The saying is, that knowledge is power. Is this the reason that so many people and departments are reluctant to share knowledge?

ITIL V3 defines Knowledge Management (KM) as the one central process responsible for providing knowledge to all other IT Service Management processes. The primary role of Knowledge Management is to improve the quality of decision making by ensuring that accurate, reliable and trustworthy information is available throughout the Service Lifecycle. The KM process ensures that all information used within Service Management, stored in the Service Knowledge Management System, is consistent and readily available. 

Peter Dorfman wrote an article titled “Knowledge Management and the New ITIL Framework” which stated the following:

"If analysts at an IT help desk have access to one another’s trouble-shooting smarts through an interactive knowledge base tied into the incident management or call management system they share, then each analyst can handle a wider variety of issues competently, and all analysts will tend to resolve issues and restore end users’ services faster, more accurately, and at a lower total cost. If the service desk actually achieves this objective, the benefits are easy to understand, measure and translate into return on investment."

"KM arguably has the potential to offer significant productivity gains beyond the service desk. Knowledge sharing enables more informed decision-making, and the people who provide and manage IT services make critical decisions constantly, about changes to the infrastructure, organization of projects and teams."

"Benefits include many of the conventional things vendors talk about in reference to problem resolution tools deployed in service desks: Better, faster, more accurate problem-solving; higher first-call resolution rates lower rates of escalation to higher level subject matter experts; reduced analyst training."

Google has made itself a popular resource for many people who wish to expand their knowledge into areas that were unknown. Searching via Google is a quick and effective method. This is the age of information and using our own Intranet Systems we can provide access to our Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) to our stakeholders.

Creating a Service Knowledge Management System can only seen as a must for any company that wishes to have an effective service delivery for their end users, as costs incurred by service disruption are lowered but the benefits go beyond just costs. Good service management is essentially good customer service and any improvement in customer service has a positive flow-on effect for customer retention, loyalty and goodwill.