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At first glance, the cost of poor knowledge management might not seem like much. But when you zoom out and do the maths, the impact becomes staggering.
According to research from Qatalog and IDC, a single researcher in your organisation wastes 1 hour each day searching for information and unknowingly spends 20% of their time duplicating existing research.
At first glance, this might not seem like much. But when you zoom out and do the maths, the impact becomes staggering.
That wasted hour and duplicated research adds up to 676 hours lost per year - per researcher.
To put that into perspective, 676 hours is the equivalent of:
- 84 full working days
- 16 working weeks
- Over a quarter of the year
Just think about what each of your researchers could achieve with an additional 676 hours annually. How many new and innovative research projects could you complete? How many strategic initiatives could move forward faster? How many game-changing insights could be discovered?
This isn’t just about numbers - it’s about teams realising their full potential. The opportunity cost of lost time isn’t something that any team can afford to ignore.
Research is the lifeblood of any insight-driven organisation. But when knowledge is scattered, buried, or duplicated, that knowledge becomes a liability instead of an asset.
Multiple studies have shown that knowledge workers spend an alarming portion of their time simply looking for information or recreating work that already exists.
For one researcher, this adds up to hundreds of hours wasted each year. Multiply that by the size of your team and the losses can quickly escalate to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But the implications go beyond lost time. Poor knowledge management also:
1. Throttles innovation – When researchers waste time duplicating work instead of exploring new ideas, your organisation misses out on new and competitive breakthroughs.
2. Reduces morale – Repeatedly searching for the same information or realising you’ve recreated someone else’s work can frustrate even the most motivated team members.
3. Increases costs – Every search and duplicated effort is a cost to your organisation that could have been reduced to streamline the end-to-end research and decision making process.
4. Reduces perceived value of research – Part of a researcher’s role is delivering the right insights to the right people at the right time. Without access to historical studies, researchers risk devaluing strategic insights that have a shelf life far beyond their initial use, which can result in research teams being overlooked and underutilised.
When knowledge is scattered, buried, or duplicated, that knowledge becomes a liability instead of an asset.
Now, let’s flip the perspective. Instead of focusing on what’s lost, imagine what’s possible when you reclaim that time.
With an extra 676 hours per researcher each year, your team could:
- Complete a major new research study or pilot project.
- Dedicate time to professional development or upskilling.
- Build deeper working relationships with other teams across your organisation, helping to cultivate a culture of cross-disciplinary innovation.
- Increase your bandwidth to respond to urgent opportunities without derailing your existing roadmap.
The question isn’t whether you should address knowledge management - it’s whether you can afford not to.
Understanding the causes of poor knowledge management is the first step to solving it. Here are some of the most common culprits:
1. Siloed systems and teams
Knowledge is often stored in disconnected tools, making it difficult to locate or share in a timely manner with teammates and wider stakeholders. If your insights live across email, shared drives, wikis, and Slack, it’s no wonder people struggle to find what they need, when they need it.
2. Inconsistent documentation
Even when knowledge is captured, it’s not always structured or labelled in a way that makes it accessible across teams. Without a clear tagging system aka taxonomy or standardised templates for research documentation, valuable insights get buried.
3. Lack of a central repository
Without a single point of access, researchers and stakeholders spend excessive time navigating fragmented systems to piece together the bigger picture.
4. No feedback loop
When teams don’t have visibility into what others are working on, the likelihood of duplicated research increases.
Reclaiming lost time starts with a commitment to better knowledge management. Here are three practical steps your team can take today:
1. Centralise your most valuable knowledge
Identify and centralise your most valuable strategic insights - those that people refer to time and time again but often struggle to relocate when looking to support with decision making. Create a single source of truth where all research reports, insights, and supporting documentation live. Dedicated tools like Dualo (our knowledge repository platform) make it easy to organise and access this information in minutes.
2. Standardise your documentation practices
Develop clear guidelines and templates for capturing, tagging, and storing research. Consistency ensures that information is easier to find and interpret by everyone across your organisation.
3. Encourage transparency and collaboration
Implement workflows that encourage teams to share what they’re working on regularly. Collaborative practices not only reduce duplication but also spark new ideas.
By addressing these issues head-on, your organisation can shift from reactive knowledge management to a proactive, insight-driven culture.
The question isn’t whether you should address knowledge management - it’s whether you can afford not to.
Wondering just how much poor knowledge management might be costing your team? We’ve created an interactive calculator to help you find out.
By inputting the size of your research team and average salaries, you can see the dollar value of lost productivity to your organisation each year.
Time is your team’s most valuable resource. Yet, when knowledge management isn’t prioritised, that resource is wasted on tasks that don’t move the needle.
The good news? The solution is within reach. By investing in better systems and processes, you can unlock hundreds of hours of productive time for your team every year.
You can read more about the common tools that are used to support with improving knowledge management here. But keep in mind that tooling is only part of the solution - you should consider working with a partner who can also support with people and processes.
The truth about investing in knowledge management: There’s never a “perfect” time. There’s only now, or later. And later always costs more.
Click here to calculate how much poor knowledge management is costing your organisation.
https://language.work/research/workgeist/
https://www.collibra.com/us/en/resources/idc-peer-scape-best-practices-in-data-cataloging
I'm one of the Co-Founders of Dualo, passionate about research, design, product, and AI. Always open to chatting with others about these topics.
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