The basic ingredients
To be able to manage knowledge it is essential to have an organizational context and a centralized knowledge base (KB). which facilitates collaboration, helps sharing between employees, customers and partners, allowing you to quickly find useful answers.
It is a precious tool for improving satisfaction, productivity and effectiveness of the decision-making process.
Organizational aspects, responsibilities and knowledge are related elements to be considered in a synergistic and dynamic way based on the obsolescence rate of the knowledge.
In this context, the role of a knowledge base becomes central, which must have the objective of maintaining a high qualitative level, rather than a quantitative one. A database allows you to manage contributions provided by users, process queries efficiently, make the environment scalable by supporting multiple security and crash recovery mechanisms.
A dynamic knowledge base is an expression of the vitality of a community of practice.
The recipe is the dialogue between these “ingredients” for the development of KB to better perform its tasks, reduce errors, develop ideas and the ability to innovate.
What are the benefits?
Preserve knowledge
In addition to a KB, it is necessary to create appropriate knowledge management strategies. For example, defining ways to “capture” the experiences and knowledge acquired over the years by the most experienced employees, which risk being lost by the company/organization due to retirement or resignation.
Consistency
In companies/organizations there may be different departments and teams within them. Over time, people can involuntarily forget, abandon or alter the protocols or best practices defined by the organization, especially if they are subject to periodic reviews and changes dictated by the changing context.
If there is no knowledge base dedicated to maintaining information organically, synthetically and up to date, there may be a high risk of loss of coherence within the company/organisation.
Customer satisfaction
An external knowledge base increases customer satisfaction, for example by offering 24/7 support with answers to common questions, while reducing calls, wait times and frustration. It is a tool to increase customer loyalty.
Employee training process
Companies/organizations must train new hires and offer ongoing training to all other employees, which takes time and effort. A knowledge base can improve the efficiency of training because it allows workers to draw on training materials at different times, seeking answers to a specific topic (even in the form of micro learning).
In-person training sessions nurture employees’ knowledge. However, workers may forget important details of these sessions over time. In addition to in-person training, organizations can create training documents, such as cheat sheets, step-by-step guides, and store them in a searchable knowledge base whenever they need them.
Examples of Knowledge Bases
Below is an example of types of content customized based on the distinctive characteristics of the organization.
Structure
Organizing the Types
A Content Management System (CMS) provides Pages and Articles that can be organized in Blog mode. The blog may be suitable for presenting events or news, but if the quantity and type of articles grows it is important to organize them by adopting search criteria to facilitate the user.
A Knowledge Base requires a functionality analysis and the types of knowledge to be managed.
It is essential to implement it when knowledge begins to be articulated, or its future development is expected (even for a Startup).
Where can knowledge reside?
- Pages: these are usually static objects organized through navigation menus.
- Articles: these are the types of content often associated with the BLOG.
- Comments: the exchange of opinions between different users.
- Custom Post Types (CPT): contain information customized for the individual organizational reality.
- Other Contents: derive from the implementation of certain application features.
A Knowledge Base is primarily made up of Personalized Content Types (CPTs).
This subdivision is fundamental in order to respond to the unique characteristics of the individual company/organization. For example, in a manufacturing industry the “product” typology (with all the associated categories) is different from the “safety” typology which must be treated with categories linked more to regulatory and legal aspects.
Then you need to relate the CPTs so you can connect them. For example, presenting the relevant safety content for a particular product family.
The overall design allows for coherent and constantly updated knowledge.
The WeYourConsult case
To organize a knowledge base relating to Business Economics, the contents have been divided into three main areas:
- articles (in turn categorized into Theory, System, Process or Case History);
- tools (with the subcategories Tool, Model, Solution or Project);
- problems (with Problem, Question, How To and Idea).
Each type allows you to manage contents and related taxonomies in a differentiated way.
The typology of articles for services was then created, so as to be able to associate a series of contents divided by type of information with the single proposed service.
Another fundamental element is to link the contents to the level of visibility and membership, choosing to make the preview of the articles visible in the knowledge base, not available for reading by non-authorized users.
The interpretation keys were defined through the categories: Function, Sector, Zones (geographical), Size, Legal Form, as well as through the summary evaluation.
Differentiating Contexts
The key element of a KB is the ability to provide meaning, a sense. To do this, the profile of the subjects to whom it is addressed must be clear, in order to adopt the most suitable language. The opportunity to provide shared meaning depends on the ability to communicate differently to different groups of interlocutors.
A Knowledge Base is an important vehicle for building, nourishing and constantly updating shared meaning, for building reading paths and tools that facilitate understanding.
Another fundamental element is the involvement and participation of the custodians of knowledge.
Subjects
Users, Authors and Actors
To manage a knowledge base you need “actors“, of subjects who create knowledge and share it. The user can be the recipient, the one who learns, who finds the answers, but the driving force is the actor, the custodian of knowledge on a topic.
