What is a Wiki? Definition, Examples and Benefits for Companies

One of the most frequently used information sources in both daily and professional life is wikis. Wikis are the general name given to information and data storage tools managed by their users. A wiki can be both publicly available and public knowledge bases where companies store important documents. If you are wondering what wikis are and how they can benefit your enterprise, we’ve got you covered! 

In this article, we will explore what wikis are and examine their advantages.

If you are ready, let’s get started!

TL; DR

• A wiki is a website, database, knowledge base, or online community that is managed and organized by its users. 
• Public wikis are tools that allow users to get or share information about any topic. 
• Company wikis are used to collect, store, and share project and business data with employees. 
• In the long term, company wikis are useful for building company culture and storing cumulative data. 
• The advantages of using wikis for businesses are saving time, storing data in a single place, finding information quickly, and structuring documentation. 
• If you are looking for a knowledge management tool that will help your business in different aspects other than storing data, with its knowledge bases, web search, and conversational AI assistant, TextCortex is the way to go. 

What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a website, database, knowledge base, or online community that is managed and organized by its users. Any user can add content to a public wiki, edit existing content, or remove content. Wikis often have different pages for different topics, projects, and themes.

What Does a Wiki Do?

Public Wikis are user-created knowledge storages that allow internet users to get information about any topic, game, movie, project, event, or history. A wiki provides worldwide communication by users entering content on any topic. A user on one side of the world can read a Wiki entry made by a user on the other side of the world to get information about an event they are curious about.

A study from financesonline shows that people have adopted wiki websites like Wikipedia so much that 86.64% of Wikipedia visitors are accessed through search.

In short, wikis are data store websites that provide global communication regardless of location. While public wikis are available and accessible to all Internet users, things change when it comes to business wikis.

What are Wikis Used for in Business?

Company wikis are not generally publicly available and are used for internal communication and knowledge sharing. Company wikis are used for two purposes: to find information to learn something and contribute information to teach something. The most common purposes for which companies use wikis include:

• Onboard New Employees
• Share Company Resources
• Answer Technical Questions
• Store Documentation
• Manage Projects

Benefits of Using a Company Wiki

Wikis are useful knowledge repositories not only for solving immediate problems but also for their long-term benefits. At their most basic, wikis are useful for building company culture and strengthening team communication. Some of the benefits of using a wiki in a long term include:

• Learning Culture and Community
• Keeps Resources
• Accountability

Advantages of a Wiki for Your Business

Wikis are a great way to connect departments, employees, and teams working across locations and to share information and data. Wikis also offer collaborative advantages for remote or office teams. Let’s examine the advantages of a wiki for businesses together.

Find Information Easily

Being able to easily find information and documents such as your company's tasks, sub-tasks, projects, files, and emails is essential for increasing the productivity of every employee. When employees spend hours trying to find information about a topic or task, it both reduces the individual performance of employees and negatively affects the productivity of the company. For this reason, knowledge bases such as wikis, where you can quickly find and categorize information, are essential for your company.

Store Data in One Place

Storing company data such as projects and tasks in one place is one of the effective methods of boosting communication and collaboration. All employees of a company can work collaboratively by accessing data and knowledge from one place.

According to a research report by McKinsey, workers who work collaboratively and have high-quality communication are 20-25% more productive.

Saves Meeting Time

One of the advantages of streamlining information search and storing data in a single place is that employees can quickly find the documents they are looking for and avoid setting up meetings to ask questions. Remote employees can also access the data they are looking for without having to make meeting requests such as task lists or document requests. While this may not help you reduce one-on-one meetings, it does help you reduce meetings such as document sharing.

Cost Effective

Knowledge management tools like enterprise wikis are cost-effective ways to store data. If you’re just looking for a data storage tool, wikis may meet your needs, but if you want to take your knowledge management a step further, AI-powered knowledge management tools are the way to go.

Structure Your Documentation

Knowledge storages, such as wikis, where you can upload and categorize large amounts of data and documents, are ideal tools for organizing and structuring your documents. By creating folders and using filters, you can store your documents by project, department, or date, and streamline the data discovery process.

For example, you can use TextCortex’s knowledge bases to create separate folders for your different tasks and projects, effectively organizing your documents. This way, you can quickly access the documents you are looking for in TextCortex’s knowledge bases, or you can select the document folder that ZenoChat will use to generate output.

TextCortex – All-in-One AI Assistant

If you are looking for a way to store your data and documents without using a wiki, then TextCortex is designed for you. Unlike traditional wiki tools, TextCortex offers its users an AI assistant called ZenoChat in addition to knowledge management. With ZenoChat, you can generate outputs using your documents as data, or you can use the data in your documents to create graphs or tables. TextCortex is available as a web application and browser extension that is integrated with 30,000+ websites and apps. So TextCortex can continue to support you anywhere and anytime.

ZenoChat – Knowledge Bases

ZenoChat is a conversational AI assistant that offers advanced features such as text/code/image generation, access to multiple LLMs, web search, individual personas, and knowledge bases. With ZenoChat's knowledge bases, you can integrate your internal documents and data and generate company documents such as project plans and to-do lists.

To integrate data into our knowledge base, you can manually upload or connect your data. Moreover, our knowledge base allows you to integrate your data sources such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Notion with a single click. This way, you can quickly integrate large amounts of data into ZenoChat and avoid wasting time.

You can use ZenoChat and its advanced features not only for knowledge management but also to boost the individual performance of your employees. 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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