e-skills UK Guide

Building a knowledge base

This guide is designed to assist you in building a knowledge base to store important business specific knowledge in a systematic way.

As more and more businesses are built using the “smarts” of employees it is important that you capture this information as it can build value in your business and help if people should leave your organisation.

Introduction to knowledge management

Knowledge management is a very grand title but don’t let that put you off. It simply means the process of documenting and making available business related knowledge.

This knowledge may be about business processes, market data, product development or other information specific to how your business runs.

You will often hear the term knowledge base used when talking about knowledge management. This term relates to the system that stores your business knowledge and is similar to how a database stores data such as customer details.

There is a lot of academic research and theories that discuss knowledge management but little of this is important to the small business owner – we need to be concerned about the practicalities of storing the knowledge that is in our team’s heads and making it available to other members of staff.

You may also hear business related knowledge being referred to as intellectual capital. This is another way of describing knowledge in a business and giving it some form of value. Whilst it may be relatively easy to put a price on a piece of machinery, measuring the worth of knowledge is a lot more difficult. In many cases knowledge is much more valuable than machinery as is always harder to replace. Many small businesses attract a higher valuation in a business sale due to their intellectual capital.

Could knowledge management benefit your business?

Many small businesses work in very focussed areas often using some specific skills not generally available off the street.

For many the cost of replacing the knowledge that an employee has developed over the years can be big, more so in a small business with few members of staff each of which has a unique skill set and personal knowledge base.

Imagine if you are developing a new product for your market place - how do you ensure that all of the ideas, techniques, tips and processes are written down and made available to all members of a team rather than sitting in one person’s head?

If a key member of your team was off long term sick or left the business and took that knowledge with them it could set your business back weeks, months or even years.

If you decide to sell you business the chances are that a purchaser would want to take across key employees that understand business processes or technologies specific to your company. Many deals have been lost as key employees have refused to move on to the new business. By having as much of their knowledge documented in a system you can reduce the risk of this happening to your company.

But in reality not every business will need to go to the expense of building a fully fledged knowledge management solution. To see if you need to take a look around your work place and imagine if one, two, three or more members of staff were to leave tomorrow and ask yourself how would you replace their skills and knowledge?

Some small businesses will manage this by having other people sufficiently trained to cover for the absent employee. Although their skills may not be at the same level initially, they are probably going to learn the additional tasks and become proficient quite quickly.

You also need to consider the nature of your business. If you are a technology start-up the chances are that you have some very specific skills that would be very difficult to replace. If on the other hand you are running a small courier business you will probably find replacement staff quite easily.

In Summary

You need to consider a knowledge management solution if you:

Have unique processes, systems or technologies.
You work primarily in an information provider role.
You have one or two key staff with very specific know how.

You probably don’t need a knowledge management solution if you:

Work in a trade or more “everyday” business.
Work by yourself and are unlikely to employ others or need a succession plan.

What is the right knowledge management solution for you?

If you have internal technical skills and the time available it may be an idea to build your own solution. The benefit of this is that you can tailor the solution to your own business and your important procedures.

If on the other hand you have more complex requirements with little internal knowledge management skills you may be better buying a solution that helps you get up and running

Building a simple knowledge management solution

The type of knowledge management solution you should build will depend on a number of factors:

If you are a small business with between 1 and 5 employees and little in the way of exclusive processes, products or procedures then you could simply build a small company handbook that contains some notes about your key procedures.
If your business is more complex and you have between 5 and 15 employees then write down your knowledge in a structured document held on a PC in the office.
If the business has more than 15 employees then you should consider the use of a small database application designed to store relevant people’s knowledge.

Once you have decided that it is important to have a knowledge management system you need to get started as soon as possible. The quicker you start the quicker the system is available.

It may be an idea to off load some of the data collection tasks onto a trusted office manager or administrator. They could be given the job of collecting as much of the data as possible and putting it into whatever format you think appropriate for your knowledge base.

