Insights or Intuition? How Knowledge Management Improves Data Driven Decision Making

We, as humans, are making decisions every single day. While some are bigger than others, at each intersection we call upon all the information we have in order to make these decisions. What happens when we can’t find information to inform our decisions? Specifically when it comes to decision making at work, where we are often left with only partial information to inform our strategy.

The 2021 Talend survey states that 36 percent of executives rely on intuition to make the majority of their decisions. If top level executives go with their gut to make decisions, how do less experienced employees make informed decisions?

When data is spread out across the organization, no one can find it to make an informed decision

Organizations have vast repositories of data. For most organizations, this includes millions of pages of PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, word documents, Podcasts and Video content, plus so much more. Much of which holds a wealth of carefully curated insights and research about the business. And with each passing day, more and more information is being created.

With this influx of data spread across departments, repositories and geographies, decisions are too often left to be made with only what employees can readily find due to the speed and demands of the business. Usually, the quest for knowledge stops when the first answer is found, which most often is not the best—merely an answer to in order to move on.

Take for example an employee who is trying to access information to simply check off their next to-do. According to a recent Workplace Productivity and Knowledge Management Survey 57% of employees state that they experience difficulty finding the right information decreasing their productivity and 49% spend between 30 minutes to two hours trying to track down information they need to do their jobs.

This struggle to locate knowledge deters teams from making data-driven decisions. It also decreases productivity and increases frustration across the organization.

Why investing now can mean so much more later

How companies use their data assets in times of uncertainty is their biggest competitive advantage. Relying on the data you own and license allows the content to become the single source of truth, empowering everyone to make decisions faster and more confidently. No matter what may arise, these companies can investigate the historical data to anticipate what may occur in the near future, understand successes and failures, and potentially what changes should be implemented to better perform and compete.

According to StrategyR, the global knowledge management market is estimated at $318.5 billion and is to reach $1.4 trillion by 2027. Knowledge management systems such as Lucy provide a centralized knowledge hub, employees can simply ask questions and receive a precise answer back, as they need it and no matter where it resides,

Consider what could happen if organizational-wide teams were able to make every decision a data-driven one. This could drive new business opportunities, improve products, enhance customer-centricity, and improve employee experience.  Investing in a knowledge management platform now will help to inform decisions and strategies that will impact the future and be leveraged by generations to come, opposed to a company that continues making decisions based on intuition.