Research Shows Why a Wiki is Essential for Your Company

Companies are comparable to a high-performance racing car. The organization itself is the car, the employees are the pilots in the driver seat, and their accumulated knowledge is the fuel, which keeps the daily business running smoothly. If a valuable employee leaves the company, this is comparable to the absence of an extensive tank filling. The daily activity comes to a standstill. The remaining colleagues have to try to scratch up the lost knowledge.

There is no doubt about it: knowledge is a company's greatest asset. By providing a central point of contact for relevant information, routine procedures, or archived documentation, a Wiki facilitates productive work and saves employees' resources. It eliminates time-consuming searching, duplicate work, and missing knowledge gaps. This is also confirmed by research.

Advantages of Shared Knowledge

A study conducted by Haufe in cooperation with the Institute for Market Research has shown that for 71% of the managers and employees surveyed, internal knowledge is a critical success factor. The active exchange of processes across all kinds of hierarchy levels plays a central role in everyday office life, which is not limited to the local workplace.

By using an internal Wiki, questions can also be answered quickly and purposefully for external employees or colleagues in the home office. The accessibility of this information will be secured. At the same time, new findings or updates can be edited centrally. Every employee can adapt content, efficiently access data from other teams, or view project progress.

A missing knowledge base is the reason for 82% of all extra work – and therefore time-consuming in the long run. It’s also likely that holiday handovers or documentation in the event of personnel change only refers to the current situation and disregard past projects. And in the case of reactivation, employees start again to restore the latest status. Continuous documentation prevents all of this from happening.

Elementary Contents of a Wiki

The design of a knowledge base can be presented according to the proper scope. In addition to dynamic projects, which are continually evolving, also necessary, and basic company information is part of it. That contains employee directories, organization charts, applications, or notes of internal communication.

Furthermore, cross-team cooperation and process flows are of high relevance, which will be necessary for a consistent appearance and for maintaining structure. You may use letter templates, planning folders, or materials given to external parties to achieve this. Likewise, all information about the company should be on your Wiki, as well as marketing-relevant brochures, tools, and product overviews. With access to this regularly maintained database, no questions remain unanswered.

Structured Operation Without Losses

For 71% of the participants in the Haufe study, the search for necessary documents turns out to be a disruptive factor. Targeted filing or documentation in the Wiki saves time and nerves. Also, the amount of e-mails sent internally will be drastically reduced. Overflowing e-mail inboxes are a thing of the past.

The wrap-up of meetings goes hand in hand with this. Concepts or presentations do not have to be presented in large conferences but presented digitally at a central location. It does not mean the Wiki becomes a digital collection point for information of all kinds. But opinions and feedback are part of proper documentation, which can be processed using minutes.

Productivity through knowledge: 90% of people also try to focus on the connection between a seamless information chain and targeted work. Positive side effects, such as flexibility and simple processes, make the company Wiki an essential part of a company’s success story. The never-ending source that keeps engines running.