Knowledge management in consulting firms

The integration of workflows has obvious advantages: a portal can not only provide access to a form for a vacation request but also allow the consultant to fill in the form and transfer it to the responsible department electronically.

34.4 Sharing knowledge with clients

Sharing knowledge with clients4 is increasingly regarded as one of the main purposes of consulting and other professional services (see Chapters 1 and 3). However, declaring that knowledge-sharing with clients is the firm’s policy is not enough for practical purposes. Knowledge-sharing is not automatic and can be hampered by inappropriate attitudes and work methods. Consultants working on client assignments will need their firms’ guidance and technical support on questions such as:

●whether they are free to choose what knowledge to share during assignments;

●what knowledge is to be treated as the firm’s trade secret (see Appendix 5) or as confidential and is thus not to be shared with anyone without the prior approval of the consulting firm’s management;

●who in the firm will answer questions on knowledge transfer and sharing, and provide guidance;

●what knowledge-sharing will be regarded as an integral part of an assignment workplan and contract;

●how much time consultants should allocate to knowledge-sharing and what methods they should use;

●how to handle intellectual property issues when transferring knowledge to clients or creating new knowledge jointly with clients (Appendix 5).

Knowledge-sharing must not be hampered by bureacratic procedures, and experienced consultants will usually be able to decide how to proceed when working with particular clients. However, knowledge-sharing is an attitude and a skill, and some consultants – especially in small or medium-sized firms – may need encouragement and guidance to be more effective at it (box 34.1).

Furthermore, many consulting companies have started to disseminate and share knowledge with their whole clientele or with the general business public. This is sometimes done in traditional ways, through papers, articles, books, conferences, newsletters and similar. Some companies, however, offer access to certain parts of their knowledge base, either via the Internet or through specially designed extranets. A well-designed knowledge base and an authorization model are fundamental to this business model. “Pay per view” priced content is already used as an additional way to exploit internal knowledge externally. In addition to allowing knowledge to be shared, these approaches arouse interest in the firm and demonstrate the firm’s continued support to existing clients.

All these initiatives have their costs and need to be monitored and coordinated. Quality and respect for users are critical. Some consultants have posted trivial,

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Box 34.1 Checklist for applying knowledge management in a small or medium-sized consulting firm

1.Discuss the KM challenge with partners. Choose one partner as KM officer, manager or coordinator (not to act in directive manner, but as driving force, coordinator and adviser behind the KM effort). KM needs to be recognized and started as a meaningful activity, important to the future of the firm. Inform all colleagues.

2.Define key areas of KM interest – these should be 4–7 key strategic practice and competency areas where the firm is active and that it wants to improve and develop. Include information on clients and their needs and pursue knowledge-sharing with clients as a strategic objective.

3.Appoint 1–2 partners responsible for KM in each area in addition to doing client work and promotion.

4.Define the objectives of KM for each area (becoming market leader, offering new services, catching up with competition, improving quality, etc.) related to business and firm strategy objectives and client needs and requirements.

5.Define key terms for the KM effort in each area.

6.Define and organize a database, including: project (assignment) profiles, presentations, literature, reference works, key periodicals, Web links, directories, internal expertise, external experts, other sources, etc.).

7.Choose software adequate to coverage, objectives, volume and resources; provide facilities for internal communication and knowledge-sharing.

8.Develop a competency profile for each partner and consultant in chosen key areas, e.g. rating knowledge of each in each area as basic, good, or expert.

9.Define individual development targets by area (becoming a top expert, keeping up to date, acquiring basic knowledge, ignoring the area, etc.). Link KM with individual development efforts.

10.Define with partners and all consultants their individual roles and responsibilities for making inputs in the database and generally contributing to KM.

11.Make sure that all consultants have direct and easy access to the system wherever they are and that their time is not wasted on lengthy searches for relevant knowledge or by circulating trivial and irrelevant information to them.

12.Focus the whole effort on the future; from existing (older or recent) documents and sources include only essential know-how and sources that will remain important in the future.

13.Among completed projects (client contracts) focus on those that were important, that offer a lot of learning, that were in prospective markets, that could be easily replicated to save time, where the firm could develop its own internal standard, etc.

14.Do not produce documents and files for their own sake; be selective and rational.

15.Organize regular knowledge-sharing events offering significant learning – on important current or completed projects, outcome of conferences, new legislation and business trends, new consulting opportunities – always sticking to the key areas of business.

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16.Circulate only a minimum of information to all or most consultants, but make sure that they do get the information they need.

17.Circulate and exchange some well-selected information and tips of wider professional and intellectual interest beyond the defined areas of business (on issues such as ethics, conflict of interest, new trends in business and management, new “fads” and the firm´s view on them, etc.).

18.Discuss from time to time the functioning and effectiveness of your system at partner meetings and with other consultants and make corrective measures. Flexibility and adaptability are essential. Make sure that the system does not stagnate.

Authors: Klaus North and Milan Kubr.

obsolete, self-laudatory or negligently prepared information and technical papers on their Web sites, at times making promises that are never met. Clients who see this are unlikely to take the consultant’s statements about knowledgesharing seriously.

1M. T. Hansen et al.: “What’s your strategy for managing knowledge?”, in Harvard Business Review, Mar.–Apr. 1999, pp. 106–116.

2T. H. Davenport and L. Prusak: Working knowledge (Boston, MA, HBS Press, 1998).

3M. T. Hansen and B. von Oetinger: “Introducing T-shaped managers – knowledge management’s next generation”, in Harvard Business Review, Mar. 2001, pp.106–116.

4See also R. Dawson: Developing knowledge-based client relationships: The future of professional services (Boston, MA, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000).

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