Developing an Intranet-based Knowledge Management Framework in a Consulting Firm: A Conceptual Model and its Implementation

Management consulting firms are considered typical examples of highly knowledge-intensive companies since they depend heavily on the expertise of their people and the nature of their assignments is knowledge-based. Hence, consulting firms have been in the forefront of thinking about how to manage knowledge However, one of the major knowledge management challenges in any organization is to develop a conceptual model to represent organizational knowledge and to use information technology for its effective implementation that would enhance right information access at right time. This paper reports our experiences in designing and developing a knowledge management framework in Management Consulting Services (MCS) of PricewaterhouseCoopers Ltd. in India (PwC India). This framework is based on a conceptual model where various knowledge sources at the content level interact to realize an integrated knowledge structure. Information technology is used here to realize an Intra-net-based framework that captures organizational structure and procedures and establishes semantic linkages among all the documents. Moreover, the framework supports sharing of informal or tacit knowledge that flows in the organization