MSPNetworks Blog

If you are looking for a way to smooth out the edges of your business, consider putting together a knowledge base that includes all policies, procedures, and other information so it is readily accessible by the people that interact within and from outside your business. Businesses that have well-documented policies and procedures have a tendency to have less difficulty onboarding new hires, fewer operational problems, and can always provide access to resources needed by employees, customers, and vendors. Today we will give you a few tips on how to successfully create a working knowledge base.

Step #1 - Figure Out What Knowledge Is Needed

The first step to creating a useful knowledge base for your business is to truly understand what information should be included. If too much information is included or is not easily defined, the platform can actually be a hindrance and even become a problem. You will need to determine what information your audience will need and where there are gaps in knowledge with your day-to-day operations.

Think about it this way, if you want to create a knowledge base that caters to your customers and your staff, you will need to know what their various concerns are. What questions do they continually ask? What part of your business is most hindered by information requests? You’ll need to take into consideration what information they regularly need to know and plan the makeup of your knowledge base around that. 

Step #2 - Choose the Type of Knowledge Base You Will Be Focusing On

There are six types of knowledge bases: Internal, hosted, self-hosted, customer, external, and open-source. Each has benefits but may not work for your particular situation. You have to make a decision on how you want to forge ahead. Here is a little information about each type of knowledge base system

• Internal - Used by employees only. This typically includes policies for your company as well as workflow procedures to give workers the access to the information they need to be as productive and efficient as possible without having to rope other employees in.
• Hosted - This is a knowledge base system that is hosted in the cloud for ease of use for employees, customers, and vendors alike. 
• Self-hosted - This is a knowledge base system that works much like the hosted system, but is hosted on company-owned servers. This provides more control over security.
• Customer - Used to provide information to customers only. Many businesses forgo this option with a simple FAQ, but it is a good resource for support.
• External - This is a knowledge base system that is publicly available and accessible. This is a great resource for sales and marketing teams as they attempt to find new customers. 
• Open-source - The open-source knowledge base, like a wiki, is one that anyone can edit. This typically isn’t a great option for small businesses, but for groups of people that are passionate about a subject, it can be one of the best types of knowledge base on the Internet.

Typically, companies will set up a hosted or self-hosted knowledge base if they plan on supporting information geared towards employees and customers. 

Step #3 - Create Content

Using the research you conducted in step one, get the experts inside your business to create the content for the knowledge base system. This can take some time, but the more thorough your knowledge base, the more resolutions you will be able to facilitate without productivity interruptions. When creating content for your knowledge base, you want to keep things simple as to not exacerbate people’s problems. You want to keep a question-and-answer-based system that is searchable. You want answers to be clear, readable, engaging and have the utility necessary to solve the problems that someone would need solved when accessing this database. 

Step #4 - Don’t Just Set It and Forget It

You will absolutely want to continue to update information as it becomes available. This becomes easier if you make efforts to add it into the workflow when circumstances change. Having a knowledge base filled with inaccurate information won’t do your business any good, so you will want to understand which material is accessed the most and keep adding to it so it represents the most up-to-date information possible. 

The knowledge base can be a major benefit for any business as it can cut down on support costs, keep workflows efficient, and help with training. Give MSPNetworks a call today at (516) 403-9001 if you would like to have a conversation about setting up a knowledge base system for your business.

The word “procedure” can easily be perceived in a negative light nowadays. It just sounds so… rote… compared to the exciting and dynamic buzzwords that so many “thought-leading, influencing, social media innovators” today toss around. Now, we don’t mean to disparage these personalities - we just want to emphasize that these innovations rely on a foundation to support them, and these foundations are based on business procedures and processes.

Let’s look at why even the most innovative businesses depend on their procedures to operate - and how a procedure can be properly created as well.

Why Processes and Procedures Matter to Businesses

If you were to list the most important qualities that a business should have, would your list include consistency? It really should. After all, if Client A, B, and C each paid for the same service, doesn’t it stand to reason that all three of them receive the same quality of service? Consistency can go a long way to support your client retention, your productivity, and any of a variety of other internal and external business considerations. Therefore, it only makes sense that establishing processes will work to your business’ benefit. 

There are a variety of ways that they can do so, for that matter. For instance, they can…

• Help improve your business’ efficiency
• Optimize internal and external communications
• Minimize confusion in your operations
• Secure accountability in your workflows
• As mentioned above, better ensure consistency in outcomes

… so it only makes sense to invest the time it will take to standardize how your business completes certain tasks. Consider, for a moment, the modern fast food franchise.

Slight cost and menu changes aside, going to a fast food restaurant on one side of the country should be effectively identical to going to one on the other side. This is largely because there are essential processes that take place in the kitchens.

The moment a server starts to put together an order with a customer at the front counter, a screen in the back shows the order being constructed. This allows the team in the back to start putting it together, keeping the communications between the front and back teams effectively seamless. Each person back there has their own task - whether it is to cook the meat, start building the sandwiches, or finish them and send them to the front.

As a result, it isn’t unheard of for a finished sandwich to reach the customer less than a minute after they have placed their order - in fact, that’s the goal - and that is exactly how they expect it to be.

Now, while your business almost certainly has very different goals and services than a chain burger joint, there is no reason that you can’t experience similar benefits to your operations by implementing standardized procedures as well.

What Makes a Good Process

Now, this may feel like we’re getting a little into the weeds here, but not all processes are necessarily created equally. To make sure that your process is worth the time spent to formalize it, it should feature four qualities:

• It can be repeated - There isn’t much use in a process that only applies to a specific scenario or can’t hypothetically be repeated indefinitely. A good process can apply to a variety of circumstances, and be used more than once
  
  
• It contributes value - Any process you design should have a purpose to each step… there should never be any “busy work” involved in one of the included tasks.
  
  
• It has a clear beginning and an end - Every process you develop should have a defined starting point, where something signifies that the procedure should commence, as well as a conclusion, where no further action needs to be taken. Each step between these points also needs to be easy to differentiate from the others.
  
  
• The process can evolve - Of course, you aren’t going to (or at least, shouldn’t) continue using the same tools and solutions indefinitely, which will at some point impact these processes. Your processes should be able to accept these impacts without your clients seeing any ill effects.

Use Automation to Power Your Processes

If there is any issue that every business is subject to, it’s human error. Regardless of how perfect and refined your procedures are, there is always the risk that the end user will miss a step - like when the fast food worker forgets to put the pickle on your sandwich.

In your business, however, the consequences are probably a little greater than a missing crunch.

That’s why many businesses have embraced the use of automation to enhance their business processes. Not only does automation bring about the benefits we discussed above - the improved efficiency and accountability - it also helps you avoid human error at key points in your processes. Additionally, it frees up your employees to accomplish other things, perhaps related to that same process.

There are many different solutions designed to help with different tasks, and they can all play a role in your automated processes. MSPNetworks is here to help you determine what is best for your business’ efficiency.

To learn more about how we can help you automate some of your processes, or about the other benefits that we can provide for your organization, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.