{"id":997271,"date":"2024-12-18T11:51:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T18:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/?p=997271"},"modified":"2024-12-18T11:51:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T18:51:30","slug":"poor-knowledge-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/poor-knowledge-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Companies are losing $ billions with gaps in market research – are you?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Knowledge is power, but what is poor knowledge management?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blast from the past<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I used to work for a global research agency. I remember one day, a senior insights leader from one of our top global clients, a Fortune 500 company, called me and said that they wanted to execute the same survey in my markets as they did in the EU. The client wanted us to follow the same protocols, use the same questionnaire, and produce the same insights format as we did in the EU markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought to myself, well, that is a good and easy way to get revenue under the belt. Little did I know at that time how difficult this would be. Upon investigation, I learned that the person who had run that project has since left the agency. I also learned that there were some other movements of staff since the time this client had done the said study. Bottom line, none of the current team had any clue what that study was about and where the key pieces of data I needed to execute the project per client expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was one of the toughest calls I had ever made. I explained this to the client and asked them to provide the materials our agency had delivered to them so we could execute the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At another time, I received an RFP from a large not-for-profit organization to do a baseline survey. I remembered that the same agency had done something similar some time back with another agency, so I communicated this to them. The response I got was surprising for me at that time. They said they had no records of the previous work, so they had to rerun the same survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

$123 billion research spent in the US isn\u2019t used!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I guess by now you are beginning to see a pattern. Surprisingly, these are not isolated cases<\/strong>. This problem is massive, and is affecting organizations of all sizes and businesses of all types around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a recent study done by Deloitte, 55% of organizational data is going unused. Take a pause and think about what this means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“55% of organizational data is going unused<\/strong>“<\/p>Deloitte<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

According to Gartner, US companies spend on average 9.1% of their revenue on marketing activities<\/strong>. It is a primarily accepted notion that 5%-10% of the marketing budget goes into consumer research, market research, and data analysis. Statista showed that in 2023, the total revenue of US businesses was approximately $41 trillion.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So 55% of the knowledge created each year by spending $224 billion on research by US organizations, or $124 billion, does not get used at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the issue is even bigger. When we expand the loss of data into the loss of knowledge gained from such data, we are looking at a much scarier scenario.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether you agree with the math or not, the fact is poor knowledge management is costing organizations billions of dollars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that we lose, when we don\u2019t manage knowledge<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Building knowledge either by an employee or collectively by an organization takes time, investment, and effort. While organizations invest hundreds of millions of dollars to collect data and build knowledge, it is a mystery why they don\u2019t invest in protecting and harnessing that knowledge.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several studies and publications have documented the impact of poor knowledge management<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Revenue loss<\/em><\/strong> <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n