How to Perform an Internal Knowledge Audit: Process, Example, Checklist

Setting up company-wide knowledge management is a big commitment since it runs through all teams and processes. Often companies need clarification about where to start with it. One of the sure first steps is to audit knowledge and assess the company’s current knowledge management state. The article explains the knowledge audit process and how to perform it successfully.

What’s the use of spending time on this process? Knowledge audit helps depict a company’s current state of affairs and build a reliable knowledge management strategy. In short, knowledge management influences how easily or quickly companies can perform knowledge audits, while the latter helps formulate and enhance the strategy and handle knowledge management challenges. However, it doesn’t work in a bubble only, as knowledge nurtures all workflows.

Let’s review the benefits of knowledge audit for the entire company first.

Why Businesses Need Knowledge Audit

There are several reasons why businesses may benefit from conducting a knowledge audit:

1. Improved decision-making. By identifying the knowledge resources available within the organization, businesses can make more informed decisions based on accurate and up-to-date information.
2. Increased efficiency. A knowledge audit can help identify inefficiencies in how knowledge is created, stored, and shared within the organization, leading to improved employee productivity and efficiency.
3. Increased competitiveness. By identifying and leveraging their knowledge assets, businesses can differentiate themselves from their competitors and gain a competitive advantage.
4. Improved innovation. A knowledge audit can help identify areas where the organization has the expertise and those where there may be gaps in knowledge. This can inform research and development efforts and drive innovation within the organization.
5. Enhanced employee satisfaction and retention. By promoting a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous learning, businesses can foster a more positive and engaged workforce, leading to improved employee satisfaction and retention.

As you see, a knowledge audit can help businesses better understand and leverage their knowledge assets to drive business success. So, what is this process like?

Knowledge Audit Process

The knowledge audit methodology may vary by industry and may be very specific for many of them. For example, electricity supply companies will need to consider their technological capacity and environmental costs, which is irrelevant to many other industries.

There are various approaches to conducting a knowledge audit, but a typical process may include the following steps.

1. Define the Scope and Objectives

The first step in the process is to define the scope and objectives of the audit. This may be identifying the knowledge assets to be included in the audit (e.g., documents, data, expertise), as well as the goals and objectives of the audit (e.g., easing decision-making, increasing efficiency, improving sales processes, etc.).

2. Identify the Knowledge Assets

The next step is to identify the organization’s knowledge assets. This may include explicit knowledge, such as documents, reports, and data, as well as implicit knowledge, such as the skills and expertise of employees. Visualizing the knowledge assets is vital for the convenient representation and use of the gathered information.

3. Assess the Value and Relevance of Knowledge Assets

Then you need to assess the importance and relevance of the identified knowledge assets. This may involve evaluating the knowledge’s quality, timeliness, usefulness, and alignment with the organization’s goals and objectives.

4. Overview Knowledge Use and Sharing Process

Move on to determining how the knowledge is used and shared within the organization. It makes sense to analyze the processes and systems in place for creating, storing, and accessing knowledge and the methods and techniques for sharing knowledge with others.

5. Identify Gaps and Weaknesses

Continue by identifying gaps or weaknesses in the organization’s knowledge resources. To do so, you must allocate the areas where there is a need for more knowledge or expertise. Furthermore, this also regards the inefficiencies in how knowledge is being used and shared.

6. Develop Recommendations

Based on the audit findings, the organization can develop recommendations for improving its knowledge management processes. What can they be? Investing in new technology or training programs or creating new policies and procedures for sharing knowledge, to name a few.

7. Implement the Recommendations

The seventh step is implementing the recommendations identified during the audit. The process may have the following points:

• adopting new technologies or processes;
• training employees;
• or developing new policies and procedures.

8. Monitor and Evaluate

Finally, monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented recommendations. If you notice inconsistencies, make any necessary adjustments to ensure the organization effectively manages its knowledge resources. Integrating knowledge management software and tracking the entire process in one place is an effective move that you can consider.

All of this can be wrapped up into a single knowledge management audit checklist.

