127. Introduction to knowledge management

Knowledge management is a very grand title but don’t let that put you off. It simply means the process of documenting and making available business-related knowledge. This knowledge may be about business processes, market data, product development or other information specific to how your business runs.

You will often hear the term ‘knowledgebase’ used when talking about knowledge management. This term relates to the system that stores your business knowledge and is similar to how a database stores data such as customer details. There is a lot of academic research and theories that discuss knowledge management but little of this is important to the small business owner.

we need to be concerned about the practicalities of storing the knowledge that is in our team’s heads and making it available to other members of staff. You may also hear business-related knowledge being referred to as intellectual capital. This is another way of describing knowledge in a business and giving it some form of value.

Whilst it may be relatively easy to put a price on a piece of machinery, measuring the worth of knowledge is a lot more difficult. In many cases, knowledge is much more valuable than machinery because it’s always harder to replace. Many small businesses attract a higher valuation in a business sale because of their intellectual capital.