10 Benefits of a Knowledge Base

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information scattered across your organization? A well-implemented knowledge base system isn’t just a repository—it’s a strategic asset that transforms chaos into clarity. The benefits of a knowledge base extend beyond simple information storage; they empower your workforce to access and utilize critical data effortlessly, no matter where they are. The advantages are substantial, from boosting productivity and enhancing employee engagement to preserving valuable knowledge and elevating customer experiences.

These knowledge base benefits all stem from the system’s ability to centralize all company knowledge, making it easily searchable and accessible. This means Customer Service can resolve issues faster, Marketing can craft more compelling content, Sales can expedite closures, and Insights teams can distribute findings more efficiently.

If you’re considering adopting a knowledge base for your organization or just starting to explore the world of knowledge management, you’re in the right place. Below, we discuss the ten most impactful benefits of implementing a knowledge base to help you build a compelling business case.

What is a Knowledge Base?

A knowledge base lets employees across your organization share content to a central, searchable hub. In many cases, a knowledge base is part of a knowledge management software solution. For example, Bloomfire’s knowledge engagement platform allows users to create a dynamic knowledge base containing the documentation, FAQs, and individual expertise that exists across their organization. Users can share different types of knowledge through a wide range of files and media, post content directly to the platform, search the platform for information, and ask questions of their co-workers.

A knowledge base system can also be used internally (by employees) or externally (by customers). For instance, businesses might set up an internal knowledge base to centralize their institutional knowledge and the collective intelligence of their employees, while they might set up an external knowledge base to give customers easy access to how-to guides, best practices, and FAQs. (Note: Bloomfire’s Help Center is an example of an external knowledge base.)

Both internal and external knowledge bases have benefits (and many companies use both), but this article will focus on some of the biggest benefits of an internal knowledge base.

10 Knowledge Base Benefits 

1. Improved Productivity

According to McKinsey & Company, employees spend 20% of their time at work searching for information they need in cluttered inboxes, unorganized repositories, and co-workers’ brains. A knowledge base system centralizes all the knowledge living in those spaces, making it accessible and searchable to all employees.

No more scrolling through old Slack messages, combing through thousands of emails for a single attachment, or desperately trying to chase down an expert before they go to lunch. A knowledge base can reclaim up to an entire workday for each employee each week. Less time spent searching for information means more time for accomplishing meaningful work.

2. Reduced Training Time

Organizations are increasingly focused on employee retention, with 90% of companies expressing concern about keeping their talent. The 2024 LinkedIn Workforce Learning Report says providing learning opportunities has become the top retention strategy. However, traditional training sessions can be time-consuming, and employees need time to complete their work.

A knowledge base can help organizations deliver on-demand training, a more efficient and impactful way for people to learn. While training managers may still lead some training sessions in real time, they can upload all materials (including video recordings of the session and related resources) to the company knowledge base so employees can revisit them at any time. When all materials in the knowledge base are searchable, employees can jump straight to the most relevant information. This enables people to learn–and reinforce what they have learned–in the workflow as time allows.

3. Increased Employee Engagement

Employees who feel engaged with their work stay at one company longer, have lower absenteeism rates, and produce higher quality work than their disengaged peers. One way to help keep employees engaged is to give them access to a company knowledge base.

Making all company knowledge available through a knowledge base shows that your organization values transparency, which fosters trust. Employees appreciate feeling that they are being kept in the loop, and they will likely feel more invested in the organization’s overall success when they can see what different teams and departments are working on and how their own work supports larger business goals.

When employees trust their organization, they’re more willing to share what they know, and a knowledge base gives them a space to do this. In a modern knowledge base with collaboration features, employees can comment on documents or posts, “like” them (similar to social media), ask questions, tag others, follow topics and contributors, and more. 

Whether employees are sitting next to each other at their desks or on the other side of the world, they can always collaborate on content and products, share ideas, and feel that they are valued voices within the organization.

4. Knowledge Preservation

As employees leave the organization for various reasons (retirement, job change, or even temporarily for vacation or parental leave), you risk losing all of the valuable knowledge that they acquired during their time with the organization. This creates problems for the people who are tasked with picking up the pieces.

To avoid this loss, you need a proper system to handle knowledge transfer. A knowledge base empowers employees to document every project they complete thoroughly, the content they write, the questions they answer, and the protocol they develop so that transferring tasks and information from one employee to another is straightforward. Additionally, a platform that lets users share content in many different formats (images, audio, video, etc.) makes it easy for subject matter experts to share and preserve their knowledge in the most convenient way.

5. Consistency in Communication

Imagine a customer who speaks to a sales rep before purchasing and learns to use a product to solve a specific problem. When the product doesn’t work as expected, they call the company’s customer service number and speak to a representative who tells them to try a certain fix. They try the fix, but it doesn’t work, so they call the customer service number again, feeling increasingly frustrated. They speak to a different representative who gives them a completely different answer.

