In the previous article, we talked about how to improve Brand Reputation and how providing efficient services and having a structured strategy can influence the opinion our customers have of the company.
However, a positive external vision is also built from within: a solid and well-defined corporate culture, based on policies and procedures shared by all employees and managers, is the key to forming a good opinion among consumers.
Enhancing corporate knowledge to boost brand reputation
Building (and transmitting) a winning corporate culture also involves enhancing corporate know how, i.e. the intellectual capital of an organisation.
But what is the know-how definition? It means to have the competence that allows you to perform a task in an optimal way, linked to the experience in a specific field.
Although it is usual to refer to the knowledge to make certain processes and/or machines work (technological know-how), company know-how is a broader concept.
It is not only made up of documented explicit knowledge, there is also so-called tacit knowledge, which resides in people and their experience in the workplace.
And this is precisely the most important source of knowledge for the company, which, if well documented and organised, makes it possible to speed up procedures, facilitate the carrying out of activities, learn the right way to solve problems, be more productive and, in short, work better.
Issues related to the management of corporate intellectual capital
Some activities should be considered fundamental in any company with a competitive advantage: sharing, documenting and preserving best practices, fostering learning from experience, enhancing organisational memory, improving access to content and connecting people through communities and networks.
However, it is often difficult to centralise the implicit knowledge of each employee, and make it accessible to everyone: you do not always have the right tools to create content that can be shared and easily updated by everyone.
In addition, if each department or, worse, each employee adopts his or her own procedures for carrying out the work, because of the lack of an adequate onboarding process or tools to know where to find the right information, productivity suffers and the whole company will appear disorganised and non-innovative to the outside world.
In these cases, we talk about “information silos” or “knowledge hoarding”, because there is no culture of sharing that encourages having a single point of access to all necessary documentation. Still, each department and each employee keeps the information they consider most important for themselves.
People involved in the training and innovation process
People such as Innovation Managers, Knowledge Managers and IT Managers aim to train teams and employees in using new technologies and implementing innovative solutions that simplify the work of all employees.
Unfortunately, they are often held back by a lack of information sharing, which results in fragmented and disorganised information across teams and individuals. To ensure that each department is aligned with the others on the guidelines to follow and procedures to adopt, it is necessary to have tools that allow access to and sharing of knowledge, such as knowledge management systems.
Having the technology to access the information you need and training employees to use it can influence how you are perceived externally, increasing your brand reputation.
How corporate culture can support brand reputation
Adopting a corporate Knowledge Management strategy can be a solution to the above problems.
Corporate knowledge management passes through the definition of roles and systems suitable for the consultation and sharing of the whole corporate Knowledge Base.
Having a Knowledge Management solution available that collects and centralises all knowledge, and makes it searchable, improves the knowledge experience for all employees.
This also facilitates training, the dissemination of know-how and the circulation of ideas, creating a positive climate in which it is easier to innovate.
Fostering the sharing of knowledge and human and technological development within the corporate culture increases collaboration and growth, both individually and within the organisation, with consequent positive effects on brand reputation.
Learn more: How to improve communication in a company to build brand reputation with corporate knowledge management
If you want more information about Knowledge Management solutions, contact a Pigro Expert!
