And Your Enterprise Knowledge Is Worth $ _____ (Please Put A Value Here)

It does not matter how big your organization is; whether it is a Fortune 500 company or Start-up or how long it has been around- gaining, applying, and sharing knowledge are the critical factors for long-term organizational success. As per McKinsey, employees spend up to 20% of their workday seeking information to complete a task. This could be the main reason behind productivity loss. Your employees will be happier and more productive if they have instant access to information and can efficiently collaborate. This will help you to meet your customers' requirements better, boost your business ROI, and dominate your market. In the ever-changing economic climate, the corporate world encounters a wide array of operational issues due to a lack of communication and knowledge silos. Implementing the right enterprise knowledge management platform can help you overcome these challenges. 

An Overview of Effective Enterprise Knowledge Management  

Knowledge management is the continuous capture, optimization, and delivery of information. Knowledge management platforms ensure that the right information is delivered to the right people at the right time. It is not a one-time investment in a new support center tool. The role of robust enterprise knowledge management is to enable organizations to share and create information, breaking down silos and empowering users to use valuable information. Developing a strategy that sustains organizational objectives as technology evolves, keeps companies on the leading edge of industry trends, and helps them stay one step ahead of the competition.

Now that you know the concept of an effective enterprise knowledge base, here comes the million-dollar question – how much do you think your enterprise knowledge is worth? 1000 dollars? 10,000 dollars? 100,000 dollars? one million dollars? Or more! Most of us will hesitate to speculate an answer. While people realize that enterprise knowledge saves employee efforts and frustration – it is often difficult to quantify that. 

Let us change that. Rezolve.ai will help you think about the worth of the enterprise knowledge is real Dollar figures. Before we proceed – let me clarify what we consider a basic unit of enterprise knowledge: a question-and-answer pair. This is not a document or an actual long-form article – it’s just a question and an answer session.  

Now, let us move forward.

We are going to do this exercise in three different ways.  

1. Method 1
   
   For method 1, we are going to take your existing knowledge base as given. This might include question-and-answer pairs from policies, employee handbook, your help desk knowledge articles, SharePoint documentation, intranet and wherever else you have by the way of storing knowledge in your enterprise.
   
   Assumptions for Method 1: 
   
   

• Total Number of Question-and-Answer Pairs: 1000
  
  Comment: This is at par with total knowledge in most mid-sized organizations or at least the beginning points of where these organizations need to be, at the very least.
  
  
• Average use of a Question-and-Answer pair every month: 3
  
  This really depends on the size of your organization. The larger the organization, the higher the use. However, this assumption works for a mid-sized organization.
  
  
• Time saved per use: 10 minutes
  
  We are going to assume that every time you have the right information easily accessible to you at the right time – you save 10 minutes of search and disruption to your work. In real life, this is a very conservative estimate.
  
  Calculations: 
  
  
• Total time saved per Question-and-Answer pair per month -> 30 minutes
  
  
• Total time saved by 1000 Question-And-Answer pairs per month -> 30,000 minutes
  
  
• Total time saved by 1000 Question-And-Answer pairs per year -> 360,000 minutes
  
  360,000 minutes is equal to 6000 hours – which is roughly equivalent to 3 FTEs.
  
  Assuming a cost of 100,000 USD per annum per FTE, this gives us USD 300,000 worth of savings every year.
  
  2. Method 2
  
  Here, we are going to start by putting the employee at the center.
  
  How many times last month have you needed to know something (work-related) but have to waste time searching for you?
  
  Based on our past surveys and other industry references, we will assume a very conservative answer 3. Therefore, it is fair to assume that you could have saved 30 minutes if this information had been easily accessible. Let us assume that this fictional enterprise has 1000 employees. Let us do the numbers.
  
  Calculations:
  
  
• Time saved by one employee per month based on accessible knowledge: 30 minutes
  
  
• Time saved by 1000 employees per month based on accessible knowledge: 30,000 minutes
  
  
• Time saved by 1000 employees per year based on accessible knowledge: 360,000 minutes
  
  360,000 minutes is equal to 6000 hours – which is roughly equivalent to 3 FTEs.
  
  Assuming a cost of 100,000 USD per annum per FTE, this gives us USD 300,000 worth of savings every year.
  
  Funny how we reached the same number here.
  
  3. Method 3
  
  In this method, we are going to estimate the lifetime savings of a question-and-answer pair. We are going to re-use some of the assumptions made earlier – and are further going to assume that one question and answer pair has a useful life of five years before it becomes irrelevant.
  
  Calculations
  
  
• Time saved by 1 question and answer pair per month: 30 minutes
  
  
• Time saved by 1 question and answer pair per year: 360 minutes
  
  
• Time saved by 1 question and answer pair over five years: 1800 minutes
  
  1800 minutes equals 30 hours. An employee's time cost is considered 50 dollars per hour – this is 1500 USD.
  
  

Therefore, writing one question and answer pair might give you a return of 1500 Dollars over five years. Not a bad investment of 10 minutes of your time at all!

Summary

We cannot ignore the fact that enterprises are not investing enough in enterprise knowledge. Investing in a robust enterprise knowledge base will bring huge benefits to your enterprise. Apart from a productivity uplift of 3-5% every year, access to enterprise knowledge enhances employee experience, reduces enterprise friction and makes your enterprise a better place to work for.