Start A Knowledge Base (KB) For Your Business

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 02:07pm by David Askaripour in Operations

Remember that toy store called KB? I used to love begging my parents to take me there to get candy and toys when I was a little kid. Oh boy, that was great! Well, this article isn’t about the KB toy store but I’d thought that I’d mention a childhood experience because those are always fun, right? This article is about a different type of KB, the one known as a “Knowledge Base.”

Most companies use KB’s to document various elements of their organization. You’ll find that hosting companies use KB’s for documenting system installs such as software upgrades, server tutorials, and how-to’s on running certain scripts on your server.

Knowledge Bases can be used for anything, really. However, as a young entrepreneur — as any entrepreneur — I strongly urge you to start documenting your entire company in a KB. Save yourself a lot of time and trouble and do this now — little by little — rather than later.

What should you document? Everything!

• When, why, and where you started your company. Include the mission statement, company profile, and original members of the organization.
• Create profiles of each partner and include all of their contributions to the organization. Include when they started, their equity stake, why they are beneficial to the team, etc…

• Talk about every single process that it takes to run and keep your business operating. Guidelines for sending out company memos (emails, for us internet entrepreneurs), how to send out company newsletters, how to sign onto the company server, how to greet clients, how to use the company wordpress blog system, how to moderate the company’s forum, how to send out an invoice, how to do the accounting, get the idea….

• Build a library of all of the company contacts such as the lawyer, accountant, associates, affiliate partners, doctors, employees contact information, etc…
• Create a database of all the company’s former problems and provide the solutions on how to easily correct the problem if it should ever happen again. For instance, if you run a series of blogs and your system has crashed in the past, create a tutorial explaining how to quickly restore the server in the case of another error down the line.

So I think you see where I am going here, right? If you start building a KB for your company now and have all of your employees constantly add to it, revise, and edit the system, you’ll be building up a very powerful resource that will grow with your company. As your company grows and changes, you’ll be able to update the KB at anytime.

For instance, when you hire employees you can give them access to your KB system and advise them to first seek the assistance of the KB before coming calling to you about every little issue that they may be having a problem with. Having a KB for your company will improve operations, increase efficiency, and overall allow your company to run smoother.

Mind Petals Advisor, Anthony, recently told me that he uses MediaWiki as his KB for his marketing and web development firm. He told me how much time that it has saved him and how it really helped employees to become well-educated on the company’s operations.

After doing some homework, it looks like I will be going with MediaWiki as well. But remember, the KB should not be open to the world if you plan on having sensitive information in it. I would suggest password protecting your KB and only giving access to your employees and partners. However, you may devote a certain section to clients as well.

Do you have any experiences with Knowledge Bases? If so, share them with Mind Petals.

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