Knowledge Banks
What’s a Knowledge bank?
Knowledge Banks are a secure web-based informative portals, providing practical information that’s readily accessible anytime, anywhere for your travellers. It can include local and national intelligence for any country or operational location – be they your own sites, regular clients, suppliers or other places your staff travel to.
Knowledge Banks are built to your requirements and are designed to provide advice and data to the traveller that they would otherwise have to ‘Google’, ask a colleague or ‘wing it’. The content increases traveller awareness of local transportation, airports, hotels, taxis and places to eat. In addition it can also include documentation, local health needs, cultural considerations, driving advice and anything else the business or traveller requires.
Your Knowledge Bank is not a travel booking site – that is provided by your TMC or internal resource. This is more about local and national knowledge to make the trip safer, slicker and more productive.
How would we start?
The best way to think about a Knowledge Bank is something that will grow and develop overtime. Ideally we’d love to build you a global site but, more realistically it might be better to build your top five destinations or top ten countries. You probably have some information already and this will form a good start point. We can also liaise with supplier or operation sites and get them to complete some of the data for us. The great thing about a Knowledge Bank is that is will get better and better the more it’s used ‘fed’ with new information.
How do we keep it up to date?
There are two ways.
Option 1. Our own researchers. Sites can be updated on a monthly or quarterly basis from our own work or from feedback from your travellers. We update the sites and keep the information refreshed as required.
Option 2. We provide the site with its own ‘trip advisor’ type forum where travellers can leave comments, feedback and advice based on their own travels. Airlines, hotels, taxi firms and anything else can be graded by your employees and factored into our own work. Credible and relevant information can be gathered and distributed thus benefitting every employee who cares to use it.
What are the benefits?
- Populated with accurate, relevant information
- Easily accessible at the user’s convenience
- Smartphone compatible
- Motivates compliance with integrated policy documents
- Reduce costs from expenses claims
- Reduce company carbon footprint
Accurate information is integral to our Knowledge Banks. Employees have easy access to this information on a need basis and at a time convenient to them, allowing them to absorb relevant knowledge to keep themselves safe on company business.
When you buy one of our custom Knowledge Banks, they are also built to host and highlight any specific policies that your company may have. Staff who have accessed one of our sites will thus demonstrate increased compliance with your own policies, as well as being exposed to more general advice and information.
A Planet Wise Knowledge Bank can also benefit the employer by reducing costs, for example delivering information about reliable public transport as opposed to using taxis, and increasing compliance with environmental legislation by highlighting more efficient travel routes for staff to reduce the company’s carbon footprint.
Where is it hosted?
There are two methods of hosting – either we host it at Planet Wise and charge you an annual fee or, it sits on your intranet. If we host then regular updates and maintenance can be undertaken and managed by us. It also has the added benefit of bypassing your IT department and any security issues. Alternatively, we can build the site for you then hand it over to be hosted on your intranet. This negates the need to pay us hosting by raises challenges of how we access the site to keep it updated.
Why Information Matters?
A relatively small amount of knowledge can go a long way towards keeping a person safe during business travel. When employees are experienced, confident or visiting ‘safe’ countries, their journeys may be considered low-risk. This does not mean that it is good practice for business travellers in such situations to depart unprepared, however.
At Planet Wise, we believe it is precisely because any problems that may occur during low-risk travel are usually extremely avoidable that these incidents can be the most frustrating and upsetting. Failing to have all of the correct travel documents, being fined for violating local rules of the road, or having your wallet taken by a pickpocket can ruin a trip to an otherwise perfectly safe destination. Having access to a Planet Wise Knowledge Bank either prior to departure or on a portable device gives travellers simple, sensible measures they can take to minimise the risks of suffering such inconveniences.
Two current Planet Wise Knowledge Banks: doing Business in… (L) and the E.ON International Travel Portal (R).
A Planet Wise Knowledge Bank can also benefit the employer by reducing costs, for example delivering information about reliable public transport as opposed to using taxis, and increasing compliance with environmental legislation by highlighting more efficient travel routes for staff to reduce the company’s carbon footprint.
