Implementing a knowledge handling process based on the KHO Standard has a cost, but avoiding managing the knowledge properly has even a higher cost.

The KHO Standard helps companies to overcome the following issues:

• Difficulties finding information due to lack of rational organization or poor tools.
• High cost of knowledge transfer.
• Few possibilities to transfer knowledge (mainly synchronous).
• High cost of onboarding.
• High cost of rebuild knowledge in case of important resources are gone.
• Reiterate mistakes because they are shared when they happened.
• Reduced possibilities to share ideas, perspectives, and solutions.
• Demotivation due to the impossibility to share valuable but "not required knowledge" specific for the own position.
• Limited relations among teams.
• Unidirectional knowledge transfer (from experts to readers), ignoring the potential knowledge owned by people normally not allowed to transfer their knowledge to others (i.e. ERP users, business experts).
• Long time to market.
• Long time to react to issues and process information.
• Lack of transparency.

There are only a few of the many issues company could experience if they do not handle their knowledge properly, using a well-designed process.