When knowledge isn’t effectively and purposefully managed, everything slows down.

• Teams redo work that’s already been done
• Information is scattered across tools and is impossible to track
• Important insights stay trapped in individual heads or departments
• New hires take too long to ramp up
• Departing employees take valuable know-how with them
• Decisions get delayed because people can’t find the right context

Knowledge management best practices offer a practical way to stop information from getting lost, duplicated, or siloed. They help organizations turn scattered knowledge into a shared resource so teams can find what they need, trust the information they’re using, and move faster without reinventing the wheel.

When implemented well, these practices create structure without adding friction. They give teams clear ways to document what they learn, share it with others, and access the knowledge they need in the flow of work. 

In this article, we’ll break down the best knowledge management practices for 2025 and show how they help organizations turn knowledge into action.

What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management is the process of capturing, organizing, sharing, and using knowledge within a company to help people work more efficiently and make better decisions. 

Standard knowledge management practices include creating documentation, training new employees, sharing knowledge across teams, and making information easy to find and use.

Every company builds up knowledge over time about how things work, what customers expect, and what problems have already been solved. 

However, without a systematic approach, it's easy for that knowledge to get lost, stuck in someone’s head, or buried in tools no one checks. 

The core principle of knowledge management is to make sure that the company's knowledge is preserved, organized, and available to everyone who needs it.

That idea stays the same no matter the year. What’s different now is technology. In 2025, companies have better tools to actually make knowledge management work. Tools that help connect information across systems, bring the right answers to the surface, and ensure knowledge gets used, not just stored.

Knowledge Management Best Practices

Knowledge management is no longer just about storing documents or creating internal wikis. It’s about making sure people can find the information they need, trust it, and use it to do better work. The principles haven’t changed, but the way companies apply them has.

Modern knowledge management is powered by tools that can capture knowledge as it’s created, organize it automatically, and make it instantly accessible across systems.

The following practices show how to build a knowledge system that takes full advantage of these capabilities. Each one is designed to help teams move faster, make better decisions, and put institutional knowledge to real use.

AI-Powered Knowledge Capture and Retrieval

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Manual documentation and rigid knowledge systems no longer keep up with how teams work. AI now makes it possible to capture knowledge as it’s created, whether it comes from a meeting, a chat, or a support ticket, and turn it into something searchable and useful without adding extra steps for your team.

The real shift is in how this knowledge is retrieved. People no longer need to know where something is stored or how it was labeled. They can simply ask a question in plain language and get answers, even if the information is scattered across different tools or buried in unstructured formats like transcripts or email threads.

This removes the need for perfectly organized folders and manual tagging. What matters now is having clean, reliable content somewhere in the system. AI will do the work of connecting the dots and surfacing what’s relevant.

To get the most out of this, focus on keeping your internal knowledge accurate, up to date, and easy to read. The better the input, the better the output.

The goal is to stop losing time to hunting for answers and start using what your organization already knows.

Improve Retrieval with AI-Powered Unified Search

Knowledge is only valuable if people can find it. In most companies today, information is scattered across dozens of tools such as wikis, chats, drives, CRMs, and more. This SaaS sprawl creates silos, slows teams down, and forces employees to waste hours each week jumping between systems.

Unified search powered by AI solves this. Instead of relying on memory to know where something is stored, employees can search from a single point and get results from across all connected tools. Whether an answer lives in a PDF, a helpdesk ticket, or a chat message, modern enterprise search brings it to the surface.

The goal is to eliminate friction. With one place to search and smart AI doing heavy lifting, employees don’t need to care where information lives. They just ask, and the system delivers.

Proactive Knowledge Retention

Valuable knowledge disappears when it isn’t captured in time. This is especially true in remote and hybrid teams, where informal knowledge-sharing rarely happens naturally.

To retain expertise before it’s lost, focus on three things:

Capture during transitions: Build a process for outgoing employees or role changes to document what they know through guided interviews, AI-powered transcription, or short async video briefs.

