The costly confusion between document management and knowledge management
Fortune 500 companies collectively waste 2.4 billion hours a year just searching for information.
Read that again. It’s not a typo. But it is a clear sign that the way organizations store and share knowledge is seriously broken.
At the root of this colossal waste is a problem hiding in plain sight: somewhere along the way, document management became synonymous with knowledge management. We started confusing file storage with common understanding. And in doing so, we shaped work habits around merely saving files, without actually thinking about how the information within those documents could be effectively shared and drawn upon when needed. And with generative AI now in the mix, the gap between what teams know and what’s actually findable is getting more expensive by the day.
The numbers tell the story. In Atlassian’s State of Teams 2025 report, 56% of employees said they still have to ping someone or schedule a meeting to get the information they need. Half say teams at their company are duplicating work without realizing it.
Most teams don’t even realize they’re operating inefficiently because it’s deeply baked into how they work. It’s time to draw a clear line between document management and knowledge management — and make sure your teams aren’t ignoring the latter.
Document management vs. knowledge management
Just about every team has some version of document management. It’s how work gets recorded, shared, and stored — from product requirements and marketing messaging to HR policies, contracts, and compliance docs. Everything has a version history, access controls, and a clear place to live. For anything that needs review, audit, or approval, this kind of structure is non-negotiable.
But document management is only half of the story. When it becomes a stand-in for knowledge management, things go sideways. They’re two very different things:
- Document management is about keeping structured content organized and secure.
- Knowledge management is about making the messy, in-between work of teams visible and usable.
But knowledge is murkier than documents. It’s the notes someone took during a kickoff and the decision you made in a meeting that never got written down. The “here’s how I fixed it” thread in Slack. These things rarely make it into a polished doc, but they’re the glue that holds projects together.
And when that context disappears into the ether, teams end up retracing their steps rather than moving forward: asking around, duplicating work, or second-guessing the latest version. That’s not a knowledge system. It’s a workaround — and a costly one, at that. Even when teams can find the “official” document, they’re often missing the backstory: what changed, why it changed, and what’s been tried already. Without that, alignment is surface-level at best.
Let’s look at an in-depth breakdown of document management vs knowledge management:
The costs of short-changing knowledge management
It’s easy to see how document management became the default. Cloud-based tools like SharePoint and Google Drive made it a breeze to create, store, and share digital files. As those systems scaled, it started to feel like that was enough — that if a document existed somewhere, the knowledge was captured.
But most teams don’t struggle because they lack information. In fact, they have more of it than they know what to do with (how many docs have you saved in SharePoint for reference later, only to never open again?). They struggle because too much information is never actually captured — it’s trapped in people’s heads, or buried in places no one thinks to look.
All that valuable context gets wasted, and it comes at a steep cost.
Scattered context, lost time
According to Atlassian’s State of Teams report, a quarter of the average work week now goes to searching for information. That number may feel shockingly high, but if you’ve ever spent an hour digging for a doc only to give up and ask someone where to find it, it tracks.
The bigger issue is the ripple effect — that lost time drags everything else down. Projects slow to a crawl, and people make decisions without the full context. And even when they do find something, it’s often out of date, buried in an old version, or missing key updates.
A system that’s easy to ignore and hard to keep fresh
Most document management systems are maintained by a small group of specialists: HR, legal, operations, finance, etc. Keeping them current is slow and manual, and often falls to SMEs who are already stretched thin. So what happens? People stop using them and rely instead on hallway conversations, direct messages, and shared drive chaos. And even when helpful docs exist, they’re rarely refreshed — and, as a result, rarely used.
Knowledge that leaves with your people
Without a robust knowledge management system, valuable organizational knowledge walks out the door with departing employees. The project decisions they made, lessons learned, shortcuts…all of it disappears. Along with leaving your existing employees worse off, this slows down onboarding and forces teams to relearn lessons that should’ve been easy to pass on.
Why knowledge management should be a priority
Information can’t just sit in folders. It needs to be easy to find, easy to share, and easy to build on.
