How Businesses Benefit from a Centralized Knowledge Base: Case Studies

A centralized knowledge base is a single source of truth, not just a convenience but a strategic necessity. To top it off, one single source of improved efficiency, collaboration, and customer satisfaction—that you could ask for!

It does the heavy lifting for organizations by capturing, distributing, and effectively using the organizational knowledge, minus any work silos.

Solutions like Document360 facilitate strong control over information flow, reducing the pressure on high-authority, knowledgeable employees. Therefore, they fill the gap and save everyone’s time and effort.

A solid old report by McKinsey proved that an employee invests around 20% of their workweek, i.e., more than 9 hours a week, searching for internal information and seeking colleagues.

Well, it’s a complete productivity disaster. (Document360 can save you from it!).

In this blog, we’ll explain how a centralized knowledge base for employees and customers alleviates this productivity drain. We’ve also illustrated four case studies to give you practical hands-on experience.

The Common Challenges of Hosting a Centralized System

What can bring substantial improvements in the long term can also pose challenges while bringing them into operation at the forefront. Even with careful planning in advance, there are common pitfalls that a company can fall into while introducing a centralized system.

Scalability Issues

Source: Reddit

The bigger the organization’s user base, the greater the volume of knowledge. So, when self-hosting a centralized system in a large-scale company, the scalability of your software can be a hindrance. As more people and teams contribute to adding information, there will be possibilities of duplication or outdated information if there is no structure to follow. For instance, a growing customer base, like Comgate’s 15,000+ clients, requires a scalable solution to manage increasing queries.

With vast information, the content quality scale should move towards upgrading with good search speed and relevant results, while the inconsistent interfaces and structures should bring about consistency. Here are three points to address for scalability:

• Who reviews content?
• Who updates it? And
• Who ensures accuracy?

Limited Searchability and Navigation

Another frustrating challenge in a growing database is poor search algorithms that do not consider typos, synonyms, similar spellings, confusing tables of contents, and even a clear content hierarchy. A great example is Panaya’s poor search functionality when its people faced this with their previous platform.

Be it for internal (employees) or external (customers) use, the impact of limited searchability gets negative with wasted time, repetitive work, and a poor onboarding experience.

Take a look at the people getting caught on the web by the poor inclusion of similar spellings in search options.

Collaboration and Access Control Problems

With more departments, users, and external partners needing access to the data, the privacy control can get complex. Ensuring that the right person gets access to the right information is paramount to ensure data security. Safebreach’s difficulties with staff contributions can be a go-to example for understanding data sensitivity and collaboration complications.

People noticed facing issues with organization members who had been working there for a long time, thinking that data repositories were just an add-on responsibility for the omniscient.

Source: Reddit

High Maintenance and Technical Complexity

The two costly challenges in managing a self-hosted platform are maintaining the database and monitoring changes in processes. Maintaining the database can feel overwhelming without the right resources. Frequent updates would require tracking old or duplicate data, archiving articles or refreshing the needy ones, and monitoring changes in processes.

The technical front would demand proper DevOps practices to ensure there is no downtime during updates or any bugs from third-party extensions to avoid technical errors as faced by Ascent Pro while using Guru and Safebreach with Salesforce plug-ins.

How does Document360 Solve These Challenges?

One of the most solid and smartly built solutions to address all types of knowledge base breakdowns, Document360 is equipped with whip-smart features. Here is how its model counters the said challenges:

Scalability

With easy-to-add content and multilingual features supporting over 50 languages, Document360 makes applications in scaled organizations as easy as pie. This can be understood by Comgate’s growing user base of more than 15,000 as well as Ascent Pro’s results of getting a centralized training hub.

Searchability and Navigation

Document360 empowers companies with advanced search capabilities. Moreover, along with a manual search bar, the software searches smartly with its AI-powered ‘Ask Edy’ assistant. This feature addressed Panaya’s ineffective search aspect by adding plug-ins like suggested articles, giving easy access to information, and enhancing the overall user experience.

Collaboration and Access Control

Ensuring no data insecurity, Document360 offers role-based access to ensure the utmost security. For collaborative environments, the software facilitates workflow for article review and commenting on any modifications. This can be observed in SafeBreach’s case, where there were equal staff contributions, and in Panaya’s case, when mixed access was enjoyed for particular sections, private or public.

Maintenance and Technical Complexity

Document360 is here to take all your technical burdens. It has features that simplify maintenance, like version control, automatic backups, and customization with JavaScript and CSS, even without the need for a developer. Ascent Pro’s integration of Document360 with Microsoft Teams and their mobile software Talk Desk further adds to the ease that the software brings.

