Most times when a marketer like me touts the benefits of a knowledge base, we focus on the customer service benefits.  While those are plentiful, today I want to share a story that exposes the internal benefits of having a well-populated knowledge base.

Back in the day, Cynthina Heinsohn, developer extraordinaire, and I worked in an Exxon Exploration Planning group.  Among our various semi-regular responsibilities, the Planning group prepared our division management team (the Exxon way) to weather senior executive reviews of our division's operational activity and investment portfolio (and our division budget encompassed $100s of millions).

For each review, our group's preparation involved undertaking a mountain of analysis, generating a plethora of reports, and then building two to three back-up books filled with the results, with each binder book being about about three to four inches thick.  And this happened two to three times per year...