Have you ever written down ideas on sticky notes, never to find them again? This happens when you have too many notes and are drowning in data.
Unorganized and siloed data causes employees to lose 12 hours a week. They spend long hours chasing data instead of accomplishing real jobs.
This is where internal knowledge bases play a crucial role. Internal knowledge bases create a single source of truth where you can find any information just like that. Thus, your support, marketing, IT, and HR teams can perform to the best of their ability.
This guide will explain everything about internal knowledge management—what it is, how it works, its benefits, best practices, and the top internal knowledge base tools.
So, let’s get started!
What is an internal knowledge base?
An internal knowledge base is a unified repository that stores company resources and processes for easy access and sharing. It contains company policies, guidelines, employee handbooks, technical documents, and product information.
A classic internal knowledge base example is the employee help center. An employee help center is designed to provide employees with easy access to resources that help them perform effectively. It typically includes HR policies, company code of conduct, onboarding checklists, and training resources.
What is the knowledge base for internal and external users?
Every company wants its employees to perform to the best of their ability. And the only way to ensure this is to provide them with easy access to the necessary resources. That’s exactly what an internal knowledge base is for.
Internal knowledge bases are a source of information for every company employee. They contain all resources, from onboarding processes to work policies and customer insights.
Here’s a real-life example of an internal knowledge base for small teams.
Here’s a screenshot of Basecamp’s handbook that includes everything about the company work policy, from employee benefits to the code of conduct and internal systems.
External knowledge bases are repositories of important information for customers. They serve as self-service portals where customers can find answers to their questions.
External knowledge bases cover everything about the product and service customers might want, such as detailed product information, user manuals, reviews, troubleshooting guides, video demos, etc.
Here’s an example of Wistia, a video marketing software that provides a comprehensive customer knowledge base. It includes information about the software, including creating and editing videos, account settings, customizations, etc.
Here’s a summary of the key areas where internal knowledge bases differ from external knowledge bases.
Now that you know how internal knowledge management differs from external, let’s dig deeper into the workings of internal knowledge bases.
What is an example of an internal knowledge base?
There are plenty of internal knowledge base examples, such as document management systems, company wikis, FAQ databases, and intranet portals.
To better understand an internal knowledge base, let’s consider a company intranet portal and how it helps.
An intranet portal lets you access enterprise information and external apps to manage and organize data. Here are a few use cases for this internal knowledge base:
Customer service
Customer support teams use intranet portals to resolve tickets faster. They can find query-specific answers from company documents and even search across external apps, emails, and customer chats.
For instance, Findr integrates with unlimited applications to help you manage and retrieve information. It lets support teams search through customer messages and emails to understand and resolve user queries promptly.
Retrieve data within seconds
Intranet portals come with internal information search. They save 50% of your time on search, helping you quickly find information, be it documents or links. Plus, you can gather all references in one place for easy access.
For instance, marketing teams can use intranet portals to quickly retrieve content assets, campaign materials, and reports and gather them in one place for quick access and enhanced collaboration.
Employee onboarding
Intranet portals can generate and store onboarding materials such as company policies and procedures, training schedules, department-specific checklists, infographics, leadership videos, and more. This helps streamline your onboarding process.
Project management
Intranet portals offer various features for managing projects efficiently. They allow cross-departmental collaboration, help generate project plans and summaries with AI, and offer universal search to access specific information and make decisions 10x faster.
IT troubleshooting
IT teams can use intranet portals to create self-service support resources. For instance, we found a Reddit discussion about an IT FAQ portal that could reduce the number of tickets.
Here, tools like Findr can help you build a solid FAQ database, which is essential for IT teams to resolve queries faster. It can also help you centralize all IT resources, create troubleshooting guides, and solve code-specific issues.
How to use an internal knowledge base?
An internal knowledge base is like a huge living document and needs to be updated regularly. Everyone reads, accesses, and uses it to perform their jobs better. Here’s how you can use an internal knowledge base:
Improve productivity
Use internal knowledge bases for employees to save time on searches and accomplish tasks more efficiently.
