This is the ringleader of your KMS operations. Your Knowledge Manager (KM) will set the standard for how information is authored and published in your KMS. They will drive the development of how you organize and govern your information and will be responsible for handling adding and removing users, setting access permissions, system restructuring, and more. Your KM will have these main focuses:

Setting up information libraries, establishing an organizational structure and determining processes for information tags, categories, hierarchies, etc.

Mapping and linking articles so that critical and relative information is linked to encourage faster navigation.

To ensure accuracy and continuity of accurate knowledge, your KM should lead the way in developing, training, and overseeing your governance team.

This includes running reports, speaking with end-users to determine system efficiency, and overseeing the next steps for improvements, if needed. The KM will be responsible for ensuring content meets the standards of consistency, digestibility, comprehensibility, etc. These standards should also include a clearly defined framework for appropriate product and service verbiage, proper authoring of new content, etc.

Your KMS Administrator (KA) should work closely with your KM to understand the current state and opportunities, and to implement new innovations for optimal KMS performance. Your Administrator should be your guru for all things that service and grow the capabilities of your KMS over time. Their main focuses will be: 

Your KA should handle items like creating new accounts for new users and granting permissions to the appropriate knowledge libraries to ensure end-users are accessing the knowledge that applies to their role.

Establishing, implementing, and maintaining integrations using APIs/SDKs to enable information flow between connected systems or applications for easy and comprehensive solutions.

Your KA should configure the proper KMS reporting to enable comprehensive data analysis by stakeholder view requirements. Configuration often begins with configuring the native reporting capabilities of the KMS itself but can extend to projects such as connecting to BI tools.

They should also manage connected products that require a specific knowledge set, such as self-service features. With each connected product requiring a unique configuration upon connection, this can quickly become a sizable task.

Content SMEs (SMEs) are the brains of the knowledge operation. They are the individuals that have a thorough understanding of your operations and can take ownership of determining what new knowledge is needed and how it must be presented to the end-user. Think of SMEs as your breaking news reporters. When information needs to come to light, your SMEs should be on the scene, gathering pertinent information, fact-checking the data, and repackaging it for mass consumption.

User Performance Supervisors (UPS) are the individuals that have eyes on all operations that utilize your KMS to perform their work duties. They should be collecting data and reporting metrics on the efficacy of your system in its current state and advising on improvements, such as knowledge format for optimal delivery amongst different end-user types and which specific content is needed to boost performance. Ultimately, UPSs gather intel from click-level operators to guide ongoing efficiency initiatives and ensure your processes enable the best return on your KMS investment.

Having an exceptional KMS means nothing if your employees don’t know how to use it properly. KMS Trainers should be your top experts in operating your KMS. They should be involved in onboarding to thoroughly train new hires in navigating the system, and lead initiatives to train current employees on new features, reformatting, or overall improvements to the system. They will work closely with your UPSs and SMEs to support agents struggling with performance by identifying what skills are lacking, where more coaching is needed, or if the existing knowledge requires auditing to resolve the issue.

Your Content Creators (CCs) are the individuals that physically create new knowledge articles and complete edits to existing information. They should have excellent grammar and communication skills, speak the audience’s language, and be able to organize and format the information in a way that translates to the end-users.

While all other roles on your Knowledge Management team are focused on providing the optimal information and system to your End-Users (EUs), the EUs themselves are the greatest source of information when it comes to evaluating your KMS. They interact with the articles more than any other role in your organization and can offer extremely valuable feedback about the efficacy of this resource. End-users will be able to tell you what information is problematic, lacking/missing, or requires restructuring to meet their needs.

Ready to start building your Knowledge Management System? Connect with our Knowledge Management Consultants to develop your KMS Team and help you find the best-fit knowledge base platform to take your operations to the next level.