Imagine valuable insights getting buried across disconnected systems, scattered teams, and multiple languages: hard to find, even harder to act on.
For many insights teams, this is a daily reality. As data multiplies, so does the need for smarter ways to capture, connect, and curate what truly matters.
Otherwise, such fragmentation stirs up more than just frustration: it inflates expenses, reduces productivity, and slows down innovation. Gartner estimates that data inefficiencies cost organizations an average of $12.9 million–and that's just the beginning of a much longer list of problems.
Breaking down silos is worth the effort, so in this article, you'll learn:
At Stravito, we have supported some of the world's renowned household names, including Roche, NPR, and Heineken, in breaking down their silos.
Read on for advice from our knowledge management experts: Vignesh Swaminathan, Head of Product Solutions; Ross Dempsey, Director of Insight Engagement, and Lucy Sarjant, Senior Director, Customers.
As signalled already, knowledge silos occur when critical assets, such as customer research or strategies, fail to reach a wider organization.
In enterprises, knowledge silos often occur between the Marketing, Insights, R&D, Sales, and Product teams. Each department may use different systems, naming conventions, or communication styles.
As a result, the enterprise misses out on the insights that could inform broader strategies.
Despite the unquestionable development of enterprise collaboration tools in the last decade, information silos remain strong. Here are the most important reasons:
Many companies still rely on outdated systems, such as static file folders, email threads, or disconnected SharePoint drives.
More akin to analogue workspaces, these tools lack support for cross-functional insight sharing and searchability, which are indispensable in digital environments.
"At global organizations, silos often stem from complex structures, fragmented tech, and unclear ownership—not a lack of communication.
The solution isn’t just new tools, but building alignment around how teams create and use knowledge towards shared business goals. “
—Vignesh Swaminathan, Head of Product Solutions at Stravito.
Separate departments often operate under different rules, objectives, and KPIs. This fact naturally weakens collaboration, especially when the company rewards teams for individual successes rather than collective efforts.
“One common challenge in large enterprises is simply knowing what already exists.
Insights often get lost in disconnected systems or buried in inboxes, leading to strategic blind spots.
The breakthrough comes when knowledge management becomes a continuous, company-wide discipline across all regions and their languages."
— Ross Dempsey, Director of Insight Engagement at Stravito.
Even when a company implements knowledge management (KM) tools, it requires consistent efforts before teams begin to utilize them. Without a culture that values and reinforces knowledge sharing, insights remain in silos.
People don't always share what they know. Whether due to time pressure, fear of losing control, or simply not recognizing the value of their knowledge for other teams, the result is always the same: the organization loses.
Let's now consider the measurable damage it causes to companies.
Knowledge silos slow things down and significantly harm your business. The most common and impactful consequences include:
Global enterprises have enough resources for excellent market research. But when insights aren't visible or easily retrievable, teams commission redundant studies, spending valuable budgets on questions that already have answers.
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A real-life example of an organizational silo Roche is one of the largest pharma companies in the world, spending an estimated 20% of its revenue on R&D. Before partnering with Stravito, the team struggled to manage vast resources across a complex global structure while ensuring that insights were accessible, actionable, and up-to-date. Additionally, the company required mechanisms to support high-quality, multilingual information for key stakeholders. |
When team members struggle to find insights across folders, emails, and systems, they waste precious time. Then, they often end up generating again the resources they can't find.
According to APQC, the average knowledge worker spends 2 hours every week recreating existing information and almost the same amount of time providing duplicate answers.
There's only one worse thing: When companies proceed without such insights.
If different departments working with separate data points sounds like a mess, that's because it is. Incomplete data often leads to biased approaches, making it challenging for leaders to make informed decisions.
McKinsey’s research reveals that companies effectively using customer insights for personalization can expect their revenue to grow even 40% faster than competitors with incomplete data.
Decisions based on partial customer data often lead to misaligned strategies, poorly received products, and a loss of market share.
For CMOs and insights leaders, such knowledge inefficiencies translate into lower ROI on research, missed market opportunities, and diminished competitive advantage. The longer insights stay locked away, the less relevant and valuable they become.
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💡 Want to prevent costly inefficiencies from knowledge silos? Discover how Stravito centralizes insights for faster, smarter decisions. |
Just as the causes of organizational silos are complex, their solutions also aren't about a single fix but require a multifaceted approach.
Below, our experts share the seven actionable strategies they have found most important when working with Stravito clients. They roughly fall into three distinct categories: behavioral, process, and technology.
Organizational memory is the enterprise's ability to retain its collective knowledge. Companies that retain and make organizational memory accessible can be more agile and innovative.
However, creating an environment that supports insight sharing doesn't happen overnight, and it always needs to start at the top. Leaders need to advocate the value of dismantling knowledge silos and foster transparency across departments.
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Action tip: Recognize and celebrate examples of impactful cross-departmental collaboration and sharing insights. Include news about such developments in internal newsletters and team meetings. |
You may preach the value of transparency, but the most potent message is when executives and leaders actively use and promote shared insight. Such sponsorship helps to overcome initial resistance and establishes insight sharing as a top priority.
