As technology evolves, every company in today’s business world uses Cloud systems to store their data and documents. The various needs of companies have led to the development of Cloud services and the design of applications such as intranets used for knowledge storage. The best way to manage and organize your company data and documents, and to streamline your employees’ workflows is through knowledge bases. If you don’t already have one, it’s time to manage your data through knowledge bases.

In this article, we will explore what knowledge bases are and examine the types of knowledge bases.

If you’re ready, let’s get started!

TL; DR

  • A knowledge base is an online library where you can store your data and information and provide easy access to this data for internal or external members.
  • Knowledge bases offer companies benefits such as fast information finding, workflow streamlining, and a better onboarding experience.
  • When choosing knowledge base software, you need to decide whether you will use it for internal or external purposes.
  • Internal knowledge bases are online libraries that only your company members can access and use.
  • You can use customer service knowledge bases to get feedback from customers and improve your product/service quality.
  • If you are looking for an AI-powered knowledge base assistant, ZenoChat by TextCortex is designed for you.

What is a Knowledge Base?

A knowledge base is a library where you store individual or company data online. The data in your knowledge base can come from any source, such as employees, supervisors, customer service, and leaders. All of these contributors contribute to your knowledge base, allowing you to create a data pool. Any of the following can be considered as a knowledge base:

  • FAQs
  • PDFs
  • Documents
  • Guides
  • Video and Audio Records
  • Wikis
  • Help Centers
  • Knowledge Management Systems
  • Intranets
  • Cloud Services
  • Spreadsheets
  • Web Portals
  • Manuals
What is a Knowledge Base?

How Do Knowledge Bases Work?

A knowledge base is a repository where any type of content uploaded by your company members is stored. Knowledge base software are applications that facilitate the uploading, organization, and connection of all this knowledge, offering various features beyond mere storage. With knowledge base software, you can store PDFs, documents, videos, images, audio, and code content, and access them whenever needed.

Benefits of Knowledge Bases

Software and apps that you can use as knowledge bases have various advantages to increase your company's efficiency and perform specific tasks with high efficiency.

  • Find Information: You can categorize the information you store in your knowledge bases and find it quickly when you search for it later. This benefit is especially important for your employees to recall old information and continue their tasks without interruption.
  • Onboarding: New hires can review the guides and onboarding handbooks you upload to your knowledge bases to adapt to your company's working principles, work culture and tasks.
  • Easy Updates: You can use your knowledge base apps to update your company's outdated and old documents and pages.
  • Roles and Permissions: You can manage who can access the documents and permissions in your knowledge base and facilitate your employees' workflow.
  • Streamline Workflow: A high-quality knowledge base application offers major solutions such as providing answers to your employees, providing fast access to information, and updating content.
Benefits of Knowledge Bases

How do I choose a Knowledge Base?

Your company may need different knowledge bases for different tasks. For various company needs, such as storing company data or enhancing internal communication, you should utilize knowledge base apps that offer different features. To choose a knowledge base software, you first need to understand what type of knowledge base you need. Let’s take a look at the types of knowledge bases.

Types of Knowledge Bases

Knowledge bases basically have two different categories: internal and external. Internal knowledge base software is a data management system that only your company managers can access and use. External knowledge base software represents data libraries that your customers and company partners can also access. Both internal and external knowledge base software are divided into different categories.

Types of Knowledge Bases

Internal Knowledge Base

An internal knowledge base is an online library created by a company that provides access to information that employees need. You can use internal knowledge bases to answer frequently asked questions by employees, to share company policies and handbooks with employees, and to share documents such as SOPs and to-do lists with your employees. While internal knowledge bases, called intranets, only provide users with existing data, AI-powered internal knowledge bases such as ZenoChat allow employees to process data and create new information. With internal knowledge bases, you get the following benefits:

  • Streamline Workflow
  • Increased Productivity
  • Better Employee Focus on Tasks
  • Better Onboarding
  • Easy and Quickly Information Search
  • Organized Data Library

Hosted Knowledge Base

Hosted knowledge bases are online libraries used to collect and store data and information for both internal, such as employees, and external contributors, such as customers. Hosted knowledge bases come in two different categories.

Self-hosted Knowledge Base

Self-hosted knowledge bases are when your organization or company hosts its own server. This approach gives you more control over security, privacy, and uptime, while also putting you in charge of fixing issues and errors.

Open-source Knowledge Base

Open-source knowledge bases are open to anyone to edit and access and are generally not free-to-use. If you are looking for a knowledge base that all your employees, customers, and partner organizations can edit, access, and modify, consider creating an open-source KB.

Customer Service Knowledge Base

These are knowledge bases that your customers can access and use and provide feedback about your products or services. Since these types of knowledge bases are accessible to customers, they are not suitable for storing important and private data. You can use customer service knowledge bases for your customers to comment on your products and for potential customers to evaluate these comments and decide whether to purchase your products or services.

ZenoChat – AI-powered Knowledge Bases

If you are looking for an AI-powered internal knowledge base equipped with technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and large language models, ZenoChat is designed for you. ZenoChat is an AI companion that offers its users AI’s text/code/image generation capabilities, web search feature, and knowledge base management in a conversational format. You can use ZenoChat’s knowledge bases to categorize data, create new and insightful information from your existing data, and manage your existing data.

ZenoChat’s knowledge bases allow you to upload or connect any document and data and generate output using them. What’s more, with ZenoChat knowledge bases, you can upload your data sources such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Notion to ZenoChat with a few simple steps. To integrate ZenoChat’s knowledge bases and other cutting-edge AI features into your business and streamline your employees’ workflows, simply:

  • Create Your Free TextCortex Account
  • Install Our Browser Extension
  • Head to the TextCortex Web Application
  • Click Knowledge Bases from the Left Menu
  • Create Custom Knowledge Bases

See the results from one of our case studies:

  • TextCortex was implemented for Kemény Boehme Consultants as a solution to tackle these challenges and today employees report increased efficiency and productivity (saving 3 work days per month per employee on average).
  • AICX, an ecosystem partner of TextCortex, was integral to the onboarding and helped achieve a 70% activation rate of the team within the first weeks.
  • Employee confidence in using and working with AI increased by 60%.‍
  • The implementation results in a 28x return on investment (ROI).

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