So you’re considering a knowledge management solution—or maybe you’ve already launched one. How will you measure the ROI on your investment in a knowledge-sharing platform?
If you don’t know, it’s time to hit pause. Moving forward without a plan for measuring your KPIs means you won’t be able to judge whether or not your money was well-spent.
Before implementing a knowledge management solution, it’s important to pay attention to data points from before implementation, and then compare the same metrics after the solution is established. This will help you quantify where and how the tool is making an impact on your business.
Some metrics we recommend to focus on include:
How many bugs are reported during product development?
After your development team has started using your knowledge-sharing tool for documenting code and sharing information, have you seen a reduced number of bugs reported? This may mean that your team is able to make better use of existing programming knowledge that’s stored in your knowledge-sharing platform.
What percentage of product launches occur on schedule?
Are you seeing a reduction in product launch delays after your team has started actively submitting and responding to Q&As in your knowledge-sharing tool? If so, this could be tied to a reduction in time spent searching for information needed to complete work.
How quickly are technical customer support requests resolved?
Compare support ticket resolution times for your customer support team, pre- and post-implementation. Are you seeing faster resolution times? Barring any other significant changes in your process, this might mean that your agents are able to quickly review information in your knowledge-sharing tool to find answers, rather than taking the time to personally consult with a subject-matter expert.
How often are employees using other communication channels?
How often do employees use tools like email, direct messaging, or group chats? If you’ve centralized product- and company-related discussions within a knowledge-sharing tool, you’re likely to see communication in other platforms go down as a result—which likely means that productivity is going up.
As well as tracking these sorts of data metrics, it’s also worth asking team members to self report on metrics such as how much time they typically spend searching for information, and how much time they spend answering questions for their teammates, and whether those have changed as a result of the knowledge-sharing platform.
By analyzing a variety of data points and how they’ve changed at various intervals (i.e., one month, three months, and six months) compared to before implementing knowledge-sharing, you’ll have a chance to monitor improvements in productivity and other factors over time as engagement increases on the platform. As you see improvements in productivity, you’ll be able to calculate ROI on your product investment based on reduced labor costs.
Knowledge-sharing can also lead to greater creativity in product development. While this is more difficult to track with standard KPIs, you can focus on revenue from new products over time to understand whether the platform has had a notable impact in driving innovation in your company.
