Let’s face it—your business faces challenges every day, impacting efficiency, productivity, and employee satisfaction. Organizations often turn to traditional training methods and knowledge management strategies to address these challenges.
But in the age of AI, those approaches alone aren’t enough to keep up with the complexity of today’s business operations. From navigating digital transformations to ensuring consistency across teams, businesses need a more modern solution.
That’s where Knowledge Operations comes in.
In this article, you’ll learn about a modern approach to solving today’s business challenges — a Knowledge Operations Strategy — including how it benefits businesses, what use cases and projects it helps with, and what industries it supports.
What is Knowledge Operations?
Knowledge Operations is a combination of systems and behaviors that help organizations capture, manage, and maintain their operational knowledge.
Operational knowledge is challenging because it is complex, detailed, and unique, and it is constantly changing. That’s why it needs to be handled differently than other types of knowledge.
Operational knowledge requires a Knowledge Operations Strategy (Knowledge Ops Strategy) to successfully transfer its knowledge.
If you want to understand operational knowledge and Knowledge Operations better, you can read this blog post or take this free course.
Why use Knowledge Operations? (Benefits)
What is the advantage of using a Knowledge Ops Strategy over a regular knowledge management strategy?
Because of the nature of operational knowledge, it can impact many areas of business operations. Here are five major areas that can benefit from Knowledge Operations:
- Onboard faster
- Increase supervisor bandwidth
- Prepare your knowledge for AI
- Increase consistency across your organization
- Seamlessly handle change
1. Onboard faster
Bringing on new employees can be time-consuming and costly.
Traditional training methods that rely on extensive shadowing or classroom learning don’t cut it when it comes to operational knowledge. That’s because there are too many clicks and steps to handle a procedure. As humans, our memory fails us.
Knowledge Operations streamlines the onboarding process by providing employees with structured, easily accessible information.
This means training is focused less on memorization and more on hands-on practice accessing findable, followable, and scannable digital guides in your Knowledge Ops Platform.
2. Increase supervisor bandwidth
Supervisors and managers are often stretched thin. It is their responsibility to fill the gap when people can’t remember or find the answers they need to handle a task. Supervisors spend most of their time answering repetitive questions or troubleshooting basic issues.
A well-implemented Knowledge Ops Strategy reduces this burden by making essential information available on demand. It centralizes the company knowledge in a hub that makes it easy for employees to access answers and guides.
Knowledge Ops serves as a multiplier for supervisors’ time. It frees up supervisors so that they can focus on high-value tasks like coaching and strategic planning. And that’s how you get more hours in a day.
3. Prepare your knowledge for AI
AI has taken the business world by storm. Everyone wants AI integrated into their business. The problem is that the company’s operationalize knowledge is not ready for AI.
Organizations need structured, accurate, and well-organized knowledge to power AI tools effectively.
Knowledge Operations ensures your documentation is structured in a way that AI can leverage.
Also, it helps you establish a system of habits that ensures you keep your knowledge resources up-to-date with accurate information. That way, AI won’t pull from outdated and inaccurate guides, causing employees to make mistakes.
Learn more about why AI needs better operational knowledge if is going to work here.
4. Increase consistency across your organization
Inconsistent information leads to mistakes, inefficiencies, and frustrated employees and customers.
By centralizing and standardizing knowledge, businesses ensure that every team member has access to the same up-to-date procedures.
Knowledge Operations allows you to create a standard for your employees. And the best part is you can have your top performers create guides, which means every employee can become an expert and perform at their best.
With customer-facing teams, Knowledge Ops ensures your team is providing consistent answers. It won’t matter which employee they speak with.
5. Seamlessly handle change
Change management is extremely difficult if you aren’t able to handle operational knowledge efficiently.
But the thing is change is inevitable. Whether it’s new technology, updated policies, or shifts in company strategy, change is going to happen in your organization. The only question is: Are you ready for it?
With a strong Knowledge Operations Strategy, businesses can seamlessly handle changes big and small.
Did your company add a step to a procedure? Update your digital guides instantaneously. Undergoing a core conversion? Transition smoothly with minimal disruption.
Use cases: Where Knowledge Operations makes a difference
As an organization, you have a variety of projects and operations to handle. Some projects come and go while others are daily.
Knowledge Operations supports organizations in executing these projects — especially if you have a Knowledge Ops Strategy in place before a major project hits.
While not limited to these seven use cases, here are some common uses for Knowledge Operations:
- Employee performance
- Employee onboarding and training
- Change management
- Digital transformation
- Internal operations
- Customer self-service
- Succession planning
A. Employee performance
Knowledge Operations helps employees access the information they need to perform their jobs accurately and efficiently.
Whether they’re handling customer inquiries, troubleshooting issues, or following compliance procedures, having clear and structured knowledge at their fingertips improves performance across the board.