In this context, we found the perfect example from Reddit. Here it goes: If an IT employee takes 2 hours to figure out the solution to an issue that might recur and impact multiple users, it’s a smart idea to document the solution—note the cause and how to address it.
Documenting and centralizing it in a knowledge base will also help other employees refer to the document if they face the same issue.
Centralize knowledge
One of the most common use cases of internal knowledge bases is to gather all knowledge in a single place. Here, a feature-rich knowledge management tool lets you gather links, docs, and other topic-related references in one place. Further, you can also create custom assistants trained on specific datasets to quickly find accurate, specific information. For instance, training a custom bot on marketing materials to help with campaigns.
Organize and retrieve documents
Messy documentation is a common issue. For instance, according to a Reddit user, unorganized documents frustrate users. Most documents are outdated, and users cannot find specific documents where required. This is where internal knowledge bases help.
Internal knowledge bases organize documents. They also help you create AI-led documents and quickly retrieve them even during a meeting. Tools like Findr also auto-update documents in real-time so you can access the latest information.
Capture ideas and generate content
You can use internal knowledge bases to collaborate, brainstorm, and capture ideas with your team. They also help you get personalized AI recommendations and generate code-specific docs for IT teams. Moreover, you can also integrate knowledge bases with your existing tech stack to unify search and access all information without switching platforms.
Knowing the use cases of internal knowledge management isn’t enough. You must also know its benefits to maximize its potential. This brings us to our next section.
Benefits of an internal knowledge base
Here’s a quick rundown of the top benefits of internal knowledge bases.
- Improved customer service: Knowledge bases let you access specific information to address customer queries. Plus, you can integrate CRMs and communication platforms to get more context of user queries
- Scaling without quality compromise: Internal knowledge bases help businesses scale by maintaining a central knowledge repository, reducing errors arising from siloed data. They also allow for content generation and revision with minimum manual effort
- Workflow automation: With internal knowledge bases, you can automate workflows such as content quality control, support ticket creation, onboarding, and more. You can also enhance search and navigation with personalized AI recommendations
- Data security: Internal knowledge bases ensure data protection with robust security features like role-based access controls. It protects sensitive company information and also ensures security compliance
How to set up an internal knowledge base?
Internal knowledge base use cases. Check. Benefits. Check ✅ Now, it’s time to tell you how to set up the knowledge base.
Step 1: Set clear goals
Planning comes first. Set goals, define the objectives and purpose of creating the knowledge base, and set clear timelines for accomplishing the objectives.
Step 2: Create a knowledge base team
This isn’t mandatory, but setting up a team helps track knowledge-base operations. It also helps structure the knowledge base, create content, and update it occasionally.
Tools like Findr AI can greatly assist as they automatically update data without manual intervention.
Step 3: Get approval
Internal knowledge management is for everyone. So, get approval to set up the knowledge base and choose the knowledge base software.
Step 4: Identify knowledge areas
This step determines the organizational departments participating in information collection and sharing. Quickly collaborate with your team and discuss the possible data types to be shared in the knowledge base.
Step 5: Find an internal knowledge base software
Once you’re all set with your team and data, the next step is to find the right internal knowledge base tool for your company. To make things easier, we’ve listed three top internal knowledge base software. Let’s take a look.
3 Best Internal Knowledge Base Software
Here are the top three internal knowledge base software you can consider if you’re looking for one to implement in your organization:
1. Findr
Findr is AI knowledge management and enterprise search software that centralizes information and helps users find what they’re looking for in seconds.
Findr allows you to search for specific data across your workspace, including emails, conversations, apps, and more. Ask Findr any work-related query and get accurate responses curated from your internal company records with sources.
The tool also allows you to build custom AI assistants and train them on specific datasets to get expert answers.
2. Confluence
Confluence, by Atlassian, is a team workspace or collaboration tool for creating and sharing knowledge. It lets you plan projects, edit and update pages, and keep everyone on the same page. The tool also offers in-built databases for storing and managing data, from product details to customer lists.
