Why Your Company Should Power Up From a Traditional Wiki
Find out why traditional internal company wikis aren't longterm solutions to your knowledge management problem -- and what you should look for instead.
A corporate wiki is a type of knowledge management software: an updatable source of internal company information. They’re versatile and easy to set up, and, unlike even a few years ago, many of them integrate with team communications platforms like Slack or Teams.
And because Guru was founded on the idea of Slack integration, we know why: By adding an internal wiki to your comms platform, you can access your entire knowledge base without interrupting the conversation.
But regardless of their accessibility in those apps, the problem with traditional company wikis remains: they become outdated and difficult to manage as your team grows and your knowledge scales, resulting in declining usage over time. It doesn’t matter if it’s a traditional portal or the newest offering, the fact is that traditional wikis don’t work long-term.
Read on to find out why traditional wikis won’t help you solve fundamental problems with your knowledge.
Most internal wikis don’t fix the major problem with traditional knowledge bases: the accuracy and effectiveness of knowledge
Here’s what happens to content in most internal wikis:
An SME spends a lot of time writing and crafting the perfect page, but after they write, they forget to update it and are never prompted to do so, leading to that knowledge going stale
Those who need the knowledge can’t tell when the wiki was last updated or whether it’s still relevant and lose trust in it
Wiki solutions reward long-form content, which means that even when a user finds the correct page, they may not be able to easily find the specific piece of knowledge they need, teaching them to ignore the wiki and ask the SME directly
The combination of stale knowledge, lack of trust, and difficulty of access leads to a decline in usage, making the entire internal wiki solution a wasted investment
If your wiki has a Slack or Teams integration, you might solve one of those problems: the issue of information usage. But because these solutions lack a way to force SMEs to verify or update existing knowledge, your team may inadvertently start sharing incorrect or out-of-date information. And bad informationcan be worse than no information — especially in customer-facing roles.
Information around your business changes every day: new features get built, new competitors emerge, and new internal processes get created, and it all gets discussed in your comms channels.
We don’t blame you for thinking, Wikis seem simple, so I’ll just grab one that integrates with Slack or Teams and that’ll solve all of my problems?
But here’s why that just creates more headaches down the line.
That may not seem that complex, but consider that each employee works in about 9 apps. Taken together, the number of combinations of apps and people quickly becomes unmanageable for even a single point solution, like a traditional wiki, or a dual point solution, like one that integrates with Slack.
So, how can a wiki for Slack help your team members when they’re not actually using Slack?
Solving your knowledge management problem at every point in your workflow
First, let’s do a tl;dr recap: most wikis with Slack and Teams integrations are still, at heart, traditional solutions, with all of the problems that come with them. That being said, if you’re still considering a wiki app, choose one that has Slack and Teams integrations. Chat integrations do promote consistent use — and staying in-workflow part of the time is still better than none of the time.
But for real-time knowledge everywhere else, don’t stop with a Slack integration.
The problem with traditional wiki content
Most wikis reward knowledge being stored, not necessarily being used. Because they are designed as portals, knowledge in them has to take on a very specific, hierarchical structure. A rigid structure tends to reward longer-form content, which means multiple topics can be grouped together under one heading. By its very nature, this makes knowledge slower and harder to access. Even with a Slack or Teams integration, you may be pulling up articles that are hundreds of words long. That makes it difficult to find what you need quickly, and a chore to update.
In Guru's wiki solution, your knowledge is structured to be used, instead of to be stored (single topic, bite-size), so you can read it quickly, and update it quickly. There’s no CTRL-F needed.
Your wiki is in Slack, but you need knowledge in Salesforce
...or email, or Intercom, or Asana, or Trello, or GitHub, or Figma, or DocuSign, or Greenhouse, or… well, you get the point. Don’t misunderstand; at Guru, we love Slack. Our product was built from the ground-up to be used in Slack. As a company, we live in Slack, not email. But we don’t, uh, live in Slack. We use all of the apps I just mentioned in our day-to-day work, and all of them require us to look something up pretty frequently (“Wait, what are our brand color hex codes again?” “What are our ROI metrics?” “What was that customer testimonial?”).
Discover how Guru integrates with the tools you need
So while a Slack integration is foundational to what you should be looking for in a knowledge base, you should be looking at wiki solutions that offer native integrations with other programs too. Or look for one with a universal integration, like a browser extension that allows you to access your knowledge from anywhere, on any site.
“Why does this matter?” you might be asking. It turns out that staying in-workflow is the key to productivity. Portal solutions like traditional knowledge management offerings and wikis eventually force you to leave your workflow to consume or update knowledge. Rani Molla, Recode’s Senior Data Reporter, explains:
“After being interrupted, it takes about 25 minutes to get back to the task you were working on, according to a Microsoft study. It can take even longer to get to a ‘flow state,’ alternatively called ‘deep work.’ These terms refer to the concentrated frame of mind you’re in when immersed in a task and time just seems to fly. It’s also when you do your best work. [...] Over time, workplace distractions can metastasize. Many of us try to recoup time by multitasking. But multitasking doesn’t work. Instead of doing one thing well, you’re actually just switching between activities and doing them all poorly.”
Your team deserves better than a traditional internal wiki solution
Knowledge workers are the fastest growing segment of the workforce. If you’re not equipping them with the best way to access the information they need to do their jobs, your company is not going to be able to compete. Access shouldn’t simply mean a place to store knowledge for the sake of documenting it; it should mean being able to find, trust, and use what you need, wherever you need it. Traditional wikis are about storage. Get started with Guru for free and see what a better knowledge solution looks like.
