Unlocking Knowledge: Bridging the Knowledge Gap

Whether you’re using SharePoint, Notion, Google Workspace, or any other platform, they all share one critical limitation: they simply store the information but don’t identify issues with it. For example, they fail to highlight when users are searching for content but can’t find it, or when existing content is ambiguous, unclear or incorrect.

In this blog, we’ll walk through how we are using AI to identify these hidden knowledge gaps and how you can do the same to enhance employees’ efficiency, reduce operational costs, and drive significantly greater value by streamlining knowledge base management processes.

Over time, all knowledge bases inevitably accumulate bad information. When employees rely on this flawed content, they may unknowingly make misinformed decisions, duplicate work, or waste time searching for answers that don’t exist. Identifying these issues isn’t easy — employees often don’t realize the information is wrong, or don’t know where to go for clarification. Even when gaps are spotted, finding the right Subject Matter Expert (SME) and getting clarification on the topic takes time, disrupts work, and doesn’t always lead to lasting fixes.

Too often, this critical issue goes unnoticed or is simply ignored, causing it to quietly undermine team efficiency. This ultimately causes business losses in both time and money. Even when these problems are eventually acknowledged, the solution is to rely on time-consuming manual reviews — an imperfect and inefficient solution.

Let’s see how we can use AI to ensure your business’ most valuable asset, knowledge, can be kept accurate and complete without spending significant cost, time, or effort.

The SMS Innovation Team took on the challenge of improving data quality by building an automated system that would highlight missing and ambiguous information. This was a part of our Adam project, a next-generation knowledge base platform.

We experimented with two main approaches:

1. A complete knowledge base analysis
2. An on-the-fly knowledge base analysis

At first, we tried performing full-scale AI reviews of the entire knowledge base. These “complete” audits were resource-intensive, often produced inconsistent or low-quality results, and struggled to predict real user needs. They were simply too blunt a tool for such a nuanced challenge.

A breakthrough came when we flipped the problem. Instead of trying to guess what might be missing in the knowledge base, we decided to focus on actual usage: what users were asking and how well the system responded.

Our solution is simple but powerful: At the end of each day, Adam runs a daily audit to review all user interactions and identify questions that were either unanswered, only partially answered, or unsatisfactorily answered. Based on the AI response and user feedback, it generates recommendations on how to improve the knowledge base.

This on-the-fly knowledge base analysis provides several key benefits:

1. User-Guided Prioritization: The system creates a continuous feedback loop to update information based on actual user needs and requirements. Every ambiguous or failed response becomes a direct signal for improvement. We get to work on the most important knowledge gaps first, as priority is set directly by user interactions.
2. Rooting Out Ambiguity: The system ensures that the information actively in use is always clear and unambiguous, making it easier to spot and remove any misinformation.
3. Cost-Effective and Accurate: Rather than conducting an extensive, costly review all at once, this approach identifies issues organically as they emerge through interactions.
4. Efficiency for SMEs: Adam ensures that Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are only consulted once per knowledge gap. For example, instead of being repeatedly pinged about the current date of a company-wide migration, employees can use Adam to find answers instantly & know it’s already been reviewed. This reduces disruptions and frees up SMEs to focus on higher-value work.

AI can do more than suggest changes to the knowledge base. It can help automate steps required to complete a task while only halting for a human for actions that require expertise. For example, here are some of the features we have planned next for the Adam project:

1. Automated Ticket Creation: Adam can automatically detect who the author of a page with incomplete or ambiguous information is and create a ticket, assigning it to the appropriate person.
2. Highlighting and Managing Outdated Content: Adam can monitor content that hasn’t been accessed or used recently, flagging it for review. This helps teams keep their knowledge base relevant, concise, and easier to navigate.
3. Insights from Knowledge Trends: Adam can analyze frequently missed details in new documents to identify gaps in knowledge as soon as a new document is created. This helps authors ensure their document contains all the information from day one.

The gap analysis feature in Adam demonstrates how AI can deliver tangible business value by reducing operational inefficiencies and driving continuous improvement leading to fewer wasted hours, fewer costly errors, and faster access to the right information.

It isn’t just about making a smarter chatbot. It’s about letting the system learn from its own shortcomings every single day and turning those insights into measurable business impact.

In the coming weeks, we will share more such practical examples on how you can use AI to add value to your organization. Stay Tuned.

At SMS, we see the rise of artificial intelligence as an opportunity to re-imagine long-standing organizational challenges and develop innovative, streamlined solutions. To that end, we’ve made significant investments in building deep AI expertise — both to enhance our internal capabilities and to better support our clients.

With nearly 50 years of experience, SMS is a trusted provider of professional services, delivering high-impact solutions across both public and private sectors. We operate in highly secure, compliance-driven environments that demand government-grade standards, while also surpassing the agility, efficiency, and speed expected from leading private sector service providers.

If you’re looking to use AI to boost efficiency, cut costs, and maintain top standards in quality, security, and compliance, let’s connect. Our team of experts is ready to help identify opportunities tailored to your unique needs.