3. Notion
Notion is an internal knowledge management tool that brings information under one roof. It’s like a company wiki where you can create dedicated spaces for projects and teams to organize work. Plus, you can plan projects and personalize how you visualize work.
How to Select the Best Internal Knowledge Base Software?
Several internal knowledge base tools are available at different price points and feature sets. Here are a few factors to help you find the perfect fit for your organization.
Business needs
Assess your business needs and use cases. Determine your organizational requirements, business size, the problem you’re trying to solve, goals, objectives, and purpose, existing content, internal or external knowledge bases, etc., and then start your research.
Powerful search
If your knowledge base doesn’t have a powerful search, you’ll be lost in a sea of documents. For your tool to be effective, it should understand the context of user search and give you personalized results.
For instance, if you search for ‘marketing reports’ using a simple query, Findr AI understands the search context and retrieves results based on user search history, job role, etc.
Ease of use for non-tech users
Check if the tool has an easy-to-use interface so everyone in the company can adopt the tool within a short time. The tool should be straightforward so your entire team can contribute collaboratively. The steeper the learning curve, the higher the training costs.
Private hosting
Select a solution that offers a private or self-hosting option. This enables you to host the knowledge base from your web servers instead of a third party. As a result, you’ve more control over your data. Plus, your documentation remains secure within your system.
Scalability
Get a tool that grows with your organization; ensure that the knowledge base can accommodate your scaling needs. For instance, as the data volume increases, your tool should be scalable enough to store the data without compromising search or security functions.
Customization
Ensure your chosen tool provides a customized content editor, fields, and workflows. This will help you tailor the solution to your specific needs and requirements.
Integrations
Check if your chosen tool integrates with your existing tech stack—CRM, HRM, project management systems, communication platforms, etc. It’s also a plus if your tool offers custom integrations.
Pricing
Check if the tool is within your budget—including its initial set-up costs, subscription fees, training costs, and additional costs associated with add-on features, if any.
Collaboration
Choose an internal knowledge base tool that offers real-time collaboration features like editing, sharing docs, commenting, etc. This will help your team come together for specific projects.
Workflow automation
Check your tool’s automation features and analyze how it can reduce your workload. Consider AI-powered search, content generation capabilities, personalized recommendations and search results, and more.
Security
Look for a tool with robust security features to protect your company data. For instance, make sure your tool has role-based access controls to limit who sees what information.
Best Practices to Build and Manage an Internal Knowledge Base Software
By now, you know how to create an internal knowledge base and what factors to consider when buying a tool. But, it’s difficult to achieve desired results without implementing best practices. So, here are a few best practices for you to follow:
- Establish content guidelines: Create templates so every department can follow and maintain a standardized content style. Also, define a process for creating, reviewing, and approving content
- Encourage contribution: Internal knowledge bases are for everyone across departments. Use AI for content creation, recognize contributors, and foster a culture of knowledge-sharing
- Update content: Review and update existing content regularly to maintain content quality. Audit and eliminate outdated information and use version control to track changes in your content
- Implement access controls: Protect your data by implementing effective security features. Use knowledge management tools with role-based access controls and review and update permissions
Conclusion
When you often lose your cloud documents or cannot find critical information on time, you know you need an internal knowledge base.
Internal knowledge bases organize data and make them searchable. The best part is that you can connect internal knowledge base tools with your existing tech stack to retrieve information from any corner of the world (read workspace!).
But finding a reliable knowledge management tool isn’t easy. We can help you by recommending one tool from the lot —Findr.
You can implement Findr as your internal knowledge base software regardless of your business size.
That’s because Findr is an intuitive AI-powered internal knowledge base that can help you organize documents, retrieve information quickly, ensure data protection, create customized AI assistants, generate content, automate workflows, and integrate with unlimited systems.
But that’s not all! Findr offers several other features; you must explore the tool to discover them.
