In most companies, knowledge isn't a scarce resource. SharePoint keeps growing. Confluence keeps filling up. Documentation gets written, processes get described, experience gets recorded somewhere. Volume is rarely the problem.
The problem only shows up in everyday work: when someone spends twenty minutes searching for a document that should already exist. When a question always goes to the one colleague who “definitely knows.” When a new employee painstakingly reconstructs knowledge her predecessor had already worked out.
According to a Statista study commissioned by Kyocera, 42% of office employees in Germany and Austria spend more than 30 minutes every day looking for relevant information – and only 46% feel that knowledge sharing in their company is well organised. For most organisations, making knowledge usable is still an unsolved problem – and a daily source of friction.
These five signs can help you assess whether this applies to your company too.
- Information is spread across too many systems – with no connection between them
The typical picture looks like this: SharePoint for documents, Confluence for project notes, one specialized system for product information, another for service data – and in between, emails containing the decisions that actually matter. Each system makes sense on its own. Together, they don't add up to a coherent picture.
Anyone searching for information in this landscape first has to decide where to even look. And anyone who doesn't know exactly which system a piece of information was filed in often doesn't find it at all – even though it exists.
The real problem isn't the number of systems – it's the missing link between them. Making knowledge usable in your company doesn't start with a new system; it starts with connecting the ones you already have.
- Employees spend more time searching than working
30+ minutes of searching a day might not sound like much at first. But over a year, that adds up to more than 120 hours per person – roughly three working weeks spent not on actual work, but on searching for information that should already be available.
What makes this especially significant is that this time is invisible. It doesn't show up in any utilisation analysis, it doesn't generate error tickets, and it's rarely recognised as a structural problem. Instead, it's treated as a normal part of the job – even though it doesn't have to be.
The real problem: search time is tied-up working time that quietly and continuously accumulates, without ever being recognised as a loss.
- Answers depend on individual people instead of the system
“Just ask Petra, she'll know.” That sentence sounds like collaboration working the way it should. In reality, it describes a structural risk: knowledge that lives only in individual heads can't be scaled and can't be safeguarded. It creates bottlenecks around the experts who are constantly asked – and it's lost the moment those people leave the company or are unavailable for an extended period.
In industries like mechanical engineering, medical technology, or chemicals, where experts with decades of experience are increasingly retiring, this isn't an abstract risk – it's an operational reality many companies already have to deal with today.
The real problem: experiential knowledge that hasn't been documented and made available in context effectively doesn't exist for the company – even if it lives on in individual people's heads.
- Documents can be found, but are barely usable without context
There's a difference between a document that can be found and a document that can actually be used. A service manual with no link to the right machine version is of little help to a technician on site. A standard with no reference to the product it applies to creates uncertainty instead of orientation. A process description with no indication of its scope will, in doubt, simply be ignored.
Knowledge needs context to be usable – a way of placing it in relation to products, projects, processes, or systems. Without that context, even when content exists, it can feel like you're not really getting anywhere.
The real problem: isolated content creates uncertainty. Only contextualized knowledge creates the ability to act.
- Knowledge doesn't reach people where they need it
A service technician standing in front of a machine who first has to switch to the intranet to find the relevant documentation. A design engineer working on a new component who doesn't automatically see which standards and lessons learned from similar projects already exist. A customer advisor who can't answer a question right away because the information exists, but isn't visible within their work context.
In all three cases, the knowledge exists. It just doesn't come to the person – the person has to go to the knowledge. That may sound like a subtle distinction, but in practice it means knowledge management only works for people who already know what they need to look for.
The real problem: knowledge that has to be actively searched for only ever unlocks a fraction of its potential. Knowledge that becomes visible at the right time and place changes the way work happens.
What these five signs have in common
They don't describe a technology problem or a discipline problem. They describe a structural problem: in many companies, knowledge is stored, but not connected. It's there, but not available in the right context. It exists – but it doesn't reach the people who need it.
Truly making knowledge usable in your company doesn't mean introducing another system. It means connecting the systems you already have, putting content into context, and making knowledge visible wherever decisions are made, problems are solved, and products are developed.
That's why we built JUNOfy.
Time to connect knowledge in a new way.
JUNOfy makes knowledge from different systems available in the right context – for companies that don't want to search for information, but use it.
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