10 Best Tools To Enhance Knowledge Sharing Within The Organisation

According to a Linkedin report, 68% of employees prefer to learn at work, and 94% of employees would stay if the company invested in their careers. 

Knowledge sharing is more important than ever in today's ever-evolving and increasingly digital world. Organizations must have the right tools in place to help facilitate knowledge sharing among teams, departments, and even across different locations. In this blog post, we'll look at 10 of the best tools to help you enhance knowledge sharing within your organization. 

We'll cover each tool's features, advantages, and downsides so you can make an informed decision when deciding on the best knowledge-sharing tools for your organization. Let's get started!

ProofHub

ProofHub is primarily a project management tool, although it is intended to improve the flow of information in corporate settings. It provides teams with useful tools to create the knowledge-sharing culture within the organization. The tool comes integrated with all the essential features that allows your team to plan, collaborate, organize, and deliver projects on time in a single platform. The tool allows you to manage all your teams operating under different departments and facilitates cross-team collaboration.  

Let's look at how ProofHub can help you improve your knowledge-sharing initiatives.

• Make Discussion Channels - Team members can actively discuss project topics, share ideas, attach files or ask for opinions on a discussion topic to keep everyone in the loop. This makes everyone’s voice heard with less complexity. If any message is sent on a discussion topic, members are notified about it through notifications and emails. .

• Plan Expert Sessions - One of the best ways to share knowledge is by scheduling expert sessions. You can invite team members to know about upcoming knowledge sessions without the hassle of creating separate google calendar invites. You get the option to reach out to organizers to confirm slots within ProofHub using a 1:1 team chat. 

• Establish project wikis and notes - Users can create notebooks to organize various notes and subscribe to team members to receive immediate updates. Members can work together with the contributor in the comments by referencing each other or asking for more details. A rich text editor is included in the note so that the notes can be formatted and standardized in accordance with corporate policies.

Google Drive

GDrive is a cloud storage and file-sharing platform that allows organizations and individuals to store, organize, and share information. From a knowledge-sharing view, Google Drive has advantages like:

• Integration with Google Suite - With integration with Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google slides, employees can easily access and collaborate on projects in real-time, increasing productivity and efficiency across the organization. 

• Industry-leading file storage capabilities - With the ability to edit and store 100+ file types, GDrive offers some of the best file storage capabilities in the industry. 

• Cloud-based - Since GDrive is cloud-based, it eliminates the need for local files, which is important for hybrid and remote teams.

The bottom line is that GDrive has the potential to be one of the best internal knowledge management software.

Dropbox

Dropbox aims to unleash the world's creative energy by designing an enlightened way of working. It offers secure, flexible cloud storage and file sharing for individuals, teams, and enterprise customers. Organizations across education, media, technology, and retail use dropbox as a smart workspace: a digital environment that connects a team's content in one place - rather than fragmented across different communication and collaboration channels. 

Here are its advantages:

• Easy to use free tool - Dropbox is easy to use, and anyone can access this tool as you get 2 GB of storage space. There are no charges, and you can download the application on your smart devices or computer. You can always access the latest version, share, upload or download files. 

• Security - It is an ideal platform for backing up information. This means if your computer crashes, you can easily use Dropbox to access all the files. 

• Backup and Retrieval - You can drag and drop the files into the dropbox folder on your desktop. There are also instances when you accidentally delete documents. Getting your files back might not be accessible with some cloud storage. However, with Dropbox, retrieving your file is straightforward. 

Microsoft OneDrive

Microsoft OneDrive is a cloud-based storage and synchronization service that enables you to share and access files from your internet. It makes it easier for users to share, store, and collaborate on content. You get sharing and editing rights at the document level, meaning you can start collaborating with team members inside or outside your organization. 

Many of the benefits include:

• The organizational platform for files - Sharing a file has never been easier with OneDrive. Users can simply share files simply by a right click and specifying an email address to share with. It is a more secure and efficient form of sharing compared with email attachments.  

