A knowledge base is a tool that every company should rely on, as it easily improves customer support, collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and workflow within a company. If you are looking for a way to stay ahead of your competition, implementing a knowledge base for your business is necessary. Let’s take a look at some knowledge base basics and how it can help you stay ahead of the competition.
Types of knowledge base software solutions
Before deciding to implement a knowledge base for your company, it is necessary to understand what options are currently available. While there are numerous companies that have knowledge base systems, all are split into three major categories:
- Knowledge base as SaaS: This is one of the best solutions for both big and small companies, as this system is completely scalable. More importantly, companies choose this option because all of the support is covered by the company that is offering the service. There are no hardware investments, since the company has its own servers for storing all of your data and your system. Additionally, this is the easiest type of software to use; the aim is to make it usable by any company out there without the need to invest in special teams of people to take care of maintenance and use of the software. Because this system is completely scalable, it will follow your business growth easily and all for a reasonable price.
- Enterprise knowledge base: This solution is aimed at large businesses that receive a tremendous amount of visits to their pages. It possesses all of the features that the SaaS option offers, but requires some training system for people who are going to maintain and manage the knowledge base. The reason why many people steer away from this option is usually the high price, but if your company is a fairly large one, this type of solution is something that you should consider. It is possible to set up this knowledge base locally, on your own hardware or on to a remote server, depending on the amount of investment you want to make.
- Open-source knowledge base: This is a completely free software solution that is used by millions around the globe. However, even though you are going to save money on the software, it is quite complicated to set up and use in comparison to the above-mentioned types of knowledge bases. You will need a higher investment to establish your own server or acquire one through a hosting company. Additionally, this sort of system requires a team of professionals who are skilled with running and maintaining the whole knowledge base system. These are the extra expenses that you should have on your mind if you decide to go with this option.
Many companies decide to go with SaaS knowledge base software solutions because the investment includes secure cloud storage, system maintenance and support; not to mention the ease of implementation.
Easy implementation and setup process
From the moment you start employing a SaaS solution, your knowledge base is ready for use. You simply pick a domain name that you want your customers to be able to reach with your knowledge base pages. The ease of use and the quick setup process is why many people go with this type of solution.
It requires no investment in employee-training time for this tool, and you don’t need a team of professionals for maintaining the whole platform, everything is already done for you and your business. This is very important in the business world, because time is money!
Ordering data and creating a data hierarchy with ease
The reason why a knowledge base is a tool that can put you ahead of your competition is the fact that storing, ordering, and establishing data hierarchy is very easy. You can include whole teams of people to keep the knowledge base updated.
The collaboration feature makes it possible for multiple team members to use the system to create incredible support pages for your customers, add valuable data related to a variety of company projects, or create a vast database of company policies, rules, and training material.
This will come in handy for the new employees of the company, who will have access to all the important data that would otherwise take a lot of time to learn. The organization of the data is easy, because teams of people who are maintaining the knowledge base can use different categories for ordering different sets of data. This is possible to achieve by attaching tags to every piece of content you create, by establishing drop-down menus, or through lists with specific categories; there are many options available for content organization.
Creating seamless workflow by controlling user permissions
One of the important features that help with establishing a great workflow within the company is the fact that different permissions can be added to every single team member. This allows you to create a hierarchy of people responsible for the knowledge base data collected.
For example, it is possible to give permission to some team members to create data and save it as a draft for team leaders to review and analyze. The same goes for cases when you are hiring freelancers: you can share content with them that is read-only, ensuring that no one can edit it to cause any misunderstandings.
This ensures that data quality of the knowledge base is much better, because not everyone can publish content easily. On the other hand, permissions are important for the security of the whole platform, since no one except an admin can edit major parts of the knowledge base.
The ultimate result of all these different features is a company that collects and stores all of the employees’ knowledge, and the workflow is greatly improved through saved time. If the knowledge base is used as a customer support tool, it ensures that people can get their answers more easily, because the knowledge base becomes richer with quality content over time.
Ensuring customer satisfaction is an important part of a business strategy and many businesses struggle to successfully achieve it; a knowledge base can greatly help with this task. All these things make a knowledge base incredibly useful and a great way to gain an edge over your competition.