Centralize what matters: Use a single, shared repository where key documents, decisions, and insights live. Connect it to daily workflows to make storing and retrieving knowledge seamless.

Make sharing visible and rewarded: Track contributions to shared knowledge bases and include them in performance feedback. When people know their input matters, they’re more likely to share consistently.

Cross-Functional Knowledge Sharing

Siloed knowledge leads to missed insights. When teams operate in isolation, opportunities to improve products, customer experience, and strategy get lost.

In 2025, cross-functional knowledge sharing starts with connected systems and smart technology. Tools powered by AI and entity recognition can identify overlapping themes, customers, or issues across departments, even when the data lives in different formats or platforms.

To make sharing work across teams:

Break down data silos: Use a central platform or enterprise search tool that pulls from all key systems so no one has to wonder which team owns the answer.

Encourage cross-team context: Schedule short, focused workshops or async knowledge swaps between departments. A product team reviewing support tickets or a sales team reviewing marketing campaign outcomes often leads to quick wins.

Embed sharing into workflows: Make it easy to tag other teams, surface related insights, and document takeaways in shared spaces. Reinforce this behavior by highlighting and rewarding real examples of cross-team impact.

When teams share what they’re learning in real time, companies make better decisions with fewer blind spots.

Q&A Knowledge Capture

AI-powered knowledge retrieval only works if the knowledge exists in the first place. In many organizations, some of the most valuable insights still live inside people’s heads, not in documents or systems.

Q&A knowledge capture creates a simple, structured way to extract that expertise. Instead of writing long documentation, employees answer direct questions. These answers are easier to reuse, search, and connect to real business problems.

To make it work:

Run internal Q&A sessions: Regular ask-me-anything sessions with domain experts allow teams to surface specific knowledge in a conversational format. These can be live or asynchronous and work especially well in distributed teams.

Use AI to scale answers: Intelligent chatbots and enterprise Q&A tools can guide users to existing answers or prompt them to ask new questions. Over time, these systems learn from usage patterns and improve the quality and accuracy of their recommendations.

Capturing knowledge through Q&A makes it easier to access, keeps it relevant, and builds a living knowledge base that evolves as your team does.

Remote Onboarding and Learning

Remote employees can’t rely on hallway conversations or in-person guidance to get started. That makes structured, accessible knowledge even more important from day one.

To make remote onboarding effective:

Build clear learning paths: Tailor onboarding content to each role. Give new hires a step-by-step view of what they need to learn, along with self-service access to documents, walkthroughs, and examples. This reduces confusion and helps people get up to speed quickly, no matter where they are.

Make knowledge easy to access: New hires should be able to find answers without needing to ask around. Use a centralized knowledge base that’s searchable, mobile-friendly, and up to date. Include quick-start guides that show how to use the tools and systems they’ll rely on most.

Remote onboarding works best when employees don’t have to guess where to start or who to ask. The easier it is to find and absorb knowledge, the faster they become confident contributors.

What to Look For in 2025

AI has introduced powerful capabilities to knowledge management, but success in 2025 depends on how well organizations guide and govern its use.

Large Language Models (LLMs) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) have redefined how employees interact with internal knowledge. When paired with enterprise search, these tools enable employees to ask questions in plain language and receive direct, accurate answers grounded in company data. This creates a context-aware experience that feels more like talking to a knowledgeable colleague than digging through a file system.

But AI still needs high-quality input. LLMs are only as reliable as the data they access. That’s why grounding them in vetted, up-to-date internal content is critical. Organizations should implement clear guidelines to validate AI-generated outputs, monitor for hallucinations, and ensure answers link back to source material.

Security and governance matter more than ever. AI tools must respect document permissions and data boundaries. Define protocols for what AI can access, how that data is stored, and how sensitive outputs are shared.

Train employees to work with AI effectively. That includes onboarding new hires using AI assistants, using generative AI for documentation, and encouraging cross-functional Q&A capture.