Here’s why knowledge management needs to be a priority for the modern enterprise:
AI needs context—lots of it
Generative AI can’t magically improve your workflows. It can only work with what it can see — and most companies don’t have their knowledge in a state that AI can use. The State of Teams report found that 96% of executives aren’t sure how to get their teams to use AI effectively.
A big reason why? The knowledge AI needs is often locked away in siloed tools, outdated docs, or someone’s head. Ultimately, to make AI truly useful (and trustworthy), teams need a robust knowledge base it can draw from.
Invisible waste is holding teams back
It’s not always easy to see, but if your employees are spending their day asking around, digging through shared drives, or recreating work that already exists, they’re adding hidden costs to your finances. A full 74% of leaders say poor communication is directly hurting their team’s speed and output. By centralizing knowledge in the flow of work and making it easily discoverable, organizations can dramatically cut this waste and free up time for higher-value work.
Shared knowledge leads to sharper teamwork
When everyone’s working from the same source of truth, everything moves faster. Teams can see what’s already been done, pick up where someone else left off, and make better decisions, faster. Atlassian research shows that teams who plan and track work together are 4.1x more likely to meet deadlines and 2.4x more likely to focus on the work that matters most.
Culture matters just as much as tools
None of this sticks without a knowledge-sharing mindset. The right tools provide the foundation, but the real power of knowledge management comes from creating a culture where sharing that knowledge is expected — where it’s just how work gets done.
How to get started with knowledge management
The good news is, if you’ve already invested in document management, you’re not starting from scratch. But merely storing information doesn’t make it useful. Knowledge management is what helps your teams actually find, share, and build on what they know without reinventing the wheel each time.
Here’s how to get started:
Centralize where teams work
Even if knowledge technically exists, if it’s scattered across a maze of folders, decks, and personal notes, it may as well be lost. People can’t find it, so they ask around, redo work, or, worst of all, make decisions without the full picture.
Remedying this starts with creating a single place where context actually lives. That means moving project notes, decision logs, and work-in-progress docs into a shared, searchable, connected knowledge hub like Confluence. This ensures everyone’s working from the same source of truth.
Done well, this doesn’t just eliminate redundant work. It creates a living record of how and why each decision was made, with linked artifacts, meeting notes, and iteration history baked in. New hires, for instance, can search Confluence, follow the project narrative from kickoff to release, and begin shipping meaningful work in days instead of spending their first month untangling version histories and Slack back-channels.
Help your people share in the moment
Google Docs are convenient, but they’re not the right fit for all kinds of information. Sometimes, recording a quick video with Loom does the trick. Other times, a whiteboard brainstorm session works best. If you don’t have a lightweight way to share that kind of messy, in-the-flow knowledge, it’s gone for good.
Here’s the fix: Give people the flexibility to capture their knowledge in whatever way works best for them. When it’s simple to jot something down, record a walkthrough, or drop a rough draft into Confluence, more knowledge makes it out of someone’s head and into your team’s hands.
Make knowledge easy to find (and even easier to use)
A knowledge base only works if people can actually use it. That means ditching folder deep dives and surfacing what matters, where it matters. Smart search, contextual suggestions, embedded references — these are the ingredients that make knowledge discoverable when people need it most. Not just easier to find, but easier to act on. In Confluence, for instance, teams can embed their whiteboards, Looms, and docs directly alongside their project work so that context is always available for reference.
Prioritize cultural change
A modern knowledge base gives teams a single source of truth — but it’s the habits and expectations around sharing knowledge that make it work long-term. When people default to documenting decisions, capturing insights, and helping others find what they need, collaboration scales naturally.
Storage is not a strategy
It’s time to stop mistaking “we saved the file” for “we captured the knowledge.” Modern work moves at warp speed. Knowledge needs to be visible in the tools people already use, easy to build on, and accessible when it matters most — especially with generative AI set to play a bigger role in enterprises going forward.
Ready to rethink knowledge for the modern era? Learn more about how Atlassian can power org-wide knowledge management.
