We live in an era of information overload, where business knowledge is scattered across emails, chats, and various tools, leading to confusion, inefficiencies, and lost productivity. Crucial insights slip through the cracks and employees waste time searching for answers instead of focusing on meaningful work.
But what if all your company’s knowledge was structured, instantly accessible, and impossible to lose? For that, a knowledge base will become your answer, bringing order to this chaos, ensuring critical information is organized, easy to find, and retained within the company.
Join Sereda.ai as we uncover what a knowledge base is and how it can transform the way your company operates.
What is Knowledge Base
A knowledge base is like a go-to guide for a business. It brings everything together in one place – how the company is structured, what different teams do, and how they work together. It also covers the essential details, like rules, procedures, and daily workflows.
When done right, a knowledge base makes things clear and easy to access. New employees can quickly get up to speed and perform like experienced team members. But it’s not just about onboarding – it also helps businesses grow. With a solid knowledge base, a company can easily replicate its operations, making expansion smoother, whether it’s opening new offices or launching subsidiaries.
Types of Knowledge Base Systems
As any informational hub, the knowledge base can store various content types which will serve different audiences and have contrasting purposes. So, to better understand knowledge base types, let’s discuss them from two different angles: purpose and content.
Internal vs. external knowledge bases
Here, we can divide our informational hubs into two main purposes – external and internal.
- Internal knowledge base: This type of knowledge hub is designed for employees within the organization. It acts like a corporate wiki and can be created for different reasons, but mainly for: onboarding new hires, documenting internal policies, and giving quick answers on employees’ demands.
- External knowledge base: This is a direct opposite of the internal hub and is created for clients, prospects, and, sometimes, for the public. The main goal of this base is to reduce customer support workload, offer easy access to effective tips and enhance the overall user experience.
Understanding the content
While the purpose and the structure of the knowledge base can be different, the content types are usually similar and can include:
- General information: company’s mission, values, and development strategy.
- Structure of the organization: here can be included main details on departments and their purpose.
- Regulations and instructions: all about internal policies and quality standards.
- Business-process descriptions: stages of completing key tasks and communication rules.
- Employee responsibilities: everything about job description, daily tasks, and overall work routine.
- Documentation and templates: standardized document forms, reports, and contracts.
- Product or solutions knowledge bases: product description, technical characteristics, established methods of working with clients.
- FAQs and solutions: most asked questions and problem-solving of typical cases.
5 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Knowledge Base
What makes a knowledge base an indispensable tool for any company? We’ve identified 5 core benefits to consider:
1. Information retention
Companies often rely on key employees for knowledge retention and sharing. However, if the said employee leaves, the information will go with them. One of the key reasons for creating a knowledge base is to centralize and standardize information, so it can be easily accessed and shared, no matter who comes or goes.
2. Quick adaptation for new hires
Structured information makes onboarding and adaptation so much easier. When new hires get easy access to their job description, regulations, and policies, they become more independent, do not need much attention from mentors, and feel more comfortable at the new workplace.
3. Business process optimization
Some business operations can be optimized, others – removed altogether. While documenting and organizing a company’s business processes in the knowledge base is highly important in itself, it also helps to identify areas of improvement.
4. Easier business scaling
If a company plans to open new branches or franchises, a knowledge base makes it easy to transfer best practices and standards to new locations without having to build everything from scratch.
5. Management efficiency
With a knowledge base in place, the owner or manager can focus on strategic decisions, knowing that all operational processes are well-documented and run smoothly without their constant involvement.
Here’s How to Choose a Perfect Knowledge Base for You
If you want to reap all the benefits, choosing the right knowledge base tool will be essential. Here’s what you need to do to pick the perfect tool for your company:
Assess current situation
Before comparing solutions on the market, ask yourself these questions:
- How is your knowledge stored right now? (Is it scattered across emails, documents, shared drives, or existing software?)
- What formats do you use? (For example: text documents, PDFs, wikis, spreadsheets, etc.).
- How much documented knowledge do you have right now? (For example: do you have an extensive archive, or are you starting from scratch?)
- What are the current challenges of your knowledge storage? (For example: difficult to search, outdated information, lack of organization or poor accessibility).
The answers will form a knowledge audit of your company and will help in the future evaluation of the options.
Evaluate your needs
This step is here to think about the future, so take a bit of time to answer the next questions:
- Who will be using the knowledge base?
- Will the knowledge base be internal, external, or both?
- How often will the information be updated, and who will be responsible for maintaining it?
- How will the knowledge base integrate with your existing tools and workflows?
After considering these points, it will be much easier to create a solid list of the options and choose the perfect tool for your organization.
Plan for implementation
Selecting the right knowledge base is only half of the process. As you pick your solution, create a bulletproof plan of its implementation. Here’s what you need to keep in mind:
- Consider the future structure of information;
- Create a plan of data migration;
- Ensure that the chosen tool is user-friendly;
- Assign responsibilities to team members who will be responsible for the development and maintenance of the knowledge base.
These steps will get you covered on multiple levels and will ensure the smooth transition to the new knowledge tool.
Train staff
A knowledge base is only effective if employees know how to use it. Provide training sessions to familiarize your team with the platform, emphasizing how to find, update, and contribute information. Encouraging active participation ensures the system remains relevant, up-to-date, and valuable for everyone.
Organize Corporate Knowledge with Sereda Base
Sereda Base is an intelligent knowledge management platform designed to centralize your company’s documents and streamline operations with AI-powered automation. It acts as an internal company wiki, ensuring that all critical information is easily accessible, well-structured, and always up to date.
Here’s what Sereda Base does best:
- Intuitive Content Editor: easily create and edit documents with a user-friendly text editor, supporting images, videos, tables.
- Multilingual translation: our tool helps you to localize documents into the world’s most popular languages with built-in translation capabilities.
- Document Analytics: gain insights with search data, and overall document statistics.
- Structured Document Organization: categorize and organize documents for easy navigation and retrieval.
- Multi-Channel Notifications: receive updates through various communication channels to stay informed.
- Access Control: manage user permissions with an advanced access matrix to ensure secure information sharing.
- Telegram Bot & AI Assistant: quickly access knowledge and get answers through a dedicated Telegram bot and AI assistant.
- AI text editing: rephrase, shorten or extend your text with our in-built intuitive AI.
Whether you’re onboarding new team members, maintaining regulatory compliance, or optimizing internal processes, Sereda Base helps your business work smarter and more efficiently.
Conclusion
A knowledge base is not just a collection of documents – it’s a powerful tool for systematic business management. It ensures stability, efficiency, and predictability while reducing risks associated with employee turnover.
With a well-structured and up-to-date knowledge base, your company can seamlessly onboard new employees, optimize processes, scale operations, and maintain high-quality performance – regardless of staffing changes.
See the impact of a knowledge base firsthand! Book a free demo to future-proof your business.