The best-performing companies blend AI with strong process and culture. They keep what works, upgrade what doesn’t, and make AI a support system for faster learning, smoother collaboration, and smarter decisions.

Why is Knowledge Management Important?

How many times have you spent an hour searching through different platforms just to find that one document you need? Or realize that when some employees who have been around for a while leave, they take years of valuable expertise with them? These common scenarios show why businesses need a better way to manage their knowledge.

Knowledge management goes beyond just organizing information - it's about making company knowledge work for you. It drives productivity, enables innovation, reduces operational costs, preserves critical expertise, and helps teams handle growing workloads more efficiently. Let's look at what this means in practice:

• Increasing Productivity:

One fact alone illustrates how much room for improvement organizations have when it comes to employee productivity. McKinsey's research shows that employees spend almost 2 hours daily - or 20% of their workweek - searching for and gathering information they need to do their jobs. This time, it gets scattered across various platforms, communication channels, and document repositories. Knowledge management addresses this productivity drain by creating clear paths to information. When companies implement effective KM practices, employees spend less time searching and more time on tasks that drive business value. The result is a direct boost to organizational efficiency and output.

• Innovation Through Knowledge Sharing:

When knowledge flows freely across departments and teams, innovation happens naturally. The American Productivity & Quality Center research shows that organizations with strong knowledge-sharing practices reduce their time to market for new products by up to 30%. This improvement stems from teams building upon existing solutions instead of starting from scratch. Knowledge management creates an environment where insights from different projects combine to spark new ideas. It also helps companies spot market opportunities faster and turn them into practical solutions before competitors do.

• Cost Reduction:

Deloitte's research shows that Fortune 500 companies lose approximately $31.5 billion annually due to knowledge gaps and inefficient information flow. These losses stem from repeated mistakes, duplicate work, and time wasted searching for existing solutions. Knowledge management directly tackles these issues by making information readily available when needed. When companies preserve and share knowledge effectively, they avoid costly rework and enable teams to build on proven solutions instead of starting from zero.

• Preserving Institutional Knowledge:

Panopto's Workplace Knowledge and Productivity Report highlights that 42% of institutional knowledge is unique to individual employees. This presents a significant risk - when employees leave, they take their specialized knowledge with them. Knowledge management helps companies capture this expertise before it walks out the door. By documenting processes, decisions, and best practices, organizations maintain continuity in their operations and provide better training resources for both new and existing employees.

• Adapting to the Rise of Remote Work:

The increase in remote work further amplifies the need for effective KM systems. Global Workplace Analytics reports a 159% increase in remote work from 2005 to 2017, with another 44% rise following the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift makes knowledge management more critical than ever. When teams work across different locations and time zones, they need reliable access to company knowledge at any time. Effective knowledge management bridges these physical gaps by providing remote employees with the same level of information access as their in-office colleagues.

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Making The Most Out of Organizational Knowledge

In 2025, organizations need practical, proven solutions to implement effective knowledge management. AI-powered platforms now offer the capabilities to transform how companies capture, share, and use their knowledge.

Akooda provides an intuitive, unified platform that simplifies knowledge management by enabling seamless cross-functional collaboration, easy knowledge capture, and rapid information retrieval, ensuring that teams can share, access, and apply critical insights effortlessly. The platform addresses key knowledge management challenges through:

• AI-powered search that cuts information discovery time across all company resources
• Automated knowledge capture to prevent expertise loss when employees leave
• Centralized, accessible repositories that support remote and hybrid teams
• Automated documentation features for proactive knowledge retention
• Cross-functional sharing tools that break down departmental silos
• AI-enhanced Q&A systems that streamline information access
• Structured learning paths that accelerate employee onboarding

The platform incorporates all the security protocols and validation measures needed for AI-generated content while providing clear metrics to track knowledge management success. By combining human expertise with AI capabilities, Akooda helps organizations make their knowledge work as a true business asset.

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