Are you wondering what’s a business wiki and how do companies use wikis for their business? Want to know what benefits do wikis provide to companies? In this article, we give you everything you need to know about using Wikis for businesses.
Business – a Simple Definition
In simple terms, a business is any organization where goods and services are exchanged for money. It can be for-profit, non-profit, state-owned, or privately owned.
The term business also refers to the organized efforts and activities of individuals to produce and sell goods and services. A business could be as small as a sole proprietorship and as large as an international corporation.
What is Business Wiki?
When a business is scaling up (grows large) you need business administration skills including organization theory, strategic management, etc., Workplace collaboration and documentation are essential for a business. A Business Wiki is a software tool that helps with documentation and collaborative knowledge sharing.
You can imagine business wiki as a private Wikipedia for your company where all the information regarding your business is collaboratively created by employees and stored systematically to be easily accessible to everyone working for who needs the information.
Wiki for Businesses: Do I need a Wiki for my Business?
Though countless people all around the globe have popularly used wiki’s, very few people have realized the importance of using a wiki for their business.
Yes, Business Wiki is one of the most potent tools which has the ability to skyrocket your business in a way you never imagined.
If you don’t believe my words, you should ask yourself the question, then why top business companies like Intel Corporation, Adobe, and IBM use a Corporate wiki fro their business.
Yes, almost every top-notch companies use wikis for their business.
It’s high time for every small business and growing startups to realize how the top companies have used wikis in their business and how it can help their own business.
How does a Wiki Benefit my Business?
Wondering how do companies use wikis? There are many ways in which a wiki can be implemented in various businesses. We will see some of the essential use cases.
Businesses use wikis to:
- Create Product Documentation
- Attract the audience through Content Marketing
- Internal Team Collaboration
- Project Documentation and Management
- Also for Individual knowledge retention
Business Wiki for Technical, Marketing, and HR Teams:
Wiki can be used for many types of work environments. Have you ever thought a Wiki could do a big deal for your marketing team? Yes, it does. Creating a wiki, writing content on your niche regularly will build a strong authority for your business in the niche you are in.
Wiki also does a great deal in your SEO by providing links from highly relevant content back to your own website, and capture a new potential customer base searching for information about your niche.
So Wikis can be a great way to produce a content-rich website on your industry and draw customers to your primary website in the longer term.
Also See Best Wiki Software
Business Wiki for Companies:
Internal Team Collaboration:
According to SalesForce, 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures
There won’t be any better tool other than a wiki for your internal team/employees to use, especially when the team is working on a common project. This type of business wiki is also called a Workplace wiki.
They can use Wiki to store the information on the project they are working on, common troubleshooting issues and the solutions, essential notes on their project meetings, the deadlines of the project, and much more.
The collaborative nature of wikis makes it the perfect tool for small teams of people who need to create and distribute information to other people in their organizations. You can find the best collaboration tools for your business here.
Global Communication:
Sometimes you might have business all around the globe and may find it hard to maintain clear communication between them. A wiki for companies can be a great tool in providing a method for teams with members in different locations to work together seamlessly and share information on a project.
Project Management:
In a Survey done by Mckinsey, they found that 97% of employees and executives believe lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or project.
Though there are many project management tools out there, considering the simplicity and a shallow learning curve of a wiki makes it the best alternative for project management.
You can use wikis to organize client data, files, task lists, etc.. You can also use it as a repository of business files that is accessible to everyone in your team.
Project Documentation:
Documentation is an essential part of running a business and also the most neglected part because of the time it takes.
Maintaining a documented process for our business as well as the client’s business may look time-consuming at the moment but it will be of great benefit in the long term and a wiki would be the best tool to create it.
Knowledge Management:
Companies implement wikis such as Employee wiki, Internal Team wiki, etc, for employee onboarding, employee training, and for sharing company standard operating procedures and guidelines.
Every department in your company can use a Wiki as a Knowledge Management space for your employees to use to solve the most common problems such as what to do when the database is unavailable, the mail isn’t being delivered, or documents aren’t printing, etc..
So wikis for companies become a better replacement for a company’s knowledge base. You can use the best knowledge management software tools to create an Employee wiki or Internal Team wiki of your business.
Intranet:
An Intranet is a local or restricted communication space used by companies for storing and sharing information. You can also use wikis in an intranet portal for all your employees to be used within your office system, allowing them to see the latest news within their department and across the company. There are various Intranet software that helps to create a private network for your business.
Improve Communications:
Wikis do a great job in improving the communications in your organization. Often, corporate communication would just involve the dumping of information of the leader to the employee rather than an idea gathering mission.
The collaborative nature of wikis makes everyone, including the employees to share their ideas, which also improves the quality of the project and also empowers the employee to come up with their own ideas.
Meetings:
Wiki for business can also be used in team meetings. Communication and synergy of ideas are the two main goals of most meetings, and we very well know that a wiki is an excellent tool that can accomplish both of these goals. Especially startups and small businesses use wikis for meetings and store information that was shared in the meetings.
As a company wiki example of how a wiki would be the best tool for team meetings,
IBM held a global wiki meeting in September of 2006 with online discussions that lasted three days. Over 100,000 people from more than 160 countries participated in what IBM considered a highly-successful brainstorming session.
Business Wiki for your Support Team:
Product Documentation:
Providing proper support for your products is one of the crucial factors in determining the quality of your products/business.
A wiki can be extremely useful in creating documentation for your products where you could add the how-to’s of your product, frequently asked questions, adding regular updates of your product, and much more.
By using a wiki for your product documentation, you can also allow your customers to add their own tips or suggestions on the documentation that needs modification, and that needs to be added.
By using this properly, a wiki can be the best tool that will improve your support process; thrice the usual.
Business Wiki For Individuals:
On an individual basis, you can also use a wiki as your own private workspace where you can make notes, make lists of your agendas, and generate new ideas.
Setting up a Wiki for your Business
By now, I believe you would have understood the importance of using wikis for any kind of business.
So, are you wondering how to create a wiki for your company? Searching for the best wiki tool for your business?
A simple and easy way to create a business wiki is to make your own wiki. It might seem like a huge task but it’s quite easy with the right tool.
HelpieKB Wiki is the best wiki software for any business. You don’t need to believe me. You can try for your self. Try a 7-days free trial of HelpieKB Wiki.
It runs off WordPress is a beginner-friendly content management system. You can easily install WordPress and Helpie on your website. See this article to create a wiki website with Helpie.
Such a great way to keep your business intact. Project management is very complex to handle but a good way to keep things organized.
Great article. Your blog contains professional content, many thanks for that! This is exactly what I was looking for!