Company Knowledge Base for Successful Remote Working

In an attempt to contain the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, several companies around the world have been pushed into a sudden and unexpected remote-working environment. In such situations, efficiency and effectiveness of the daily business operations come down to the tools used by the organization.

Besides that, employees working remotely must have easy access to tools that enable them to perform their daily operations. Only then employees can remain productive and attain success in their remote working environment. However, even when all of the cloud-based tools are available such as Slack and Zoom, there are still certain important challenges faced by employees while working in a remote environment. One of these main challenges is the non-availability of key information in one centralized location.

The Main Challenge

The organization has to maintain loads of company information such as standard operating procedures, sales playbook, marketing materials, how-to guides for different tools (Slack, Microsoft Teams, and likewise), customer refund policy, business continuity plan, and many more.

Having said that, different departments within the organization maintain this crucial information in different tools. For instance, some departments might store this information in Word documents for sharing it through emails as and when required. At the same time, some departments could save this information in places such as Google Docs or SharePoint sites in an unstructured manner.

With multiple versions of the same documents floating around, getting access to the right information becomes next to impossible. Moreover, finding information through such channels is also a time-consuming process. This becomes a major bottleneck when employees are working remotely. They spend hours of their time to look for critical information in cluttered inboxes and unstructured Word documents. As a result, there is a loss of productivity, which creates a negative impact on the overall business operation. 

Cloud-Based Knowledge Management System for Remote Working

For successful remote working and efficient use of available resources, organizations must have a cloud-based knowledge management system.

The knowledge base software has two important use cases. These include a public-facing knowledge base that serves customers and an internal private knowledge base that serves employees and managers.

Big corporations such as Google and Microsoft have been using the public-facing knowledge base for several years now. Whenever the customer faces any problem with various service offerings of Google like Google Gmail, Google Docs, and others, they are not required to send a support request. Instead, they can find the answers on the company's public-facing knowledge base. This knowledge base system contains documentation that provides the customer with the needed solutions.

If companies start adopting the same principles, remote workers will have easy access to information that they need to do their jobs more promptly and efficiently. Moreover, with knowledge management tools such as AllAnswered, companies have to worry about nothing other than writing good content to capture your institutional knowledge.

While companies focus on providing remote workers with credible documentation, AllAnswered ensures that the information is searchable and accessible to employees in a relatively simpler manner.

In a remote working environment, like the one we are facing today due to the coronavirus outbreak, it becomes imperative that remote workers get access to crucial information from wherever they are working in the world. Furthermore, knowledge base software such as AllAnswered also provides seamless integrations with different third-party tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, GitHub, and many more.

Mostly all businesses rely on these tools to communicate and collaborate with their employees daily. Therefore, having a knowledge management software that can seamlessly integrate with these tools plays a crucial role in the success of a remote working environment.

Moreover, knowledge management tool such as AllAnswered also allows remote workers to directly search and access useful information from these third-party tools, which minimizes time loss due to context switching. For instance, remote employees communicating through Slack can find relevant information on the AllAnswered knowledge base without leaving the Slack interface. This integration saves remote workers a lot of time, allowing them to do their job more efficiently.

Importance of Sharing Knowledge with Colleagues

Shared knowledge among employees, especially remote workers, is one of the best ways to communicate and collaborate. It is the only way remote teams can avoid frustration from missing information and come up with innovative ideas and new ways of doing things more efficiently.

However, to do so, it is important to make use of one centralized knowledge management tool, which remote workers can use to access and share crucial information with their colleagues. Not only will it allow an easy way to share information, but it will also promote enhanced communication among employees working from different locations.

Moreover, what would happen if one of the team members leaves the organization for a new position at some other company? Sharing knowledge through a central knowledge base software will create a future-proof environment where a new hire can access pre-existing information with ease and continue working on the projects without any interruptions.

Things to Look For In a Knowledge Management Software for Successful Remote Working

Companies need to have a knowledge base software to ensure successful remote working. At the same time, it is equally important to have a knowledge management tool that makes information more searchable and accessible.

AllAnswered provides organizations with an AI-powered knowledge management tool that offers organizations with wiki pages, question and answer system that promotes a structured way to store information. 
Besides that, the knowledge management tool also provides remote workers with communities feature to create department-specific workspaces. All of these features ensure that your organization is adopting a company knowledge base that promotes successful remote working.

Since the start of the pandemic, the coronavirus outbreak has resulted in the widespread adoption of a remote working environment. More than ever before, companies must start investing in a competent knowledge base tool for the increased productivity and success of their remote working teams.