Stop Wasting Hours Searching for Information: Smarter Ways to Share Knowledge
Most leaders think they’ve got knowledge covered.
Maybe there’s SharePoint, Google Drive or an intranet, then prop that up with Teams, and Slack. So that’s a decent baseline, everything is saved somewhere, and on paper, that looks fine.
But ask around the office and you’ll often hear a different story.
Someone spends half an hour digging out the latest policy. A manager finds three versions of the same Excel sheet and doesn’t know which one to trust. A new starter gives up looking on the file system and just asks their line manager.
It’s not that information doesn’t exist, it’s that the knowledge isn’t easy to find, and this operational flaw is where the company is haemorrhaging time.
McKinsey’s research puts numbers on it: knowledge workers lose around 19% of their time each week searching for information. That’s almost a full working day. Across 100 employees, you’re effectively paying 20 people just to search for answers.
So, let’s talk about how teams are really set up today, why that’s not enough, and what a smarter approach looks like.
How Organisations Store Knowledge Today
SharePoint, Google Drive, Document Repositories
These systems are great for storing files, but clunky for locating answers, when they’re needed. Users often must scroll through endless results, second-guessing which file version to trust.
Wouldn’t it be great if your search could take you straight to the section of a document that contained the answer you need, and not just the file location?
Collaboration Tools like Teams or Slack
They’re perfect for quick chats, but terrible for long-term knowledge retention. Any useful insights, policy updates, best practice sharing vanishes within weeks of the thread ending.
Imagine a system where helpful answers and updates captured in conversation could be stored and made accessible future for future use.
Knowledge in People’s Heads
Ha, the oldest system of all, and obviously only effective until the fountain of all knowledge is on holiday, sick or leaves the business.
It’s critical for businesses to capture internal knowledge, best practice and processes flow to allow the next generation of employees to build from that point forward and avoid repeating the same cycle of learning and then leaving.
The reality is all these setups store information in some way, but they don’t manage knowledge. And that distinction is why so many teams waste hours searching for information, instead of working.
The Symptoms Everyone Recognises
These issues aren’t just frustrating they carry real consequences leaders can’t afford to ignore, often resulting in lost time or even compliance risks:
- Policy Errors Reach Customers
A call centre rep pulls up the wrong version of a policy and gives inaccurate guidance. The potential risk of, reputational damage, claims, and the obvious additional time and calls to correct the error. - KPIs Get Missed
When frontline staff spend too long searching for answers, it can drag down the average handling times. Then suddenly, service levels and customer satisfaction targets start slipping. - Shadow Systems Emerge
Employees become tired of fighting with the “official” file share, leading to some creating their own folders, cheat-sheets, or local drives. Knowledge then fragments, silos grow, and duplication gets out of hand. - Adoption Stalls
Once employees decide the system is too painful, they stop using it properly. That means leaders lose visibility and staff fall back on asking around the office instead of finding answers that align with company policy and standards.
Counting the Cost
Let’s run the numbers.
Ten minutes a day wasted searching for answers doesn’t sound like much. But across a 100-person team, that’s 83 hours lost each week. Over a year, more than 4,000 hours vanish into the search void. That’s basically the equivalent of hiring two full-time employees whose only job is “looking for stuff.”
And that’s before you count the knock-on effects, of duplication, compliance risk, drained morale, drawn out onboarding of new hires and so on.
Suddenly, the in-house solution of using file storage or chat threads looks expensive.
What Smarter Knowledge Sharing Looks Like
The real opportunity isn’t just to fix today’s inefficiencies, it’s to give every employee instant access to the knowledge they need to do their job…so they can work faster, with fewer mistakes, and greater confidence. That’s where a purpose-built knowledge system comes in, loaded with features that dramatically improve productivity and help mitigate compliance risk:
Answer-Level Search
An intuitive search features takes you straight to the exact paragraph within a document, providing the answer you need. Call centre staff can resolve queries in seconds instead of minutes and no more trawling through huge PDFs or endless folder results.
Automatic Version Control
The right document version is always surfaced. Outdated policies and duplicate files are archived automatically, so nobody accidently picks outdated documentation and acts on the wrong information. Employee trust in the system goes up, compliance risk goes down.
Single Knowledge Hub
Instead of scattering content across file shares, chat threads, and intranets, with a Knowledge System everything lives in one place and is accessible from one interface. It becomes the single source of truth in your organisation, and accessible to every department.
Engagement Analytics
Leaders can see what’s being searched, which documents get used most, and where gaps exist. It turns knowledge searching into measurable intelligence that can provide leaders with data to steer decisions and manage performance.
Compliance Protection
Only approved and current content is surfaced and accessible, meaning you can protect against regulatory slip-ups. Staff follow the latest policy by default, not by chance.
Intuitive User Interface
We’re talking about a purpose build system and one that people actually want to use. It feels familiar, like searching the web, so adoption is natural. Knowledge stops being a chore and becomes part of the daily flow.
Fast Rollout with Minimal IT Overhead
Unlike heavyweight intranet projects that drag on for months, a modern knowledge platform can be up and running and rolled out within days. It’s cloud-based, easy to configure, and doesn’t drain internal IT resources, or hold back projects waiting on slow IT roll outs.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
The pressure on leaders across all organisations is apparent: please deliver more with less. Budgets are tight, teams are lean, expectations are high.
That means productivity gains aren’t optional extras they’re essential. Freeing up even 5–10% of wasted time can transform productivity levels, and beauty of purpose-built knowledge systems is that they don’t require extra headcount. It free’s up the capacity that’s already in place, that was previously being tethered by poor internal processes.
The Stats and Facts Prove It
- 19% of time lost: the McKinsey benchmark for knowledge workers searching.
- 20–25% productivity gains: typical results seen with purpose-built knowledge systems.
- Days or weeks cut from onboarding: when answers are centralised, new hires hit productivity faster.
- Error rates reduced: when outdated policies are removed from circulation, mistakes fall.
These aren’t incremental gains. They’re step-changes that compound into a culture where knowledge becomes an asset, not a bottleneck.
Turning Possibility into Reality with KPSOL Universal Knowledge
All the features we’ve just outlined…instant answers, version control, compliance protection, fast rollout, this isn’t just a wish list. It’s exactly what KPSOL Universal Knowledge delivers.
KPSOL provide a Knowledge Management platform built from the ground up to take the friction out of knowledge sharing. From call centres handling thousands of queries a day, to HR and compliance teams managing critical policies, it’s designed to help organisations work faster, smarter, and with confidence that information is always correct.
But…unlike heavyweight systems that take months to deploy and cost a fortune, KPS can be live in days. Pricing starts from as little as £10 per user, per month, which represent outstanding value for money when offset by the productivity gains it offers.
Interested to learn more? Book a 10-minute demo to see it in action and speak to one of our Knowledge Management experts.
The gap between storing information and managing knowledge is costing organisations thousands of hours a year. KPSOL closes that gap, quickly, affordably, and in a way your teams will actually use.
Knowledge doesn’t have to be a bottleneck. With the right system, it becomes an asset that compounds value every single day.
Where to Go from Here
- Take the 60-Second Knowledge Audit
See how your current setup stacks up and where you’re losing time take the audit. - See KPSOL Universal Knowledge in action
Book a demo to watch how a purpose-built knowledge system works in practice and picture what it would mean for your team.
