How to Know If Your KMS Needs an Upgrade

Keith Berg, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Contact Center Solutions, Upland Software,  explains how to know if your KMS needs an upgrade.

Finding the right solution for your organization’s needs can be quite the undertaking. When it comes to something that touches nearly every part of your business, be prepared to take that process up a few notches.

And that’s what you can expect when it comes to selecting just the right knowledge management system (KMS).

The information your organization has about its everyday processes, policies, employee training, and customer insights are all considered knowledge. Every organization has its own knowledge management system in place.

However, it may have been a while since it was last evaluated. Or it could be that it’s a brand-new system.

Either way, we’ve put together a list of questions to help your team navigate the knowledge management system review process. We also go into further detail on our Connected Knowledge podcast.

As you evaluate your knowledge management system, here are a few questions to think about:

1. Is all the knowledge that’s currently used by your team in one repository or multiple?
2. Is it tightly integrated to the CRM or ITSM system your support team are using?
3. What’s the feedback from your support team or customers on the knowledgebase? Would they say it’s working well or not?
4. Is your knowledge base also customer-facing through some sort of self-service portal or bot?
5. How do your users feel about the quality of your search?
6. How do you know if your knowledge is any good? Are you able to measure quality?
7. Do you currently support a KCS (Knowledge Centered Service) methodology in your knowledge management team?
8. Have you ever thought about engaging an outside expert in this space to help you assess your current program and provide guidance?
9. Does your current system support in-app capture capabilities to enable people to suggest new knowledge from within all the web-based applications they may be using?
10. Does your current system support decision tree-style knowledge that walks a user through a series of questions and answers that leads them to the right answers?
11. Does your current system leverage Generative AI yet?
12. Is your reporting around the knowledge base sufficient to help you understand what’s working and not working, where knowledge is missing, etc.?
13. Are you using a commercial product or something homegrown? Is your organization able to keep up with costs to enhance and maintain it?
14. Are other teams within your company using their own (different) knowledge management solution?

As organizations’ knowledge continues to expand, getting a better handle on managing it all is important for successful productivity.

We hope that as you begin to evaluate your knowledge management systems, you take these questions into consideration. And, if there’s a way we can help with that, let’s make it happen.