• Unlimited file access, anytime/anywhere - It is designed to provide immediate access to the user’s data no matter where they are or any device. 

• Securely store files and information - With state-of-the-at data security, you can be sure that your data is secure. Microsoft uses strong encryption to protect your data.

Evernote

Evernote helps you organize your research, share it with your colleagues, and apply it to future projects. It helps everyone in the organization work from a common ground of shared knowledge. This means people can communicate different information sparingly, making it easier for teams to get things done. This empowers your business and enhances knowledge sharing in a few key ways:

• Improved communication - The more everyone is aware of what others are doing, the easier it is for them to contribute relevant ideas. This makes meetings effective and encourages cross-functional collaboration. 

• Quicker problem solving - When a project hits a roadblock, the managers can see if others have had the same issue and learn how they solved it without reinventing the wheel.

• Building efficient processes - Teams can take advantage of their colleagues' success. When one group creates an efficient technique or workflow, others can use it as an outline - adapting to their purposes. 

nTask

nTask is a powerful project management solution made for growing teams. The tool helps project managers to break down complex projects and helps you to collaborate, plan, analyze and manage daily tasks. You get multilingual support, organize and manage all your tasks with a single tool. The tool excels in task management and facilitates smooth collaboration and communication between team members with complete transparency. 

Main benefits of the tool include: 

• Powerful project management - You can simplify project planning and streamline as per the task priority. Set milestones for team members and balance workload to ensure nobody is overburdened and under-utilized. 

• Task management flexibility - You get high flexibility in task management through list views, grid views, and calendar views to help you organize everything from scratch. 

• Team collaboration and communication - You get excellent team collaboration and communication, and help you keep every team member on the same page. This helps your team work together with accountability, responsibility, and transparency. 

Quip

Quip is real-time collaborative documents, spreadsheets, and chat embedded inside Salesforce to transform any business process. It has tools for communicating in real-time, including in-app chat. Anyone in the organization can use it, irrespective of role and experience; this tool is a benefit for everyone. It is not only a productivity application but also empowered by collaboration with your team to share your knowledge.

Let's dive into the benefits:

• Easy view of information - This is easy to digest and follow during conference calls. You can easily capture actions and add reminders for items and alerts when necessary for meetings. 

• Accessibility - Access can be accessed from your browser, OS application, or mobile for easy accessibility. 

• Easy to export - Depending on access, it is easy to export content as PDF, Word, HTML, or XLs files to use in office applications.

Salesforce Chatter

Salesforce Chatter is a free collaborative social networking tool like Facebook and Twitter, but only for organizations on the Salesforce platform. This chatter feature lets users establish networks, share files, and status updates. In a nutshell, it is like a mini social-networking platform for enterprises/businesses using Salesforce.

Now let's move towards benefits:

• Eliminate meetings - Unnecessary meetings could hamper your productivity. With Salesforce chatter, virtual groups could quickly cancel these meetings and have discussions. This is to ensure that the live meetings are more meaningful with brainstorming ideas. 

• Teams connected - Now, the employees can closely work with real-time alerts and updates. It lets you chat with your teammates via texts or video calls while viewing the same page of Salesforce. 

• Keeps you up-to-date - With all the updates within Salesforce, you can relate to any deal or project advancing to a new stage, or in some cases, revoke or escalate, etc. You stay connected from every phase of the ongoings of the organization. 

SharePoint 

SharePoint is designed for keeping and maintaining documentation. It allows teams to view, edit, and share internal documentation through Microsoft's ecosystem. It allows taxonomists, librarians, and administrators to manage a set of terms across the organization. In short, it keeps your company information in one place, distributes teams, and enables people to collaborate better. 

Let's have a look at the benefits:

• Effortless Onboarding - It is likely that almost 95% of your staff is expected to have used Microsoft 365 Suite applications. With the high popularity of applications, you can keep your knowledge base in the same systems your staff is used to, which will reduce onboarding time and effort. 

