Knowledge base, wiki, or AI assistant: what cuts repetitive questions to accounting?

A knowledge base on the same portal where employees order accounting services, plus an AI assistant that answers from that knowledge base. The employee looks for the answer in the same place they would order a letter: they either find an article, on their own or with the AI assistant's help, or pick a service in the catalog right away. How to choose questions for articles and keep them up to date is covered in the answer on reducing repetitive employee questions to accounting.

What the options are

The options differ in where the answer lives relative to where the employee contacts accounting.

• Email blasts, memos, and pinned messages in chats. They take minutes to publish, but a week later the memo is buried in the inbox, and the question goes back to the accountant.
• A shared folder with instructions or a section on the intranet. The answers are collected, but they aren't where the employee asks the question. Employees forget about them, and the accountant replies with a link to the file.
• A separate knowledge base or corporate wiki. The answers are collected and organized, but the employee orders a letter in one place and looks for answers in another.
• Articles and services on one portal: enterprise service management (ESM) platforms, such as SimpleOne ESM. Accounting articles sit next to accounting services on the portal that other departments also use.
• An AI assistant over the knowledge base. The employee asks in their own words, and the assistant finds the answer in the articles and summarizes it. It answers only as accurately as the articles are up to date. If the assistant works separately from the portal, the employee still has to look for where to order the service after getting an answer.

When the articles are in order, an assistant takes a large share of the load. At ITG Corporation, employees search corporate documentation through an AI chatbot, and about 95% of information requests are closed automatically.

What to look for in accounting

• The article and the service sit side by side. If the answer and the request form are in different systems, the employee will choose the familiar route and write to the accountant. When the article "How to file an expense report" and the service "Submit an expense report" are next to each other, the employee either finds the answer or submits the report right there.
• A path from the article to action. Check whether you can go from an article straight to the right service instead of looking for the form again.
• The AI assistant answers from your knowledge base and leads to a service. Check whether the assistant answers from your accounting articles with links to the sources. And check what it does when the articles have no answer: offers a service from the catalog or a request, or leaves the employee with the question.

How to choose a system for accounting requests themselves, such as letters, expense reports, and questions about pay and deductions, is covered in the answer on software for employee requests to accounting.

How it works in SimpleOne ESM

SimpleOne ESM is a set of SimpleOne platform tools for managing internal services. Knowledge base articles and the accounting service catalog are on one portal, and an article can be linked to an accounting service. How the knowledge base works is described in the SimpleOne ESM documentation.

If the company already uses SimpleOne ITSM, the IT service management system, accounting articles and services appear on the same portal where employees submit IT requests and track their status. The SimpleOne ITSM AI assistant can work on this portal. It works through the integration with SimpleOne Ainergy, is configured separately, and:

• searches for answers in articles and announcements;
• briefly summarizes what it found, with links to the sources;
• if the employee needs a service, suggests the right one from the catalog and helps fill in the form.