Why do companies need a Knowledge Base? And how to make it safe?

Today so many tools and approaches to business management appear so fast that sometimes businesses need to adapt to new changes as soon as possible. And it’s your team who keeps professional knowledge, old and new. The success of a business, especially in the B2C sector, depends entirely on employees, and the rapid transfer of knowledge between them is a serious engine for the development of your business.

So, almost every company at a certain stage of development faces the need to implement a knowledge base, which will describe the strengths, plans and development strategies compiled based on the results of a SWOT analysis.

It often happens when one employee has learned something, and this knowledge is only in his head. The rest have to “fill the cones” in practice or to extract knowledge from a more experienced colleague. The situation is aggravated when employees leave the company and take all the valuable knowledge with them. New employees come in, they need to spend resources on training them and wait for a certain period of time until they reach self-sufficiency. It is thanks to the correct management of the knowledge base that you can reduce the training period and the payback of a beginner by at least 2 times.

In order for your company to always be competitive, employees need to keep their knowledge, their achievements, and mistakes in writing, which will be easily accessible to colleagues at any second of time. To do this, you need a convenient tool for fixing knowledge, and most importantly, an understanding of the importance of this matter by the employees themselves.

What is the corporate Knowledge Base for?

This tool will help you avoid chaos in the documentation and reduce routine work. Employees will not have to waste the time of colleagues and ask the same questions — instead, just click on the link of the desired section of the knowledge base.

Each employee knows their tasks, the roles of colleagues, can help with a problem or find a solution to their own. However, in practice there are nuances. It is not enough just to create and fill in a knowledge base. Moreover, you should not do it “impudently”. We recommend dividing the process into several steps: first collect the content, then decide on the classification and design.

Aleks Yenin, Principal Polontech consultant states that “The main goal of any knowledge base is to reduce the time spent searching for information and getting an answer to a typical question at any time. Unfortunately, many companies cannot achieve the desired effect from maintaining a knowledge base or are not engaged in it at all”.

And it does not matter in which area your organization is involved: business, IT, telephony or technical support. The presence of a knowledge base is relevant both for the organization’s employees and for their clients.

When working with our clients, our Polontech experts  integrate Confluence, as it’s easy to set up and use, and at the same time flexible enough for any team.

Basic requirements for the corporate knowledge base

Operation stability and fail resistance

Large companies use knowledge bases for customer support. And if the entire system stops for at least an hour, the company will incur huge losses due to endless calls to technical support and lost customers who could not get an answer to their questions.

Obviously, in order to avoid this, a system that would withstand high loads and work stably 24/7 is needed.

Data storage security and access permission settings

The user knowledge base can be open and it does not need strict access settings. But in a large corporation, where an impressive amount of confidential data is stored, security is almost in the first place. But there are some simple tips on how to improve the level of data security in Confluence: information security checklist.

Well-structured and easy to search

Employees of large companies claim that their productivity significantly decreases due to the fact that they cannot find the necessary file or page in the total amount of data. So, the effectiveness of staff work directly depends on a powerful search and structuring.

Wide functionality and collaboration

The more you use the knowledge base, the more diverse functions it will acquire. If at the beginning of the company there will be enough of a small site with text information, then later it will be necessary to enter media files, special tables, documents, etc. into your database.

In addition, over time, there will be a need to change the structure, work with the contents of several pages at the same time, add a comment form, and build diagrams.

It is also important to be able to work together with documents and configure access rights for editing or viewing pages.

Corporate Knowledge Base in Confluence

Confluence is a corporate wiki system that allows teams to create web pages and documents, exchange information and accumulate knowledge. This is a proven solution that supports ITSM / ITIL processes and works with 1000+

additional applications to expand the functionality and improve the interface.

How to integrate Confluence Knowledge Base?

1. Creating a knowledge base in Confluence.
2. Migrating data and processes from OpenKM, eXo, Slack, Google Drive, MyBase – from the cloud to the server and vice versa.
3. Integrating the functionality of Confluence and software that you are already working with.

Your company gets a solution that greatly facilitates the onboarding of new employees, saves all data and content in one reliable place and saves time for each employee – you do not need to wait for another specialist’s answer, you can find the answer yourself in the knowledge base. You get the opportunity to establish collaboration, both in the office and remotely, and make corporate knowledge the property of the company, not the employees.