Market Perspectives

ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Knowledge Management: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research. All enterprises maintain storehouses of knowledge about the business and its activities. ISG Research defines knowledge management (KM) as the practice of using technology to organize information for practical purposes: to create it, store it, keep it current and make it accessible to workers when needed. Knowledge is fundamentally different from data; it is made up of data, but it adds critical context that allows it to be used or evaluated in particular situations. In customer experience management (CXM) situations, enterprise knowledge can consist of customer histories, product details, insights and commentaries on products by users and developers—essentially any recorded information deemed notable and potentially beneficial for someone to use when interacting with customers. Knowledge management software is available as standalone niche tools and as part of comprehensive CXM suites. In either case, it is focused mainly on helping workers record organizational insights to be reused when context demands. Resource management is one of the key CXM focus areas for enterprises. There are many relevant resources, but knowledge and data resources and digital content are most in need of management. So much attention goes to artificial intelligence (AI) application deployment, and it is critical to ensure the business information fed into an AI tool is robust and organized enough to allow the AI to generate useful output. The emergence of AI as a customer support tool has spotlighted the need for enterprises to rethink how to organize company knowledge. AI is not just a new technology but an amplification of knowledge management. AI finally provides a way to organize and maintain vast repositories of relevant knowledge for use in all sorts of service-related applications. By 2027, most contact center agents will be assisted in real time by AI guidance using automated knowledge management resources. Knowledge is the key to better service outcomes, and AI is the key to mastering that knowledge. Software providers are just starting to make that connection clear to AI buyers. If an enterprise has flawed (or rudimentary) knowledge awareness and technology, AI tools are challenged to produce meaningful and productive output. Fortunately, a subset of CXM software providers has incorporated knowledge management features into suites. In this report, we evaluate the KM functionality of those software providers, with special consideration for how KM is used to provide contextual assistance to customers and employees who support them. We explore how knowledge resources are funneled into agent-facing guidance tools, self-service chatbots and field service technical systems. Some aspects of KM also dovetail with elements of product development, marketing and promotion and digital (and physical) asset management. In this evaluation, we looked at KM as a set of supported functions rather than a standalone application. We selected features that dovetailed most closely with CX operations, including service and marketing. This included content creation and updating, support for multimedia content including video, integration with existing systems and platforms like CRM and ERP, mobile accessibility and the different user roles supported by the tools. We also considered features related to how knowledge management coordinated with AI platforms, including whether applications used AI to extract knowledge contextually for recommendations or guidance. Separate Buyers Guides on Customer Experience Management and Customer Journey Management are available to more specifically examine those software categories and requirements of enterprises. To be included in this Buyers Guide, software providers and products must offer KM capabilities as part of an overall CXM platform. The capability model for KM in this research included: analytics, customer journey management, marketing and sales support and resource management. Providers that develop standalone KM products not included in a CXM suite were excluded from this evaluation. The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Knowledge Management evaluates software providers and products based on support for features related to collecting and organizing informational resources that service representatives and customers use to solve problems and understand how to use purchased products and services. This includes AI features that deliver information to service reps’ desktops, potentially including materials in video, audio or text format. Other features evaluated include how well the software integrates with other CX tools, including those used for customer communication and back-office tools like ERP or CRM systems. We also considered how easy it is for users to track the effectiveness of specific knowledge resources and the KM system overall. This research evaluates the following 17 software providers that offer products that deliver knowledge management as we define it: Adobe, eGain, Emplifi, Freshworks, Gainsight, Genesys, HubSpot, Microsoft, NICE, Oracle, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Sprinklr, SugarCRM, Verint, Zendesk and Zoho. This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of knowledge management software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool. We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating knowledge management offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI. The Buyers Guide for Knowledge Management in 2025 finds Verint first on the list, followed by Salesforce and ServiceNow. Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader. The Leaders in Product Experience are: Verint. Salesforce. ServiceNow. The Leaders in Customer Experience are: NICE. Salesforce. Verint. The Leaders across any of the seven categories are: NICE and ServiceNow, which has achieved this rating in six of the seven categories. Salesforce in four categories. Verint and Zendesk in two categories. Genesys in one category. The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating. Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle knowledge management, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another. ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our knowledge management blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects. You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.

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