Knowledge Management Audit Checklist

To save you some time and effort, we offer a simple knowledge management audit checklist based on the process described above. Even though particular industries will need individual approaches, all companies can use this functional, basic audit knowledge checklist.

1. Define the scope of the audit:

• Formulate objectives;
• Prepare a list of knowledge assets.

2. Identify knowledge assets:

• Explicit knowledge;
• Implicit knowledge;
• Prepare a visualization of the assets.

3. Assess the value and relevance of knowledge assets:

• Quality;
• Timeline;
• Usefulness;
• Consolidation with the organization’s goals.

4. Overview knowledge use and sharing process:

• Analyze processes;
• Analyze channels;
• Analyze sharing techniques.

5. Identify gaps and weaknesses:

• Areas with a lack of expertise;
• Inefficient use of knowledge;
• Inadequate sharing of knowledge.

5. Develop recommendations:

• New technologies;
• New procedures and policies;
• New processes.

6. Implement the recommendations:

• Communicate the changes;
• Introduce new technologies (e.g., integrate knowledge management software);
• Introduce new policies and procedures;
• Introduce new processes;
• Onboard employees.

7. Monitor and evaluate:

• Set up knowledge management reports;
• Assign decision-makers to perform ongoing audits.

The last step sets the beginning of the ongoing knowledge audit process, as all the valuable tools will be at hand. With it, knowledge audits can become a scheduled practice that constantly improves how knowledge is managed in the organization.

How does it work in practice? Let’s look at company A’s knowledge audit example and how they revealed the inefficiency of their knowledge-related activities.

Knowledge Audit Example

Imagine company A has developed CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and needs help to convert website visitors into users. The website works flawlessly and intuitively and doesn’t create obstacles for the visitors to proceed to the registration page and complete the process successfully.

Company A decides to perform a knowledge audit to find out precisely why they cannot make their product engaging.

Goal: to convert visitors into users.

Explicit knowledge assets: website content, market analysis reports stored in the marketing team knowledge base.

Implicit knowledge assets: marketing team members’ opinions on the issue.

The management comes up with the following visualization of the assets.

Company A’s managers are confident in their marketing team’s expertise and the quality of conducted market research. The knowledge base stays updated, and website content reflects the agreements on the final release. Focus group research shows that the developed CRM is an excellent alternative to their current solutions.

The marketing team uses Slack for communication and a separate marketing channel for sharing vital information about market research findings. All important market research reports are stored on Google Drive.

No lack of expertise has been revealed during the audit, but auditors have noticed a messy Slack channel discussion. A content creator asked the head marketer to share the latest market research report on competitor pricing, and the link to the Google Drive spreadsheet was shared.

Apparently, the link was wrong and led to a report from 2 years back with the research of the CRM pricing plans for big teams and enterprises. As a result, the content creator placed huge and irrelevant figures in the starting pricing plan.

Audit Recommendations and Implementation

Based on the findings of messy Slack communication, company A decides to integrate knowledge management software and keep the critical artifacts in one place, granting equal access to every team member.

A decision to integrate a Slack bot for knowledge management is made, and a new procedure to share documentation inside Slack is announced.

Monitoring and Evaluation

With the in-built reports, Jane, a newly-assigned knowledge manager, can view data on the top requesters and top contributors to the knowledge-sharing process. It helps reveal new imperfections in knowledge organization and rewards the most proactive team members.

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Not to mention, the team now enjoys serving their desired registered users!

Wrapping Up

Internal audit knowledge is the first step on the way to improving the knowledge management strategy and benefiting from it. It requires commitment, patience, and consolidation. As a result, businesses receive more independent and competent employees, faster delivery of work, a greater competitive advantage, employee retention, and a higher probability of innovation.

The knowledge management software market is full of high-quality solutions that natively integrate into the company’s essential workflows. Try OneBar to organize collaborative knowledge base maintenance and effective knowledge sharing, get useful analytics for upcoming knowledge audits, and keep everyone on the same page!