Sales department knowledge base
Scattered files from a shared drive consolidated into a checkable knowledge base — with an explicit line between what's confirmed and what's guessed.
- A salesperson finds the answer in the base instead of asking a colleague
- Only what an internal document confirms makes it into an article
- A source register shows where every statement came from
The problem
The sales department's knowledge lived in people's heads and in shared-drive folders: dozens of documents of varying freshness, some contradicting each other. A new hire spends weeks working out which file is still current.
How it works
First a register of sources: what exists at all and what can be trusted. Then draft articles shaped to the structure of the work tracker the base ultimately moves into. A hard rule: an article carries only what an internal document confirms, and everything else goes into a separate list of clarifying questions for the process owners.
The hard part
The temptation to fill gaps with plausible prose is unusually strong here: a coherent article reads better than one with holes. But a knowledge base with an invented paragraph is worse than none — people believe it. So the gaps stayed gaps and became a question list, and everything gathered is honestly marked as a draft pending the process owner's review.
Evidence
- The source register was compiled before any article was written
- Unconfirmed material went into a separate question list rather than being written in
- The whole package is marked draft until process owners verify it