This translates into fewer mistakes, increased confidence and independence, and increased performance scores.
B. Employee onboarding and training
Instead of overwhelming new hires with dense manuals or relying on tribal knowledge, Knowledge Operations provides a structured onboarding experience.
Knowledge Operations focuses on helping employees DO something — not just KNOW something like traditional training methods teach.
Employees receive step-by-step guidance, interactive learning resources, and real-time access to critical information.
This shortens onboarding time, helps employees achieve proficiency (i.e. independence) faster, and increases employee retention.
C. Change management
When companies introduce new processes, systems, or policies, employees often struggle to adapt. That’s because you can’t get the information out fast enough.
It takes time to train tenured employees on new software or programs. Often, you have to pull people from their jobs and redistribute the workload while you take weeks or months to train everyone.
With Knowledge Operations, change is easier. A Knowledge Ops approach ensures that changes are documented, communicated, and easily accessible.
Transitions are smoother and employees have less resistance to change. Why? They already are accustomed to searching for and finding answers to their questions with your Knowledge Ops Platform.
D. Digital transformation
New software and digital tools can be challenging for employees to master. Undergoing a core conversion can halt or greatly slow down your operations. But, you don’t really have time for that.
Knowledge Operations supports digital adoption by providing real-time, contextual guidance. This enables employees to confidently navigate new systems without extensive training or IT support.
E. Internal operations
From HR policies to IT troubleshooting, businesses rely on internal processes to run smoothly.
A robust Knowledge Operations Strategy ensures that your internal operations run smoothly. Instead of employees relying on managers and supervisors for support, employees have immediate access to the procedures they need.
The power of Knowledge Ops accelerates operations, reducing bottlenecks and increasing efficiency.
F. Customer self-service
Customers today want the most direct line to answers. And yet, many businesses struggle to provide quick and accurate answers to customer inquiries.
By implementing a Knowledge Ops approach, companies can create a knowledge hub that puts customers one search away from their answers. That’s answers at their fingertips without needing to wait on hold.
Ultimately, that means reduced support ticket volume, decreased escalations, and increased customer satisfaction.
G. Succession planning
Are you prepared for your tenured executives to retire? How about for your subject matter experts (SMEs) to quit?
When key employees leave, they often take critical knowledge with them. That is unless you have a succession plan.
Knowledge Operations ensures that institutional knowledge is captured, documented, and easily transferred. This prevents critical company knowledge from walking out the door with leaving employees.
When you have a Knowledge Ops plan, your business is prepared and remains resilient, even during transitions in leadership or workforce changes.
Industries that benefit from Knowledge Operations
While any business can benefit from Knowledge Operations, certain industries see the greatest impact.
Customer-facing employees, back-office workers, and internal subject matter experts (SMEs) are the most dependent on operational knowledge.
So, if your industry deals with complex procedures or expects employees to memorize a lot of processes, Knowledge Operations can simplify your training, reduce employee mistakes, and decrease stress for everyone.
Taking a closer look, here are some industries and bulleted lists of how they have benefitted from Knowledge Operations.
Financial Institutions (credit unions, farm credits, banks, etc.)
- Onboard and train employees faster
- Improve compliance
- Reduce errors
- Increase consistency with frontline employees delivering accurate information to customers
- Improve operational efficiency
Healthcare & Insurance
- Speed up onboarding and training
- Improve compliance
- Increase consistency with standardized processes
- Improve patient experience
Technology & SaaS Companies
- Increase digital adoption
- Train and onboard new employees and customers faster
- Improve internal operations
- Enhance customer self-service with structured knowledge
- Simplify complex troubleshooting procedures
Manufacturing & Logistics
- Ensure standard operating procedures (SOPs) are readily accessible for employees
- Simplify complex procedures
- Improve safety, efficiency, and process consistency
Legal & Professional Services
- Onboard and train paralegals and support staff
- Simplify complex procedures, including the intake process
- Increase procedural accuracy and compliance
- Increase bandwidth for managing partner
- Improve operational efficiency
Education
- Provide clear click-by-click instructions for staff and students
- Improve administrative efficiency
- Streamline faculty and staff training
- Support student services with structured knowledge management
Build a Knowledge Ops Strategy for Your Business
If your organization is facing challenges with onboarding, performance, change management, or any of the areas mentioned above, it’s time to implement a Knowledge Operations Strategy.
ScreenSteps developed the world’s first Knowledge Ops Platform — along with a Knowledge Ops Strategy — to help organizations operationalize their knowledge.
This has led businesses to decrease training time by more than 50%, increase customer satisfaction scores, and decrease employee and supervisor stress.
Ready to try a Knowledge Ops Strategy in your organization?
Schedule a demo with a ScreenSteps expert today and see how a Knowledge Ops Platform can transform the way your organization works.
