still get the same results. - Property IT manager

Challenge 1: Capturing and reusing knowledge

What does an organisation run into?

• Expertise is lost over time.
• Knowledge is not captured or reused.
• Precious employee time is wasted by inefficient information searches.
• Difficult to find existing assets/documents to help with new deals or projects.

The solution

• A knowledge base that collects and makes intellectual capital accessible.
• The ability to tag documents with metadata, putting information in context and simplifying reuse.
• Make sure truly all company data is connected to tools that offer powerful search and filtering capabilities.
• A platform that helps identify related information, people and projects to gain more insight into topics.

Different automated workflows is the key. With M-Files, you can have more than just documents, you can also have other objects such as customers, staff, assignments, projects, branches and much more. - IT manager business services

Challenge 2: codifying knowledge

• Employee productivity suffers from the lack of templates.
• Updates to templates and new versions do not reach employees.
• Organisations seem unable to capture lessons learned.
• Processes are executed and tracked manually, without guardrails to avoid missteps.

The solution

• A platform for managing and generating documents.
• Automatic templates, including checks for approval.
• A periodic review of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and systematic check of new ideas.
• Capture organisational knowledge in automated workflows.

We would not be where we are today without M-Files and the way we would have moved forward would have been very different. We are able to do a lot more things that are really going to help us become more efficient and that with a strong return on our investment. - Consulting industry director

Challenge 3: Automating knowledge processes

• Organisations understand the importance of knowledge management, but struggle with implementation.
• Fear of leaking customer information and therefore refrain from sharing information.
• Too busy to see how reusing knowledge, documents and resources helps in the long run.
• Frustration in finding relevant or up-to-date information in existing sites.

The solution

• A platform that enforces, guides, and automates steps needed
  for capturing and reusing knowledge.
• Automated workflows that ensure a flawless anonymisation process with reviews, approvals and publication.
• Classify and tag knowledge assets with more context making them easy to find.
• Periodic reviews of knowledge documents to keep them up to date, archive them if they are outdated or apply new tags if terminology changes.

The end goal: knowledge management

M-Files acts as a Single Point of Truth for collecting all company data and makes knowledge management easier.

In addition, M-Files serves as a knowledge base that can facilitate and automate processes related to capturing, codifying and reusing knowledge.

Automating processes and governance

Using the company's accumulated knowledge as intellectual capital against competitors.

Protect customer privacy

M-Files workflows have processes and permissions to ensure that confidential information is protected from unintended access when sharing information.

Improving workflows and collaboration

Time-wasting searches, outdated templates and human error are reduced by powerful search capabilities, automatic templates and intelligent workflows.

Prepare your organisation for the future

Codify the knowledge in your organisation and avoid repeating mistakes or reinventing the wheel by enabling all employees to become more skilled at what they do, regardless of their level.

Start knowledge management in your organisation now via an online introduction and outsmart your competitors!