If you have members of the team with critical knowledge in their heads then you must allow them time to update the knowledge base or they will forget to do it or put it very low down on their list of priorities. Help the team understand the importance of what you are trying to do.

As we have seen the simplest knowledge management system could be a folder containing hard copy documents that list processes, techniques, ideas and developments sitting on a shelf. Many companies refer to this type of folder as their “bible” as it is seen to contain everything they need to run their operation. A simple test to evaluate this folder would be to give it to someone unfamiliar with your business and ask them to describe one or more of your regular tasks. If they cannot do it then maybe your folder needs some updating!

The problem with this approach is that the folder could get lost or damaged, or could get out of date very quickly.

Another solution would be to use a simple word processor document that sits on a PC in the office that is updated by staff when new processes and ideas are created. The biggest problem here is ensuring that the data is up to date and accurate. By producing a simple format or template in the document updating could be made straightforward.

The next stage may be the creation of an intranet to share documents and knowledge. An intranet is an internal web page that is only accessible by staff working for a business as it contains private company data. The benefit of this approach is that an intranet can be indexed and searched just like the worldwide web. This makes looking for a process such as “Paint application rules for Jenson Products” as easy as typing it into a search box.

A database can be used to build a knowledge base. One of the popular products such as Microsoft Access is designed to help you quickly setup small databases. It is important to keep your requirements as simple as possible so that you are not over complicating the solution. If this work is outside of your organisation’s skill set you may consider working with a third party to implement the system for you, but this may prove to be relatively expensive.

To quickly calculate the cost benefit of the knowledge base think how much it would cost to replace the lost person’s knowledge or experience and use that as part of your business return on investment. For many a knowledge base is an insurance policy, for others it is a vital part of their company’s value and contributes significantly to any subsequent company valuation.

Whatever approach you take, it is critical that the data in the knowledge base is up to date an accurate. Misleading information is worse than no information.

In Summary

Give your team time to build the knowledge base
Keep it simple whatever you do
Backup your knowledge base
Keep it up to date and relevant
Consider the development of an intranet to help share the knowledge base data
Calculate the financial cost of loosing a key member of staff and work that into the justification for building a knowledgebase
Use it!

Buying a knowledge management system

Knowledge management systems can range in price from hundreds through to many tens of thousands of pounds. Obviously the high end is out of the range for a small business so you would need to be looking at the smaller systems.

You will need to consider who is going to access the system and how they will update or search their entries. You will need to think through how the system will need to be supported and whether you have the time and/or infrastructure to support the more complex solutions.

A search of the web will reveal many knowledge management vendors and some sites offer a guide such as the Ziff Davies Web Buyers Guide.

As an example a free form database that can be used for knowledge management is AskSam. This provides a very simple to use database that can be used to search text content and would be ideal for a small business moving into knowledge management.

More advanced users may want to review Content Management Server from Microsoft and related technologies such as Share Point which enables you to build a simple intranet based knowledge management solution that is searchable and easy to maintain.

There are a number of consultants and advisors that can help you select a knowledge management solution. More details can be found in the Choosing an IT consultancy supplier Guide.

Top tips for keeping your Knowledge Management system up to date

In a small business lead by example and put your own knowledge into the system.
Give people time to update the system away from their day to day work.
Check the currency of the knowledge base data and ensure that it is being kept up to date by having a weekly review.
If you manage your staff by objectives give them one to keep the knowledge base up to date
Explain the importance of the knowledge base to all team members.
Make it easy for the knowledge base to be updated. The more difficult the process the less likely people are to update it.
If someone is not able to update the system as maybe they are unfamiliar with computers have someone sit down with them to document their input and type it up for them.
Make sure that your knowledge base is held safely and securely. This is your critical company data and must not fall into the hands of competitors or be lost in a fire or flood.
Back up your knowledge base and store a copy off site.