You’ve decided you need a new knowledge base. So you do what any logical IT manager does: you open a spreadsheet, create a list of features—search, editor, integrations, permissions—and start comparing vendors.
It seems like a sound process. But it’s a trap.
This feature-focused approach is the #1 reason why most knowledge base projects fail. Teams spend months choosing a platform with the longest feature list, only to end up with a powerful, expensive, and completely empty tool that no one uses.
Why? Because they forget that the single most important part of a knowledge base isn’t the software—it’s the knowledge. Let’s redefine what a “must-have” feature really is.
The Old Checklist: Mistaking “Table Stakes” for “Game Changers”
Let’s be clear: certain features are important. A modern knowledge base should absolutely have:
- A decent search function
- A clean interface
- A way to organize content
These are “table stakes”—the minimum requirements to be in the game. But focusing on which platform has a slightly better search or one extra integration is like choosing a car based on the quality of its cupholders. You’re missing the engine.
The hard truth is that all the bells and whistles in the world don’t solve the single biggest problem, the one that causes 90% of knowledge bases to fail: the overwhelming, soul-crushing effort of content creation and maintenance.
The Real Problem: The Content Bottleneck
You buy your shiny new platform, and on day one, you face a blank page. Now the real work begins. Your team has to:
- Spend hundreds of hours writing, editing, and taking screenshots for every common question about Microsoft 365, Slack, Zoom, and every other app your company uses.
- Manually track every software update and immediately revise your documentation the moment an interface changes, otherwise your KB becomes untrustworthy.
- Somehow find time for this on top of their actual jobs of closing tickets, managing infrastructure, and fighting fires.
This is an impossible task. It’s why knowledge bases turn into digital junkyards filled with outdated articles that no one trusts. The problem isn’t the platform; it’s the unsustainable manual effort required to fill it.
The Real “Must-Have”: A Managed Content Library
Instead of asking “What features does it have?”, the most important question you can ask is:
“How does this solution help me solve the content problem?”
This is where the entire model of a knowledge base changes. The single most valuable, game-changing “feature” isn’t a piece of software functionality—it’s a service. It’s having a knowledge base that comes with a pre-written, managed, and automatically updated library of content.
Imagine a knowledge base that, on day one, is already populated with hundreds of clear, professional guides on how to use Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Google Drive, and more. Imagine that when Microsoft updates its interface, all of those guides are updated for you, without your team lifting a finger.
That is what Kandbe does. It’s not just another empty container; it’s a solution to the content bottleneck. This approach delivers benefits that no fancy editor or integration ever could:
- Immediate Value: Your knowledge base is useful and comprehensive from the moment you launch it.
- Massive Time Savings: Your team is freed from writing generic documentation, allowing them to focus on your company’s unique, internal processes. (You can use our free templates for exactly this purpose).
- Permanent Trust: Your employees and users will trust the knowledge base because they know the content is always accurate and up-to-date.
So, by all means, make sure your next tool has good search. But don’t let a long list of minor features distract you from the one thing that will determine whether your knowledge base becomes your team’s most valuable asset or its most expensive failure.
Ready to invest in a knowledge base that actually works?
Stop focusing on empty features. See how Kandbe’s managed content library can deliver a trustworthy, comprehensive knowledge base from day one.