According to a Forbes Insight survey, 55 percent of executives believe that one of the key factors that sets innovative businesses apart is their ability to leverage knowledge and insights into their customer bases. But the same survey found that only 13 percent of companies can be considered leaders in leveraging customer data.
Many companies have a wealth of customer data and insights available to them, but information is spread out across different repositories or research vendor platforms. Market insights that could help fuel organization-wide innovation are often siloed within a team or line of business. As a result, decision-makers don’t have a holistic view of the customer.
Customer insights teams can break down information silos by adopting a knowledge management platform. A knowledge management platform acts as a central research library for insights teams and their stakeholders. With knowledge management software like Bloomfire, market researchers can upload research in a wide-range of formats (including slide decks, data visualizations, videos, and audio recordings).
The software deep indexes all words across all file types, which makes everything searchable. Users can then find relevant research through a simple keyword search and uncover market insights that can inform their decision-making process.
What Are the Benefits of KM Software for Customer Insights?
Knowledge management software can help customer insights teams build an organization-wide culture of research. A knowledge management platform places research at the center of the organization and makes it easy to access the moment it’s needed. A few of the benefits include:
Reducing time spent searching for research.
According to a frequently cited McKinsey study, the average knowledge worker spends 20 percent of their time looking for the information they need to do their job. A knowledge management platform reduces this search time so that market researchers can spend more time conducting research projects, synthesizing insights, and sharing their results.
Enabling self-service.
A knowledge management platform allows stakeholders to access research whenever they need it, rather than going through a gatekeeper. By removing this point of friction, the knowledge management platform encourages stakeholders to refer to customer and consumer insights when they make important business decisions.
Preventing duplicate research.
When your team doesn’t have an effective way to keep track of the research that you and your vendors have already done, the risk of duplicate research increases. By making all historical research searchable, knowledge management software helps customer insights teams avoid wasting their budget on redundant research.
Streamlining vendor research publishing.
Rather than navigating to multiple vendor platforms and trying to keep track of dozens of platforms, knowledge management platform users can access a one-stop shop for all research and reports.
Encouraging engagement around research.
Some knowledge management platforms (including Bloomfire) offer social features, such as the ability to comment on posts and share content with other platform users. These tools encourage both researchers and non-researchers to stay engaged around the work you’re producing, provide additional context, and ask questions that lead to new lines of inquiry.
Driving innovation.
Innovation is the result of existing ideas coming together in new ways. A knowledge management platform makes it easy to synthesize existing research and insights, allowing your team to come up with innovative ideas to shape the customer experience.