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Action tip: Make sure that your senior leaders are aware of key new studies and critical research assets. Use your company's inner communication channels to highlight examples of how shared research and customer insights influenced a successful campaign or strategic decision. |
Incentivize teams to contribute to your organizational knowledge hubs. This step can take place with formal mechanisms like performance metrics or informal ones, such as shoutouts or team awards.
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Action tip: Include knowledge-sharing behaviors in performance reviews or Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). |
One common challenge when building a shared pool of customer insights is the lack of standardized information, as teams often use their own unique formats and conventions.
It's, therefore, essential to develop a consistent format for capturing key findings, methodology, and implications. It also requires metadata, such as tags, regions, and themes, to facilitate easy filtering.
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Action tip: Create templates or playbooks for summarizing insights that align with your company's needs and tools. |
Encourage teams to bring insights into existing workflows regularly. Whether it's an All-hands meeting or a quarterly review, make use of all opportunities to showcase and inform the team of your current research or insights initiative.
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Action tip: Dedicate 5 to 10 minutes in every cross-functional meeting for a "latest insights" spotlight. |
Ensure there's a clear path for your teams to share, approve, and store research from the moment you get it to when you use it in action to build strategies and campaigns. This step prevents bottlenecks and ensures accessibility.
"Having led the implementation of knowledge management frameworks for global clients, including Delta Airlines and Roche,
I've seen first-hand how aligning processes across regions and functions always unlocks value.
One key is designing intuitive workflows that make sharing insights part of everyday work. When the process is intuitive, adoption follows."
— Lucy Sarjant, Senior Director, Customers, at Stravito.
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Action tip: Take time to design workflows that match your specific organizational requirements. Use relevant software to streamline and automate your knowledge management tasks. |
Technology is a crucial enabler in breaking down organizational silos.
Insights management platforms provide solid structures for consolidating insights from multiple sources into a single, searchable hub.
The most important features of include:
By reducing friction in storing, finding, and sharing insights, Stravito helps organizations democratize knowledge and drive smarter decisions more quickly.
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A real-life example of a solution to enterprise knowledge silos Delta Air Lines is a major U.S. airline. The company urgently required a single source of information to unlock the full value of its extensive customer research. Teams often struggled to locate relevant insights quickly, which blocked strategic decision-making. By partnering with Stravito, Delta created the Delta Insights Hub, a centralized, AI-powered platform that lets employees find and use research. The solution provides access to insights across the entire organisation, enhancing cross-departmental collaboration and empowering teams to make faster, more informed decisions.
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Equipped with Stravito, even the most complex organizations can:
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A real-life example of enhancing customer insights with GenAI Powered by Stravito, HEINEKEN's KIM platform uses AI-driven search to retrieve precise, context-rich insights. This solution allows employees across departments to find and apply relevant knowledge quickly. Shared Collections, annotations, and intuitive interfaces make it easy for marketing, sales, and CS&L to collaborate and use existing insights. Thanks to consistent and organized documentation, users easily find the insights they need. They can also ask the AI Assistant questions.
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Knowledge silos are more than an inconvenience; they're a competitive liability. In a world where customer expectations evolve rapidly, only organizations that share and apply insights swiftly can win.
By understanding the root causes of organizational silos, whether it's behaviour, process or technology, you can take action to boost cross-functional collaboration.
From reshaping team behaviors to rethinking workflows, and introducing smarter tools, the path to breaking down silos is clear and achievable.
Start small: recognize sharing, pilot a new process, or explore a hub like Stravito. Each step creates momentum and, over time, transforms how your organization makes decisions. And when insights flow freely, innovation follows.
Curious to discover how Stravito can help your teams tackle knowledge silos?
Knowledge silos occur when valuable information, such as customer insights, remains within a specific department without being shared with other teams.
As a result, the organization can’t build on that knowledge, which often leads to duplication, inefficiency, and misalignment.
Silos typically result from outdated tools, fragmented organizational structures, and insufficient cross-functional collaboration.
Even with modern collaboration software, issues persist when departments use different systems, incentives, or terminology to manage and store insights. The larger the organization, the greater the potential for knowledge silos to form.
Organizational silos drive up costs and slow down decision-making. Teams waste time recreating research that already exists, make decisions based on incomplete data, and miss opportunities to act on customer insights. Gartner estimates that data inefficiencies cost businesses an average of $12.9 million annually.
Breaking down knowledge silos requires addressing behavioral, process, and technological issues:
Stravito offers an AI-powered insights management platform that helps global enterprises centralize knowledge, improve findability, and foster collaboration across departments.
Real-world users, such as Delta Air Lines and HEINEKEN, have seen measurable improvements in efficiency and access to insights.
Begin by identifying where silos exist and their impact on collaboration and decision-making. Encourage leadership to champion knowledge sharing and standardize how your teams document insights.
Consider using an insights management platform like Stravito to centralize information and make it easily accessible across teams.