What is a corporation wiki?
When you hear about the word“wiki,” you probably think of Wikipedia. A corporation wiki is similar, but it is accessible only internally so only your company staff can access the information on the corporate wiki.
Similar to Wikipedia, a corporation wiki is a place to house the information that your teammates should know, but it’s an internal wiki that only your teammates can access. You can see it as an centralized information hub for your company.
What is an internal knowledge base?
An internal knowledge base is a modern version of a corporation wiki. Other than just serving as a company wiki to store information, modern internal knowledge base softwares often offer built-in workflows to facilitate the movement of knowledge between employees. The goal of a good internal knowledge base tool is not just simply storing information, but to increase collaboration and productivity in the team.
Drawbacks of traditional corporation wiki
While company wiki tools are not a new thing and there are tools that have been on the market for a long time already, many of them are not user-friendly and do not offer features that adapt to the needs of modern teams.
Limited search capabilities
If you want your employees to increase collaboration, then they need to be able to access the information they’re looking for quickly. However, most traditional wikis or intranet tools come with poor search capabilities. If your teammates cannot find what they are looking for in an easy way, they are unlikely to engage with your corporation wiki as they might just find it easier to ask somebody instead of searching for the information in the wiki by themselves.
On the contrary, modern knowledge base softwares usually provides better search, some can even offer auto knowledge suggestions based on machine learning, in order to feed content to users proactively as they need it instead of needing them to search manually.
Hard to edit content
Many traditional wiki offers limited formatting and embed options, some are even worse that you would need to know markup language such as HTML in order to edit the content.
On the contrary, modern knowledge base softwares usually comes with a "wysiwyg" ("What you see is what you get") editor. Many of them also provide rich formatting and embed options so you can create visually appealing documentation easily.
Inconsistent content that’s inefficient to maintain
You want to encourage team contribution to your corporation wiki so that it won’t just become one or two persons’ burden to maintain the content on the knowledge base. But without the right tool to help, the more people you grant edit rights to, the higher chance that your knowledge base will become messy and hard to manage.
Modern KB software allows you to set permissions based on content collections. For instance, if you have a working budget that your finance team is developing, you can share it with other departments to view or comment on without allowing them to change the numbers. Some tools also offer features such as templates to ensure consistency and built-in content review flow to ensure content is always accurate and up-to-date.
Little to no analytics
Without analytics, you cannot gauge how your employees interact with your content, leading to content gaps. Many modern knowledge base softwares come with analytics and give you the ability to understand employee engagement and bridge any gaps in knowledge.
Replacing corporation wiki with modern internal knowledge base software
Modern internal knowledge bases resolve many of the above issues associated with corporation wikis. The best KB software provides easy integration with the systems you’re already using. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel or hesitate because you think KBs come with a difficult transition period. Modern KB software will have you wondering why you didn’t make the switch sooner.
When you’re searching for a new KB software, be sure to choose a platform that offers advanced search capabilities, fosters internal (and maybe external) collaboration, and allows you to analyze how your employees consume your content.
Our checklist of KB features also includes:
- Easy integrations
- Connection of all your tools for easy data retrieval
- Built-in workflows to facilitate knowledge sharing
- In-line comment capabilities
- Collaborative editing
- Access settings
- Mandatory read settings
- Embedding capabilities
- Template creation
- Version history for record-keeping
Achieve organizational goals with Kipwise’s internal knowledge base
In the digital-led office environment, organizations need to adapt to the needs of their workforce. Kipwise’s internal knowledge base software is a one-stop solution for companies to foster collaboration and drive productivity.