• One system for all your needs - SharePoint integrates with Microsoft Office and has various applications to meet your organizational needs. It possesses great potential to manage your calendar and email inbox. In addition, you can use SharePoint to write business systems, classify content, or create a web part and knowledge base platform. 

• SharePoint as a knowledge Wikipedia - SharePoint is best suited as an internal, collaborative tool for your Document Management strategy. In simple terms, it means keeping the company information in one place and enabling people to work together better. 

Yammer

Yammer is an organizational social networking site designed for company collaboration, file sharing, and knowledge exchange. It also works as a microblogging service like Twitter, allowing users to post updates of their activities, updates, and share useful links, etc.… You can also make groups with participants from more than one organization. 

Benefits to elevate idea sharing:

• Collaboration and Knowledge sharing - It is a platform where you can connect and follow colleagues and groups within your organization to stay updated with the latest projects, news, interests, and events. This interaction is an open environment where you can ask questions and share ideas to grow and strengthen with further inputs. 

• Efficient information sharing - Yammer enables you to directly communicate with a specific section or the whole organization through the Yammer post. It allows the user to decide on the scope to which the information needs to be shared, from an individual, single team to the entire organization. 

• Search - It allows you and your employees to discover groups, colleagues, files, projects, and conversations. 

10. Nuclino

According to the 2012 McKinsey report, “employees spend 9.3 hours per week searching and gathering information.” Nuclino offers a clean, intuitive interface, and can be easily set up even by non-technical users. It is designed as a unified workspace for your team’s knowledge, docs, and projects. It works like a collective brain, bringing all your team’s work together in one place and collaborating without the chaos of files and folders, context switching, or silos. 

Here are its benefits:

• Manage teams efficiently - Nuclino manages the team’s permissions by defining roles and limiting edit access. While managing a large team, you can divide team members into groups and assign them simple tasks. 

• Easy for content publishing - With Nuclino managers can easily keep track of comments and mentions while working together. The list, board, and graph views make it easy to organize your work according to your team’s workflow.

• Seamless integrations - It integrates seamlessly with your team’s other platforms like Slack, Figma, or Google Drive. 

Why is knowledge sharing crucial in the workplace? 

Humans have always had the thrust to learn and discover new things. This is why even modern workers demand more insight into the learning and knowledge-sharing process. Knowledge sharing aligns the organizational goals with employee learning. It maximizes employee engagement, promotes and shares ideas, and retains their skills. 

Helps to navigate through problems

The best problem-solving experiences can save time and money, increase productivity, and minimize risks. Sharing best practices helps streamline work. Some of its examples include user manuals, training documents, best-proven practices, and e-learning. 

Generate competence and efficiency

Employees generally spent a lot of productive time doing unproductive work. The organization's knowledge management tools and practices will shrink most of the unproductive time spent searching the information. At the same time, employees will have easy access to the right information whenever and wherever they need it.

Boosts decision making

When all the tasks are performed efficiently in the organization, every member works in a streamlined manner to ensure better and faster decision-making and eventually improve the productivity of the organization. 

Strengthens customer relationships

Knowledge sharing plays a crucial role in managing customer relations. For example, when a customer spends a lot of time searching for relevant information to resolve a problem or answer a question, the customer will end up dissatisfied. With knowledge-sharing tools, the search effort and time can be reduced drastically. 

Build a community 

Sharing knowledge is one of the best ways to form a strong community. A dedicated platform for information sharing and management helps businesses store knowledge in the most accessible ways. It also ensures the consistency of knowledge within the organization.

Conclusion

Lesser employee engagement is a notable concern and a barrier impacting effective knowledge sharing. Thus developing a knowledge-sharing platform and building a knowledge-sharing culture is crucial at all stages of the organization. With the above-mentioned knowledge-sharing tools, you can start maximizing the benefits of the knowledge-sharing platforms and have valuable contributions from your team members. 

The right knowledge-sharing platforms will give you access to information anytime, anywhere, quickly search relevant information, ask questions, streamline onboarding, and create synergy.