Knowledge Management - Questions to Ask Yourself

Procedures

• What percentage of your firm's knowledge resides only in the brains of your staff? This is implicit knowledge that walks out the door at the end of each day, and some days, doesn't come back.
• What percentage of this implicit knowledge could become explicit knowledge by documenting the processes into procedures?
• Are your documented procedures centrally stored for ease of access across the firm?
• Do you have a knowledge management system that ensures strict version control on these procedures? Are you sure everyone is working of the same centrally stored master version of each procedure?
• Does your system incorporate a structured review and approval process for updating and managing these procedures?
• Does your system allow your staff to easily keyword search across a database containing all of your firm's procedures?
• Does your system allow your staff to quickly filter procedures found by keyword search, based on the area of the company or the topic?
• How certain are you that your procedures are up-to-date with current best practice? Are all of your procedures compliant with current laws and regulations?
• Does training and induction in your firm take a lot of time and effort? How much of the 'This is how we do it here' information imparted during induction could be documented into procedures and policies?
• Can staff instantly access with one click a list of links to every procedure that relates to their role in the firm? This is the equivalent of providing each team member with their own personalised procedures manual.
• Does each step in a documented procedure include a link to the related document or tool required to complete that step?
• Does your system incorporate an easy download service for your organisation to subscribe to third party publishers of generic best practice procedures?
• Does this download feature automatically detect if you have modified the previous version of a document, thus avoiding overwriting your versions of the procedures?

Standards and Templates

• Are your standards and templates centrally stored for ease of access across the firm?
• Do you have a knowledge management system that ensures strict version control on these standards and templates? Are you sure (or do you just hope) all staff are working of the same centrally stored master version of each standard and template?
• Does your system incorporate a structured review and approval process for updating and managing these templates and standards?
• Does your system allow your staff to easily keyword search across a database containing all of your firm's standards and templates?
• Does your system allow your staff to quickly filter standards and templates found by keyword search, based on the area of the company, the document type (checklist, letter, form, workpaper, etc.) or topic?
• How certain are you that your standards and templates are up-to-date with current best practice? Are all of your standards and templates compliant with current laws and regulations?
• Does your organisation have a policy of 'no orphans' in relation to standards and templates that are used as part of a procedure? This means that a standard or template cannot be added into the knowledge management system if it is not linked to a procedure that explains the context in which this standard or template can (and cannot) be used.
• Can standard letter and checklist templates be populated with client data straight out of your client database? Can letters be created within seconds, not minutes?
• Are your checklists designed for on-screen completion for ease of electronic filing?
• When a standard letter, checklist, form or workpaper is used to create a document for a client, does your system require the document to be immediately filed correctly?
• Does your system automate this filing process?
• Does your system incorporate an easy download service for your organisation to subscribe to third party publishers of generic best practice standards and templates?
• Does this download feature automatically detect if you have modified the previous version of a document, thus avoiding overwriting your existing versions of the documents?

Reference & Training Library

• Do your staff have a central database in which they can search across the firm's entire reference and training library?
• When staff are sent to training and professional development courses, are their course materials and notes from the course stored in the reference and training library database so that it is shared with other staff?
• If you subscribe to third party training and reference services delivered via the internet, when staff search your firm's reference and training library, can the search results contain web links directly to these online resources?
• Can your knowledge management system store multimedia files (e.g. training videos) as well as documents?
• Can your knowledge management system apply expiry dates to documents and materials? Do you have a choice of what will automatically happen on this expiry date? For example, can you choose for the items to be automatically removed from the system, or instead choose simply to warn users opening the items that they are beyond their 'valid until' date?
• Can your knowledge management system automatically filter out standards and templates that are not relevant to the logged-in user, based on their role in the firm?

Knowledgebase

• In addition to procedures, standards and templates, and formal reference and training material, does your knowledge management system facilitate the easy management of informal reference and background material?
• Does your firm have a centrally managed database of useful (and company approved) web links? Web links (a collection of someone's favourites or bookmarks) are an extremely useful resource that typically is not shared between staff. This is a missed opportunity for knowledge sharing.
• Can your staff instantly find with one click every procedure, standard and template, reference and training material, and knowledgebase resource that relates to a particular topic?
• And lastly, does your knowledge management and document management system offer your staff the one simple search screen for accessing ALL procedures, standards and templates, reference and training resources and knowledgebase items, as well as any client document or email, whether received, created, work-in-progress or finalised and sent? HowNow® does.

HowNow® solves all these knowledge management issues for your organisation.

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