A knowledge audit entails interviewing target users to find out what's going on in their heads. Where is the knowledge being created, how is it being created and how is it being used? Then ask the same questions about your databases and document stores.

Through this process, you might learn that knowledge is being created during in-person meetings, after which everyone e-mails their notes around. Then, everyone stores independent versions on hard drives, adding notes to their own copies and scheduling more meetings to share the revised notes, setting off the cycle again. Ultimately, this process results in a new product, service or customer contract. If follow-up meetings were eliminated, this would save anywhere from days to weeks of the cycle.

Gillespie also recommends you determine whether the knowledge is relevant to a specific business objective. This will help you cost-justify the necessary software.

You'll also want to check to see that the knowledge is being created accurately. Are people actually using the knowledge once it is created (important for databases and documents)? On the technology side, is the technology available to support and ease this process?