What Is Single Source Of Truth & How To Create It?

Study shows that employees spend around 29% of their workweek (11.6 hours) searching for information.

This is because large organizations today use an average of 367 different software to manage various workflows, which leads to data silos, making information retrieval harder for employees.

80% of surveyed executives claimed that they now actively prioritize reducing data silos. This can be achieved by implementing a single source of truth to house your organization’s knowledge.

In this blog, we will walk you through 8 easy steps to create your single source of truth. We’ll also share some case studies of our clients who witnessed improved customer satisfaction by implementing single source of truth.

What is a single source of truth?

A Single Source of Truth (SSOT) is a centralized repository of all your knowledge – product information, policies, procedures, FAQs, and troubleshooting steps. It acts as the one-stop shop for employees, ensuring consistency and efficiency.

8 Steps to Creating an Efficient Single Source of Truth

#1 Choose the Right Single Source of Truth platform:

The first step is looking for a SSOT platform like a CRM, SharePoint or cohesive knowledge management system.

Your single source of truth should have features like

• Intuitive search that gives users instant answers from your knowledge base.
• DIY content creation so that you can create content easily without spending hours on coding
• Dynamic content formats like interactive quizzes, videos, visual guides, and next-best action workflows so you can provide guided and contextual knowledge to your users
• Clear content taxonomies to classify information into categories and subcategories so that your users can quickly navigate your knowledge base to find relevant information

#2 Migrate All Existing Knowledge to your Single Source of Truth:

The second step is migrating your existing content from all your individual databases to your new SSOT platform.

A fortune 500 telecom client with over 6,000 articles and decision trees, was able to easily complete the migration process that would traditionally take 360 man-days of effort, in just 60 man-days, with Knowmax’s AI content migration engine. This resulted in faster implementation of the knowledge management platform, improvement in CX metrics, and cost savings of $60K.

Uncover the full story here

#3 Develop a content creation strategy

Once you migrate all your knowledge to your single source of truth platform, you need to create a content strategy.

Analyse your knowledge base to identify knowledge that is hard to understand, irrelevant and outdated.

Based on your analysis create a content strategy, assigning team members with responsibility and timelines to:

• Create new content
• Update old content
• Repurpose existing knowledge into easy-to-understand formats

Dynamic formats like step-by-step picture guides, next-best-action workflows, or interactive FAQs are easy to understand. They help increase the efficacy and user adherence of your documents.

#4 Assign the right roles to the right people

Next, you need to identify all the individuals who will need access to your single source of truth. This may include employees from various departments, external collaborators, or even customers.

Once, you identify your users, you need to create user accounts for them – assigning them specific roles with tailored permissions.

For example, you can create user groups like:

• Knowledge contributors who will add, edit, and share knowledge content.
• Knowledge approvers who will review and approve submitted knowledge content before publishing.
• Knowledge consumers who will have read only access for knowledge content.
• Administrators who will manage user accounts, roles, and platform settings.

Assigning these roles and permissions will help you keep your data secure, by ensuring that users only have access to the functionalities and information relevant to their job.

#5 Onboard and Train your users:

After you have all your information in one place, the next step is to onboard the star of the show – your employees!

Create an onboarding strategy detailing the order in which your user groups will be onboarded to your platform.

For example, you can create an onboarding strategy like:

• Phase 1 – Onboard and train administrators so that they can configure user access, manage security settings, and ensure the system functions smoothly.
• Phase 2 – Onboard and train knowledge contributors so that they can create content using proper guidelines, formatting, and tagging best practices.
• Phase 3 – Onboard and train knowledge approvers so that they can approve content maintaining the established standard of quality.
• Phase 4 – Onboard and train the knowledge consumers so that they can easily navigate the system, search for content, and leverage the available knowledge.

For training, you can use a variety of methods. You can give lectures, show video tutorials, share step-by-step picture guides, or invest in an interactive learning management system.

Remember to make these resources versatile to actively facilitate on-going employee learning.

#6 Implement the Platform:

Now that your users are trained it’s time to start replacing your old clunky databases with your brand-new single source of truth and see how well your employees adapt to it.

But wait! You may want to take this process a bit slow, cause this step is all about trial and error.

Create an implementation strategy and implement the platform in phases.

Start implementing the platform among a few teams or employees.

Set a few realistic KPIs to measure their performance with the new platform.

Track their progress, answer their doubts, and take notes on how to improve your implementation strategy for the larger group.

Once you are satisfied with their performance, you can start implementing the software among more teams.

#7 Gather User Feedback:

Now as you implement the platform, be prepared for some resistance from your employees – sometimes change is a hard pill to swallow.

But shoving it down their throats is not the answer. In this step, we recommend leading with compassion and strategy.

Establish a support system where employees can seek help whenever they encounter challenges with the platform. This can be through your Slack channels or other internal communication channels.

Encourage an open dialogue where employees feel comfortable sharing feedback and voicing concerns about the SSOT implementation.

For example, you can use anonymous feedback tools like SurveyMonkey, so that employees can voice their experience fearlessly.

Once you get their input, actively listen and efficiently address all their problems.

Lastly, the reward is a proven method of promoting a desired behaviour. So, use this advice from psychology and celebrate employees who show enthusiasm and proficiency in using your single source of truth.

This not only incentivizes everyone else to follow suit but also creates positive momentum for widespread adoption throughout your organization.

#8 Regularly Update Your Single Source of Truth:

Now the whole point of having an SSOT platform is to ensure that your team has access to accurate and relevant information at all times.

This is only possible if you measure the effectiveness of your platform regularly.

This includes analysing metrics like user engagement, the effectiveness of knowledge content, and customer satisfaction.

Based on these insights, update your single source of truth regularly. This does not mean only adding new content but also flagging outdated content so that your employees don’t get confused.

Knowmax Knowledge management can help you here by providing micro-segmented analytics that leverages AI to flag outdate content while enabling your team to access updates easily in real-time.

Case Studies: Organisations That Achieved Success with an Efficient Single Source of Truth.

Jupiter’s Journey to a Single Source of Truth

Jupiter is a digital bank, and in 2019 they were struggling with:

1. Scattered and unorganized standard operating procedures.
2. Longer agent learning curves
3. Outdated and wrong information delivery

Knowmax helped them create a single source of truth for their knowledge, which in turn improved their customer experience.

Uncover the full story here.

Leading Fintech Transforms Customer Experience with Knowmax’s Single Source of Truth

The FinTech Unicorn startup was struggling with:

• Scattered process information, which made it hard to follow standard operating procedures.
• Knowledge was not actionable, which lead to delayed and poor customer service.

Knowmax helped them by providing a single source of truth for all their organisational data, enabling exceptional customer experience, and faster agent onboarding.

Here’s what they say:

“We have achieved a 12% increase in FCR and 10% reduction in AHT. We’re now providing seamless customer service to over 2 million users. Knowmax has transformed our CX function and helped us increase our C-SAT scores by 28%. We’re lucky to have found a Knowledge Partner that delivered promising results and supported us throughout our Knowledge Management journey.”

Chief Operating Officer

Uncover their journey with single source of truth here.