By now, most corporate decision makers have heard of wikis, whether it is from their kids who are using wikipedia for school projects, or simply through the course of their job, wikis are getting more and more attention from the corporate world. The business benefits for wikis have been outlined (see the BrainKeeper solutions page), but what we hear quite often from directors and executives is:

"I have email, voicemail, shared file drives, portals, and instant messaging ...why do I need a wiki?"

The answer is fundamental to what BrainKeeper offers:

You have a question that you need to have answered thoroughly and accurately. You need to know when the answer changes, and when you should be asking a different question. You need to understand the perspectives of all departments involved, and you need information outlined in the context of your products, your business, and your market. And you need it now.

None of the traditional communication mediums can offer a solution that addresses this need. An enterprise wiki does.

Where does a Wiki fit?

Communication tools like email and instant messaging are essentially learning tools: one or more individuals looking to learn something from one or many other individuals. This learning can take place over a span of replies and forwards, but eventually the questions that were asked have been answered. If someone is not a part of this process, like a new employee or someone changing roles inside the company, how does that learning transfer? Especially since a new employee doesn't even know what they don't know!

Wikis are built around the concept that the only constant is change, and therefore everything is perpetually out of date. By giving everyone responsibility and the tools to contribute their knowledge, wikis provide a communication tool that opens the collective knowledge of a company up to everyone within it.

Wikis allow everyone to contribute everything that is learned throughout their career, thus enriching the experiences of others who can easily absorb this knowledge and improve upon it. Wikis feed themselves, govern themselves, and grow into a tool that makes you wonder how you were able to function without it.

All corporations struggle to capture critical information in a way that can be easily maintained, digested and understood by the people who need it. This situation presents itself in every company, every department, and even within business teams of a notable size. Most of us have experienced the frustrating and time consuming processes of:

1. Sending out a document with 'tracked changes' turned on, and then reconciling all of the versions that come back to you- doing your best to resolve conflicts.
2. Looking through a large document (product user guide, development specification, market research, etc.), only to find that the content is completely out of date- with no plan or strategy to update it!
3. Writing a document to address questions that are asked over and over again, but knowing full well that the questions will keep coming.

By distributing the responsibility of managing your corporate knowledge, you give yourself the best chance to avoid these situations and actually achieve goals that you never thought you could.

As an example, we will look at the third item from the list: creating an FAQ document. Everyone in the process has a vested interest in having this document created and maintained:

• Product Managers, Analysts, and Developers: don't want to have to answer the same questions over and over again.

• Customer Service: don't want to have to wait on responses for answers to client questions, and want to ensure a consistent, accurate answer

• Management: wants all employees to be more productive by eliminating the unnecessary emails between employees.

• Clients: want to get their questions answered quickly and accurately!

So, instead of having a single person or group be responsible for updating a word document that sits on a network folder somewhere, which is not searchable, is difficult to locate, and can have multiple outstanding versions- create a BrainKeeper page that everyone can contribute to.

Now, you have a living knowledge repository that can be comprehensive and stay up to date. If a new product feature is released, a Product Manager can add questions that are likely to be asked, and review existing pertinent questions to see if existing answers should be updated. Developers or researchers can add questions that they receive from Customer Support. Anyone from Customer Support could add their own questions and answers as well.

Inaccuracies are resolved as they are found, by the person who finds them- rather than having to send an email to a document admin and wait for a response. New employees have a place to go to learn about the products they will be working on / supporting. Management can have peace of mind, knowing that clients are being serviced better than they had been.

Through distributed knowledge management, the entire company benefits. In this example, clients are also given a much better experience with the vendor. There is quite simply no better way to keep large documents relevant and accurate.

First, let us express our sincere thanks to those who worked with us during our private beta.  We received a great deal of very valuable feedback from a number of individuals in key positions and roles- all of whom took time out of their busy schedules to evaluate our software for us. 

The Results
In the majority of the cases, the reviews of the BrainKeeper Enterprise Wiki were very positive.  Everyone saw the benefits and understood how distributed knowledge management could benefit their organizations.  Several of our private beta testers have continued to use BrainKeeper within their own companies, and are eagerly anticipating the new features we have planned.  If you are interested in receiving email notifications when we release new features, please subscribe to our mailing list. 

We updated a few features in the system based on the feedback we received.  These included some additional AJAX components, a more streamlined signup process, and a few other minor changes across the system.  At BrainKeeper, we make it a point of emphasis to respond to the comments we get from clients and non-clients alike. 

Welcome!
We invite you to come and see our product for yourself.  Capturing, collaborating, and distributing knowledge within your organization has never been more important- and BrainKeeper makes it easy. Creating a trial account takes only seconds.  No credit card information is required, and we will not use your contact information for any reason (view our privacy policy).

With our public beta launch, we are now looking for feedback from you!  We welcome any comments or suggestions you could give to us that would help our product be more comprehensive or targeted to your needs.  There is a feedback form within the product, or you can contact us directly at support@brainkeeper.com. 

We look forward to hearing from you.