The actor is someone who relates to other people, other knowledge with the constant search for coherence and shared meaning in a changing context. Actor-author is not only the actor who writes, but the one who creates meaning by making it his own in an original way. Before being an author, therefore, one must be an actor because knowledge arises from relationships and the texture of meanings.
To make the whole process not only effective but also efficient, the author does not necessarily have to be associated with an individual, but can alternatively be a group, an area. In this case the group’s activities are summarized in a user “group”, for example the Engineering Department.
It is also possible to foresee the participation of multiple authors and define different types of contributions coming for example from co-authors, reviewers, editors, etc.
The Roles of the Portal
Custom roles are defined based on the objectives and complexity of the KB so as to be able to differentiate the authorization profiles and resources that can be accessed.
Restricted Groups
They can be defined as private management or reading areas. For example, you can organize content that is accessible for read-only to customers with levels of depth that you don’t want to make visible to everyone. Or between small groups that have been decided to keep separate, such as between the Engineering and Commercial departments.
Object
Finding knowledge
One of the goals of a KB is to make content easier to find so that relevant information can be controlled and made available.
To do this, you need to associate the content with one or more taxonomies (a way of grouping content). There are two types: categories and tags. The difference is that categories have a hierarchical value and uniquely label the object, while tags have a semantic value and are “transversal”.
For example, an article might have the following categories: Solution | Finance | Petrochemical Sector (three categories: type, function and sector, each organized in a hierarchical way), while as a tag: Budget | Financial statement.
Depending on the domain to which the knowledge belongs, it is important to evaluate whether the categories must be differentiated, in order to have search “keys” that are uniquely recognizable by users.
Example Branches of Knowledge
The fields of knowledge have different characteristics, terms and purposes. In general terms they can be divided into the following branches:
– arts
– humanities and religious disciplines;
– applied and medical sciences;
– mathematical, physical and natural sciences;
– humanities and social sciences;
– other disciplines.
Each branch can then have different levels of depth. Thus, for example, Business Economics (study of economic activity from the point of view of individual companies) is part of the economic sciences, a subcategory of the human and social sciences.
The presentation and navigation methods depend on the objectives of the KB, adopting easy-to-read solutions.
If the KB is large, it may be essential to provide a search filter, allowing you to select the categories of interest.
The definition of a good KB can then represent the premise for the use of artificial intelligence tools (for example chatbots for commercial support).
Process
The Creation of Knowledge
Although there has been a lot of theory about knowledge management systems for several years, the practices are not widespread. 
has adopted solutions that allow you to easily manage the import of contents already present in the company/organisation, their loading through customized models, thanks to the definition of organizational support roles.
The Editorial Plan
The system allows you to define an editorial plan in order to organize the different contributions, managing and planning the different stages of progress of the contents, the authorization levels and the final publication.
Relationships with other Systems
It is possible to teach a turkey to climb to the top of a tree, but it would be better to hire a squirrel for the job
Gian Paolo Montali
In our case it means using the right tool to achieve the goal.
A Knowledge Management System (KMS) is different from other business management systems, for example:
- management applications and enterprise resource planning (ERP);
- customer relationship management (CRM) solutions;
- document management system (DMS);
- human resource management systems (HRMS);
- warehouse management systems (WMS);
- and other application systems.
proposes the development of a KMS using the open source Content Management System (CMS) WordPress as a strategic choice to create an environment in continuous development and evolution, integrating proprietary applications (software whose license allows the beneficiary to use it under particular conditions and prevents others such as modification, sharing, study and redistribution) and removing the barriers linked to locked-in solutions that depend on a single supplier.
YOUR PERSONALIZED
KNOWLEDGE BASE
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Open source:
- it is a more transparent and modern way of developing something innovative;
- allows you to search, find and fix security problems much faster;
- it is used by some of the world’s best-known technology companies and institutions;
- it is often longer-lived than proprietary applications;
- promotes the use of open standards, which always represent an advantage for users;
- even companies that develop proprietary software use open source software;
- it is the basis of all artificial intelligence solutions;
- it is used by large scientific research organizations such as CERN;
- GitHub is an example of the main systems used by software developers.
WordPress because:
- it is used by some of the world’s best-known technology companies and institutions:
- approximately 2/3 of the sites present worldwide are developed through a CMS, the remaining part (in decline) is written by hand. WordPress has a market share of around 60% of CMS (statistics);
- was born in 2004 and is supported by a vast global community of companies and developers;
- allows it to be customized based on the needs and specific characteristics of the individual reality;
- allows you to search, find and fix security problems much faster;
- it is developed following traceable, well-documented procedures with a simple and orderly process;
Open Source does not mean free. Considering the rate of diffusion and development of WordPress and the security aspects (mostly due to failure to update by the administrator) it is important that it is managed in order to have a reliable platform.
Introduction to the Knowledge Management System
Insights
FAQs KMS
