What is SaaS Knowledge Management & Documentation?

Knowledge management and documentation in SaaS are the practices of organizing, storing, and sharing critical information within the company. These practices determine how information is located, improve customer experience, and enhance how daily work is carried out. Atlassian’s State of Teams 2025 survey found that leaders and teams spend 25% of their time searching for answers.

There are four main types of knowledge management:

• Explicit Knowledge

Explicit knowledge is fairly easy to communicate. It is the kind of knowledge that you find in manuals, guides, or even organizational policies. This includes instructions regarding the use of machinery and procedures for answering customers’ queries.

• Implicit Knowledge

Implicit knowledge comes from experience. It is knowledge that individuals acquire from practical work, observation, and experimentation. Implicit knowledge is different from explicit knowledge in the sense that implicit knowledge may not be easy to explain or describe.

• Tacit Knowledge

Tacit knowledge is personal expertise that’s hard to teach to someone else. It is the kind of knowledge that people have but do not know about. Tacit knowledge entails ideas, intuitions, and abilities that people acquire through their experiences and interactions with others.

• Embedded Knowledge

Embedded knowledge is knowledge that is integrated into organizational routines, processes, and products. This kind of knowledge is rooted in the culture of the organization. An example of embedded knowledge would be the manner in which an organization deals with customer complaints or produces its products.

Document management (DM) involves how a company stores and organizes documents, including invoices, contracts, and reports, to make them easier for employees to use for their work.

On the other hand, knowledge management is more comprehensive than document management. It includes organizing and sharing diverse knowledge, such as individual expertise, practical experiences, and best practices.

Implementing knowledge management involves the following steps:

• Step 1: Identifying your company’s most critical knowledge base areas. This could be things like what customers like or knowing about technical issues
• Step 2: Find Sources: Determine where this knowledge is currently located. It could be in people’s minds, documents, or outside reports.
• Step 3: Find the Gaps: Determine what information your organization is lacking. There can be situations where your staff needs new information or data.
• Step 4: Select Knowledge Management Tools and Approaches: Determine the optimal solutions for managing and sharing information. This may involve building a knowledge base, organizing training sessions, or using collaboration software. If you are working with a platform, pay attention to quick searching (according to a survey from Atlassian’s State of Teams 2025, managers and employees spend 25% of their time searching for answers), integration with existing applications, and role-based access according to your identity and access management policy.
• Step 5: Implement and Monitor: Start using your knowledge plan and watch how it goes. Change things if needed to make sure it helps your company.

Creating a knowledge management roadmap means figuring out how your organization will gather, sort, and use information effectively. Follow these steps:

Step 1: Define Goals:

Consider what you want from managing knowledge. It could mean making different choices or generating new ideas.

Step 2: Gather Input

Talk with the people who care about knowledge management to know what they need and what problems they face. You can ask them questions through surveys or interviews.

Step 3: Develop Strategies

Determine how you’ll reach your goals. This could involve using new tools or methods, training, dedicated communities, or encouraging everyone to share their knowledge.

Step 4: Allocate Resources

Decide what you’ll need: money, people, and technology to make your plan happen.

Step 5: Implement

Implement your strategy by investing in a dedicated knowledge management system. This could mean teaching your team, starting new systems, or changing how things are done now, which makes it a change management task.