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Case Studies Insight on Centralized Knowledge Base

Document360’s solutions to a strong knowledge base are best illustrated through case studies. They demonstrate the versatility of the software across different industries. A few of its solid examples would include

Comgate

Business Overview:
A Czech-based company, Comgate has 15,000+ clients, including startup entrepreneurs to established companies, spread across the cities of Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland. A 20-year-old company, Comgate provides payment gateways and terminals under the supervision of the Czech National Bank.

Challenges:

Comgate sought a well-structured knowledge management solution to provide access to their user guides so that their clients can opt for self-service. Therefore, the company built the base in-house within its website. However, instead of having customers who can troubleshoot issues on their own, the company faced issues with an improper interface that would add more graphics than text.

 Solution with Document360:

With careful consideration, Comgate decided to host their guides on Document360. The company got to experience better versions in areas like the Homepage builder to have their logo and brand colors, user-friendly interface, video tutorials, and a feedback manager to fill any gaps.

Key Takeaway:

Comgate got what it hoped for initially with Document360. Increased self-service, reduced support calls, and performance metrics to peek into usage or if any information customers search for but don’t get.

Panaya

Business Overview:

An industry leader in testing and impact analysis solutions, Panaya serves large-scale companies using ERP solutions. The company offers a change intelligence software that analyzes the changes brought about by upgrades and new features.

Challenges:

The company used to manage all its data, user guides, troubleshooting, and regular release notes with another knowledge base solution. Despite third-party software, Panaya faced challenges like ineffective search and irrelevant results, no version history to refer to and make changes, and a lack of workflow that would hamper collaboration.

Solution with Document360:

Hosting their data through Document360 gave Panaya’s centralized knowledge base a whole new direction. Rich metrics highlighted pain points and most-read articles. The mixed access feature allowed teams to create sections with private access for internal use. The workflow designer ensured that content was reviewed before going live. The intuitive user interface, CSS and Javascript for more customization, and article versioning were a few more enhancements that Panaya got to experience.

Key Takeaway:

Document360 was surely a betterment in the lives of people at Panaya. There were more views on the articles, as much as 10,000, finding information was quick and effective, and overall usage of the platform and the company’s data.

SafeBreach

Business Overview:

SafeBreach offers cybersecurity solutions. The company is based in the USA and Israel. They serve other companies to identify breach scenarios and validate their cybersecurity.

Challenges:

The requirement was for a privately accessible platform to host documentation. Although the company sought services from platforms like Paligo and Madcap Flare, it faced uneconomical, unreliable, and unsupportive issues. There were too many bugs to solve, too much minimalism to make it attractive, and too slow to migrate content.

Solution with Document360:

The collaboration with Document360 allowed SafeBreach to make any changes at any time without disturbing the existing documentation. A few other improvements that SafeBreach experienced were workflow features for better management, version history and notifications, single sign-on to integrate with the support portal, an intuitive user interface, a feedback manager with quick notifications, custom templates, a private access feature, and much more.

Key Takeaway:

The association with Document360 gave SafeBreach a well-maintained repository of their documentation, which ultimately encouraged more contributions from the company’s members. It also offered insights into viewership from different countries, most searched keywords, etc.

Ascent Pro

Business Overview:

Ascent Pro is a company that deals in emergency road services, especially for the trucking industry. The company has expertise in tyres and stays connected with service centers for quick solutions to any tyre-related breakdowns, minimizing downtime and maximizing efficiency.

Challenges:

Looking for a centralized solution to put all training manuals for their call center agents, Ascent Pro hosted the knowledge base on Guru initially. However, the platform services were getting too expensive to bear, prompting an alternative.

Solution with Document360:

Along with offering affordable solutions, Document360’s integration with Ascent Pro made it a breezy ride for the latter. Special widget options, integration with Microsoft Teams, Chrome extension, insights on most visited articles, and integration with Ascent Pro’s phone software ‘Talk Desk’ were a few of the other highlights that came with Document360’s knowledge base solution.

Key Takeaway:

The benefits of this teamwork with Document360 gave one central location to Ascent Pro. This made easy accessibility to data for call center agents, improved self-solving capabilities, minimized escalations to high-authority teams, etc.

Why A Strong Knowledge Base is Critical for Business Success?

A strong knowledge base is not just a tool but an asset to the company. Maintaining a centralized knowledge base that benefits both the employees and the customers is directly proportional to increased efficiency, effective decision-making, and enhanced user experience. Here are all the reasons that make a strong knowledge base vital for business success-

• Centralized Information
• Improved Customer Support
• Enhanced Employee Efficiency
• Consistency
• Training and Onboarding
• SEO and Visibility
• Cost Reduction
• Knowledge Preservation
• Brand Recognition

Final Words

Centralizing knowledge with Document360 helps solve common challenges faced in business operations while making them smoother and customers more satisfied.

Success stories from companies like Comgate, Panaya, Safebreach, and Ascent Pro show clear, real-world benefits, stating why a powerful knowledge base, one like Document360, is a valuable investment.

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