This inconsistent, disjointed customer experience often occurs when different departments or teams are operating in silos and relying on other sources of information. Not only can it leave a bad taste in customers’ mouths, but it can harm your company’s reputation and cause you to lose customers to competitors.

A knowledge base gives companies one central source of truth that all teams and departments can access. This means everyone refers to the same information and knows how other teams communicate with customers and prospects, leading to a more consistent, unified customer experience.

6. Empowered Remote Employees

Modern collaboration doesn’t always happen in an office from 9 to 5. Remote work has become a standard part of many employees’ lives today. According to the Pew Research Center, around 22 million employed adults in the U.S. work from home all the time, roughly 14% of all employed adults. Additionally, just over one-third of U.S. workers who can work remotely do so full-time, while 41% work on a hybrid schedule. It’s projected that more than one in five Americans will work remotely by 2025.

No matter where employees work, they need access to the information required to do their jobs effectively. A cloud-based and mobile-friendly knowledge base ensures remote employees can access company knowledge from anywhere. This is particularly crucial in organizations that adopt a hybrid or flexible work model, empowering employees to access the information they need when needed without disrupting co-workers who might be offline.

A knowledge base is essential for accessing time-sensitive company information, such as when a sales representative conducts a product demo or a remote customer service representative assists a customer with a return policy question. When a company’s reputation depends on timely customer service, employees must be able to quickly find the answers needed to resolve queries and issues efficiently.

7. Better Cross-Functional Collaboration

The demand for better internal collaboration is taking center stage, with 54% of global marketing leaders prioritizing it. Additionally, at GDS Group’s RevGen Digital Summit in North America, 59% of senior executives emphasized the importance of trust within sales and marketing and the entire organization.

Improving cross-functional collaboration can be challenging. From decentralized workforces to different sources of records for various teams, obstacles to effective collaboration abound. A knowledge base can help tackle these challenges by providing employees across departments with a single digital location where they can come together and share information. This centralization offers each team better visibility into what others are working on and allows them to comment or ask questions about shared information. As a result, the organization benefits from greater collaboration and diverse perspectives that might otherwise be missing.

8. Reduced Reliance on Email for Knowledge Sharing

Organizations should encourage employees to use a knowledge base to share information that might be helpful to a larger group or future employees. When employees get in the habit of posting to a knowledge base any time they have information that may be useful to multiple people, they’ll prevent knowledge from becoming walled off in emails. Subject matter experts won’t have to respond to the same question more than once.

Sharing content through a knowledge base eliminates one of the biggest problems with sharing content over email: version control. When you share a document over email and your recipient edits it, they must resend the most up-to-date version. Multiple people may sometimes work on the same document, resulting in numerous versions floating around the company. There may also be various one-to-one conversations about the document occurring over email, with important information about the content becoming siloed.

By using a modern knowledge base with version control, you can ensure that all employees can find the most up-to-date content while viewing changes made to the document over time. This helps eliminate duplicate efforts and keeps everyone aligned around the same knowledge.

9. Faster and Better Informed Decision-Making

Your organization likely possesses a wealth of data and insights–but can everyone access them? In many cases, insights and research reports are shared with a limited audience through presentations or emails and then forgotten about or buried. When decision-makers have a specific research question, they must dig through their inbox or track down a subject matter expert who can help them find the needed information. This slows down their decision-making process, leading them to make more decisions based on assumptions rather than available data.

With a knowledge base, internal stakeholders can search for and surface answers to their research questions in seconds, empowering them to make faster and better-informed business decisions.

10. Revenue Generation

That’s right–a knowledge base can contribute to revenue generation and company growth. When employees spend less time searching for knowledge and more time acting on it, they are more productive and contribute higher-quality work. They can also decrease duplicate or redundant work because they better understand what everyone across teams is working on. 

Having a centralized source for knowledge sharing also contributes to innovation. Employees can build upon one another’s knowledge and connect information in new ways. This becomes a competitive advantage for your business, leading to revenue and company growth.

The Long-Term Benefits of a Knowledge Base

Reports show that organizations that have implemented a knowledge base see increases in productivity, collaboration, and employee engagement. A knowledge base’s benefits have far-reaching effects. When employees are empowered to do their jobs faster and more efficiently, your company’s customers and partners also benefit.

This post was originally published in August 2017. It was most recently expanded and updated in August 2024.

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About the Author

Betsy Anderson

Betsy leads the customer success and implementation teams at Bloomfire. Passionate about the people side of knowledge engagement and knowledge sharing, Betsy shares real-world experience with the challenges faced by companies with a knowledge management problem.