A Conversation with John Ragsdale: Your Roadmap to Knowledge Management in 2022

When it comes to knowledge management (KM), what comes first: the content or the search strategy? This year, organizations are focused on content findability as they tackle major knowledge management transformations.

With obstacles like siloed content and limited resources, how do we best support our customers and support agents in their quest to find fast, accurate, and reliable information?

We sat down with John Ragsdale, Distinguished Researcher, VP Technology Ecosystems, TSIA, to talk about some tips and tricks.

Coveo: You’ve conducted a yearly knowledge management survey since 2014. How much success are companies having with their KM systems?

JR: One thing I always ask people is how they would rate their current knowledge management program on a scale from one to 10. Over the last eight years, the numbers have not really gone up despite the millions of dollars companies invest in this area.

That tells me that there is room for improvement and a lot of hurdles to overcome.

Coveo: What are some of the most common obstacles to a successful knowledge management program?

JR: It’s a combination of People, Process, Technology and Culture. There can be a lack of resources or defined processes around creating and maintaining content, or a culture that doesn’t promote knowledge sharing and collaboration. Employees and customers also often struggle to find content due to poor search technology or badly designed portals.

You have to be intentional and strategic when implementing a change in your KM system. Don’t focus on one area at the expense of another. For example, it does not make sense to prioritize content creation without simultaneously considering distribution and search.

Coveo: Who needs to be involved in knowledge transformation?

JR: You definitely need enough resources and people dedicated to the project. More importantly than the numbers, however, is making sure you have the right people involved in the process.

You really need input and buy-in from the executive level down to your support team to get a well-rounded view of the impacts of your knowledge management system.

Coveo: How do you encourage a culture of knowledge sharing?

JR: Well, first of all, everyone should be made aware that knowledge management is a priority. We need dedicated knowledge workers who author and edit content. And we can encourage participation by tying it to employee performance or some other type of incentive program.

We want every person to be interacting and contributing to the system so that we’re gathering as much data as possible.

And secondly, we can reframe the situation in terms of the customer experience. This shouldn’t be an ego thing where someone isn’t using the knowledge management system because they want to come up with a unique solution that they can put their name to.

The purpose of a good knowledge management system is to reduce call times and resolve issues as fast as possible, which lowers both employee and customer effort.

Coveo: What is a common misconception around knowledge management?

JR: That you shouldn’t invest in advanced search technology until your content and processes are mature.

When it comes to intelligent search, it’s in the organization’s best interest to implement the system as early as possible because of the valuable data that becomes available to you.

Firstly, the data gathered by the intelligent search system will facilitate early and ongoing content gap analysis so that you can direct your limited resources to create content that will have the most impact.

Secondly, usage analysis data will inform your portal design and content strategy because you’ll understand what formats are the most helpful to your audience. It will also help you identify who the top knowledge authors are in your organization and how you can leverage that.

And, finally, intelligent search can be used to improve both the employee and customer experience. These two groups will use search very differently, so the intelligent search system will learn twice as fast.

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Get more insight on knowledge management transformation in the on-demand webinar, Your Road Map to Knowledge Management Transformation in 2022.