Expanding a knowledge base

Once you have created and added your first content to the corporate knowledge base, don't stop there.

Think about your company and consider which knowledge areas you could delineate. Typical fields present in nearly every organization include:

• Marketing
• HR
• Design
• IT
• Finance
• Accounting
• Operations / Logistics
• Sales
• Research and Development
• Law
• Communication and PR

Once you have identified these main domains, create shelves for them.

In the next steps, you should start engaging your team. First of all, ask them to read this guide to understand why such a knowledge base is useful and how it should be created. You need to have the team on your side, otherwise the execution of this project will not succeed.

Each shelf should have its custodian. Choose a competent person for each of the fields that are important in your company and appoint them as the custodian of the relevant shelf in the knowledge base.

Let me remind you what exactly such a custodian is responsible for:

1. Each shelf has its custodian - usually someone from the relevant team, e.g., the marketing manager is the custodian of the "Marketing" shelf.
2. Each custodian has a specific day each month noted in the company calendar, when they must review their shelf and in consultation with the rest of the team ensure that all knowledge on their shelf is current. If it is not - they must update it or delegate someone to update it.
3. An automatic reminder to check the knowledge base appears once a month on the company communicator. Each custodian must then check off that they have performed their monthly review and that all the knowledge on their shelf is up-to-date.

Once your team is familiar with this guide and the idea of an AI-supported knowledge base, they should distribute tasks among themselves to create the appropriate books, chapters, and pages.

Each team and its manager know their domain best, so there are no better people than them to fill the given shelf with content. Just make sure that everyone is familiar with the set standards and will use the templates.

The custodian should ensure that the content created by their team conforms to the established pattern and should commission corrections if necessary.

Remember - there should be no knowledge in the company that is only in the heads of individual people. Everything valuable should be documented and recorded. Communicate to your team that this thought should guide them during the creation of the knowledge base.