Case Studies
Empowering Education Experts through a Custom Knowledge Base
About this Client
Large, global philanthropic organization focused on various issues, including supporting higher education in the United States.
Headquarters: United States
Additional offices in several countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
Contacted FireOak to build, administer, and curate a subject-specific knowledge base.
The Client's Situation
This large, global philanthropic organization recognized a critical need within the higher education community: a centralized hub where researchers, administrators, funders, non-profits, and other key stakeholders could easily access and share curated knowledge.
The client sought to address the challenges faced by higher education leaders who were grappling with similar issues but lacked a streamlined way to stay informed about the latest research, trends, and best practices.
By developing and maintaining a curated knowledge base, the client aimed to empower this community to leverage existing knowledge, collaborate more effectively, and drive meaningful change in higher education.
Our Approach
To tackle this challenge, the FireOak team worked closely with the client and several partners to develop a customized, tailored solution that would meet the unique needs of their invitation-only community. Through this engagement, we planned and implemented a custom knowledge base using Salesforce Knowledge, integrated within a dedicated Salesforce Community. This platform would serve as a central repository for high-quality, human-curated blog posts, peer-reviewed articles, news stories, lessons learned, case studies, and other valuable resources related to critical topics in higher education.
Our approach centered around leveraging native Salesforce features while extending the platform’s capabilities through custom components that were designed for this specific community. We prioritized user experience, ensuring that community members could easily find, discover, and re-use knowledge, as well as collaborate with one another. Throughout the development process, we relied heavily on data-driven insights and ongoing feedback from community members to refine the knowledge base architecture, topics, and curation process.
A Unique Approach, Transformative Results
The resulting solution was a custom-built knowledge base seamlessly integrated within a Salesforce Community, tailored specifically for the client’s group of education subject matter experts. By harnessing the power of Salesforce Knowledge and Salesforce Engagement, we delivered a platform that empowered community members to efficiently access and share curated knowledge, fostering collaboration and driving innovation in higher education.
Through our data-driven approach and close collaboration with the client, we identified additional opportunities to optimize the knowledge management process. We implemented custom components and extended the platform’s functionality to address specific member requests and support their evolving needs. These enhancements further streamlined the curation process, improved searchability, and facilitated knowledge discovery and re-use.
The centralized knowledge curation provided by our solution has had a significant impact on the higher education community. Researchers, administrators, and other stakeholders now have quick and easy access to a wealth of curated resources, saving them valuable time and effort. This has enabled them to stay up-to-date with the latest research, uncover relevant case studies, and apply best practices at their own institutions. By fostering knowledge sharing and collaboration, our solution has empowered the community to tackle critical issues in higher education more effectively — and ultimately driving positive change and innovation in the field!
About our clients
FireOak Strategies serves all types of clients, but we specialize in working with nonprofits, private sector companies, international organizations, and higher education.
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Reach out to schedule a time to talk. After we understand what you hope to accomplish and what problems you’re trying to solve, we’ll put together a custom proposal and work with you to get started on your consulting engagement.
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