A corporate wiki is a type of knowledge management software: an updatable source of internal company information. They’re versatile and easy to set up, and, unlike even a few years ago, many of them integrate with team communications platforms like Slack or Teams.
And because Guru was founded on the idea of Slack integration, we know why: By adding an internal wiki to your comms platform, you can access your entire knowledge base without interrupting the conversation.
But regardless of their accessibility in those apps, the problem with traditional company wikis remains: they become outdated and difficult to manage as your team grows and your knowledge scales, resulting in declining usage over time. It doesn’t matter if it’s a traditional portal or the newest offering, the fact is that traditional wikis don’t work long-term.
Read on to find out why traditional wikis won’t help you solve fundamental problems with your knowledge.
Most internal wikis don’t fix the major problem with traditional knowledge bases: the accuracy and effectiveness of knowledge
Here’s what happens to content in most internal wikis:
An SME spends a lot of time writing and crafting the perfect page, but after they write, they forget to update it and are never prompted to do so, leading to that knowledge going stale
Those who need the knowledge can’t tell when the wiki was last updated or whether it’s still relevant and lose trust in it
Wiki solutions reward long-form content, which means that even when a user finds the correct page, they may not be able to easily find the specific piece of knowledge they need, teaching them to ignore the wiki and ask the SME directly
The combination of stale knowledge, lack of trust, and difficulty of access leads to a decline in usage, making the entire internal wiki solution a wasted investment
If your wiki has a Slack or Teams integration, you might solve one of those problems: the issue of information usage. But because these solutions lack a way to force SMEs to verify or update existing knowledge, your team may inadvertently start sharing incorrect or out-of-date information. And bad informationcan be worse than no information — especially in customer-facing roles.
Information around your business changes every day: new features get built, new competitors emerge, and new internal processes get created, and it all gets discussed in your comms channels.
We don’t blame you for thinking, Wikis seem simple, so I’ll just grab one that integrates with Slack or Teams and that’ll solve all of my problems?
But here’s why that just creates more headaches down the line.
That may not seem that complex, but consider that each employee works in about 9 apps. Taken together, the number of combinations of apps and people quickly becomes unmanageable for even a single point solution, like a traditional wiki, or a dual point solution, like one that integrates with Slack.
So, how can a wiki for Slack help your team members when they’re not actually using Slack?
Solving your knowledge management problem at every point in your workflow
First, let’s do a tl;dr recap: most wikis with Slack and Teams integrations are still, at heart, traditional solutions, with all of the problems that come with them. That being said, if you’re still considering a wiki app, choose one that has Slack and Teams integrations. Chat integrations do promote consistent use — and staying in-workflow part of the time is still better than none of the time.
But for real-time knowledge everywhere else, don’t stop with a Slack integration.
The problem with traditional wiki content
Most wikis reward knowledge being stored, not necessarily being used. Because they are designed as portals, knowledge in them has to take on a very specific, hierarchical structure. A rigid structure tends to reward longer-form content, which means multiple topics can be grouped together under one heading. By its very nature, this makes knowledge slower and harder to access. Even with a Slack or Teams integration, you may be pulling up articles that are hundreds of words long. That makes it difficult to find what you need quickly, and a chore to update.
In Guru's wiki solution, your knowledge is structured to be used, instead of to be stored (single topic, bite-size), so you can read it quickly, and update it quickly. There’s no CTRL-F needed.
Your wiki is in Slack, but you need knowledge in Salesforce
...or email, or Intercom, or Asana, or Trello, or GitHub, or Figma, or DocuSign, or Greenhouse, or… well, you get the point. Don’t misunderstand; at Guru, we love Slack. Our product was built from the ground-up to be used in Slack. As a company, we live in Slack, not email. But we don’t, uh, live in Slack. We use all of the apps I just mentioned in our day-to-day work, and all of them require us to look something up pretty frequently (“Wait, what are our brand color hex codes again?” “What are our ROI metrics?” “What was that customer testimonial?”).
Discover how Guru integrates with the tools you need
So while a Slack integration is foundational to what you should be looking for in a knowledge base, you should be looking at wiki solutions that offer native integrations with other programs too. Or look for one with a universal integration, like a browser extension that allows you to access your knowledge from anywhere, on any site.
“Why does this matter?” you might be asking. It turns out that staying in-workflow is the key to productivity. Portal solutions like traditional knowledge management offerings and wikis eventually force you to leave your workflow to consume or update knowledge. Rani Molla, Recode’s Senior Data Reporter, explains:
“After being interrupted, it takes about 25 minutes to get back to the task you were working on, according to a Microsoft study. It can take even longer to get to a ‘flow state,’ alternatively called ‘deep work.’ These terms refer to the concentrated frame of mind you’re in when immersed in a task and time just seems to fly. It’s also when you do your best work. [...] Over time, workplace distractions can metastasize. Many of us try to recoup time by multitasking. But multitasking doesn’t work. Instead of doing one thing well, you’re actually just switching between activities and doing them all poorly.”
Your team deserves better than a traditional internal wiki solution
Knowledge workers are the fastest growing segment of the workforce. If you’re not equipping them with the best way to access the information they need to do their jobs, your company is not going to be able to compete. Access shouldn’t simply mean a place to store knowledge for the sake of documenting it; it should mean being able to find, trust, and use what you need, wherever you need it. Traditional wikis are about storage. Get started with Guru for free and see what a better knowledge solution looks like.
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