5 Steps to Get Value from Your Confluence as Quickly as Possible

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Do you feel like your team isn’t using Confluence to its full potential? You’re not alone - I’ve heard it many times in my conversations with our customers.

Most organizations only tap into a small portion of what Confluence can do. As a result, they miss out on the real value it can bring - better collaboration, smoother processes, and less chaos around documentation. In this article, you’ll learn what a “consumption gap” and “value gap” are and how to close the latter in five clear steps.

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What Is a Consumption Gap (and Why It Matters)?

The consumption gap is the difference between what a product can do and what the customer actually uses it for.

Let’s take Confluence as an example. Maybe it can support project documentation, internal policies, approval processes, and even ISO-compliant quality management. But if your team only uses it to store meeting notes, there’s a big consumption gap - and with it, a value gap.

What’s the Value Gap?

The value gap is the difference between the value you could be getting from Confluence and what you’re actually getting today. And closing that gap means getting a better return on your investment - faster.

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How to Close the Value Gap in 5 Steps

These five steps will help you close the value gap and start getting real value from Confluence - not just a place to “dump” documents, but a central hub that drives collaboration, quality, and compliance.

Step 1: Assess Where You Are Now

Start with a simple internal audit. Ask yourself:

• ✅ What departments currently use Confluence?
• ❌ What departments don’t?
• 📝 What do they use it for?

Use a checklist of common use cases to guide this:

Use Case	Department	Using It? (Y/N)
Internal documentation
Knowledge base / Help Center
Approval processes
Onboarding & HR documentation
Software/project documentation
Document lifecycle management (DLM)
Compliance & quality workflows (e.g. ISO)
Controlled publishing
Cross-team collaboration

Step 2: Define Where You Want to Be

Now that you know where you are, decide where you want to go.

This could be a company-wide goal or goals for individual departments. Use the checklist again to set targets.

For example:

• 🎯 “HR will manage onboarding checklists in Confluence using templates and approvals.”
• 🎯 “The QA team will maintain ISO 9001-compliant SOPs with version control and formal approvals.”
• 🎯 “Marketing will build a shared knowledge hub for campaign templates and cross-functional collaboration.”
• 🎯 “Regulated departments will implement a document lifecycle - from draft to approval to archive - all inside Confluence.”

Step 3: Identify the Gaps

What’s stopping those departments or teams from using Confluence more effectively?

Some common blockers:

• Lack of training or onboarding
• No clear structure or templates
• Manual, time-consuming approval processes
• No visibility into document status or ownership
• Missing functionality (e.g., workflows, versioning, review tracking)
• Change resistance
• No adoption strategy and plan in place

This is especially critical in organizations that must meet ISO standards, FDA regulations, or internal quality management frameworks. In these environments, documentation must be complete, up-to-date, traceable, and formally approved.

App like Workflows for Confluence can help you enforce formal review and approval processes, ensure version control, and manage the entire document lifecycle - from draft to approval to archival.

Step 4: Create a Plan to Expand Usage

Once you know the blockers, build a plan to overcome them. Think in terms of enablement, simplification, and support.

Some ideas:

• Run enablement sessions tailored to each team’s needs
• Create reusable templates for SOPs, quality manuals, or policy updates
• Set up approval workflows to align with your internal review procedures or ISO standards
• Add automation to notify reviewers, control publishing, or trigger re-approvals after changes
• Assign “champions” in each department to help drive adoption and feedback

The goal is to make structured, compliant documentation easy and sustainable.

Step 5: Measure Progress and Keep Improving

Finally, decide how you’ll measure success.

For example:

• 👥 Number of active Confluence users
• 📄 Number of pages or spaces created per team
• ✅ Number of documents approved using structured workflows
• 🗂 Use of document lifecycle stages (draft, in review, approved, archived)
• 📆 Frequency of review cycles (e.g., quarterly policy updates)

These metrics are especially important in industries where compliance, traceability, and audit-readiness are essential.

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Final Thoughts

Confluence has the potential to be a powerful platform for more than just documentation. It can support your entire document lifecycle, help enforce approval processes, and enable ISO-compliant quality management - if you set it up with intention.

By identifying the value gap, setting clear goals, and taking practical steps to expand usage, you can turn Confluence from a basic wiki into a scalable platform that supports growth, quality, and compliance.

Ready to take the first step? Book a demo of how you can use Workflows for Confluence in your document lifecycle management to get inspired!