The Way To Sustain Your Knowledge Base
Sustain a knowledge base is more difficult than building it!
Why do organizations build knowledge bases?
Organizations are becoming aware that having knowledge bases is important for empowering their business. Therefore they hire professionals to build knowledge bases. They believe that once the so-called knowledge bases have been built, the staff can rely on them to do their jobs better, such as finding company policies, marketing materials, products information, and internal training materials, as well as connecting to subject matter experts. In addition, the organizations also want the experienced staff to share their knowledge with others; or keep their knowledge after they retired. Typically people expect a so-called knowledge base can provide the functionalities below:
- Store updated information for retrieval
- Easy to search for information
- Information is always updated
- Share knowledge to create more knowledge
- Keep knowledge from those leaving an organization
- Connect to experts to solve specific problems
- The user interfaces are friendly
Why do people hate the knowledge bases?
People expect the so-called knowledge bases can provide the functionalities that claim to have. However, first of all, they can only obtain information, the insolated information, outdated information, sometimes even very difficult to find the information they need. It is still far from sharing knowledge and obtaining knowledge. As a result, people turn to find subject matter experts to obtain information or guidance, instead of from the knowledge bases. Besides the ways users access the content, users sometimes require new kinds of content to be stored or the new interface they feel comfortable with. But in most cases, the knowledge bases are not flexible enough, or no proper process to fulfill the requirements of the users. Eventually, with decreasing user engagement, the so-called knowledge bases are being abandoned.
What are the main issues?
Here are the most common issues that make people hate the knowledge bases:
- The so-called knowledge bases are actually only information bases.
- The information is not connected, therefore no knowledge is formed.
- Information is not constantly maintained, so people turn to subject matter experts to find the most updated information.
- People are not encouraged to share or not allowed to share their knowledge on the knowledge bases.
- The user interface cannot be customized to meet individual needs. That is no personalization. The fact is that every person only looks for specific areas of information related to their jobs. Providing too much information without personalization overwhelm people.
- Currently, most of the search engines cannot meet user expectations, which is not intelligent enough. People simply give up using the knowledge bases when they are failed to search the information or do not know how to navigate to the exact location where the information is being stored.
- Content owners do not keep their information updated or even forget their ownership of their content in the knowledge bases.
What is missing?
To sustain a real knowledge base, only relying on undermanaged information is not enough, a proactive maintaining process is also necessary and important!
Basically, the so-called knowledge bases rely on a reactive maintenance process. For example, actions are not taken until users report that some information is outdated or missing. Or the user interface is not being kept evolving to apply new technologies or meet users’ expectations. The solution is to implement a proactive maintenance process. A process that constantly monitors the database’s content and collects users’ requests for improvement.
Knowledge Base Maintenance Process Framework
A proactive maintenance process can be implemented based on a Knowledge Base Maintenance Process Framework. Basically, the framework has three tiers. The first tier contains the stakeholders, they contribute the information or consume the information. They also decide what information to be stored there and the way the information is to be maintained. The second tier contains the change requests. Change requests allow the stakeholders to request new information, update existing information, or remove outdated information. The third tier contains the change processes. Change processes execute the change requests and eventually keep the knowledge base updated. This framework looks quite straightforward and not difficult to implement. However, most organizations do not take it seriously. They spend little resources or even non of their resources to maintain the process in a proactive way. This framework can provide a reference for implementing the process for most organizations.
Key Takeaways
- Any existing knowledge base can be made great again by implementing a proactive maintenance process for it.
- Get the buy-in from management and thus have enough funding for acquiring tools and hiring expertise for supporting the ongoing maintenance process.
- Recognize those who contribute content to the knowledge base.
- Recognize those who propose new features that are implemented eventually.
- Involve the human resources department to ensure the content owner's information is being updated.
- Keep periodic feedback from all users using an organization-wide survey
- Last but not least, do not rely too much on technology. Technology can play the role of enabler but is not critical to the success of the knowledge base.
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