information week hire one

8/6/2019 Information Week Hire One

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rililn i,lATl ilffi[|(GROUPWAREHircOnOnc,Gct'EmAllKPMG PeatMarwickgivcs onsultantscccssto'knowledge asi

HEN KPMG Peat MaT-wick consultants go to aclient's office, they take75,000professionalswiththem. That may sound alitt le cramped, but we're talking invirtual terms.Over the past few years Peat Mar-wick has been crafting a "knowledgebase" that allows its consultants toget a helping hand from their col-leagues around the world. The com-puter system that supports Peat Mar-wick's information access needs iscalled Ihowledge Manager. It letsemployees make use of a vast store ofinformation and experiences about

practically everything associatedwiththe company's accounting and con-sult ing business. DownBig plans: there on the battlefield,Xiitf ; every professional that.1,* \ r - r , stands in f ront of the' ' . . - . - . - . , , c l ient is PeatMarwick, ":(lnlrc'cr rr i saysAllan Frank, a Rad-75,ooo nor, Pa.-basedartner inclllplolccs charge of enabling tech-nologies. "We direct thecombined intellectual assets of thefirm down to a single point."

Focused: PMG eatMaruvick'srank elped irectirm's ssets own o a single oint.At the heart of Ihowledge Manag-er is FirstClass,a groupware systemfrom SoftArc Inc. in Markham. On-tario. Peat Marwick also plans toincorporate Microsoft s forthcomingExchange Server and Internet accesstechnology into l(nowledge Managerto give employees a variefy of ways to

access,present, and sh are informa-tion. FirstClass,which is being rolledou t nationwide, is a client-serverapplication that runs on a Macintoshserver and s upports Mac, Windows,DOS, OS/2,an d Unix clients. A Win-dows-basedserver s currently in betatests.


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The groupware system combineselectronic messaging,private andpublic bulletin boards, databaseaccess, orms processing, nd con-nections o publicnetworks. t usesafile-basedstructure. rather than adatabase rchitecture.ConnectionsoFirstClass erverscan be made viaIPX,AppleTalk,or TCP/IP rotocols.But the technologyprovidesmorethan just a place o house data atPeatMarwick. "It is multiple piecesofinformation linked together withgolden hreads,"saysFrank. We arethe quintessentialknowledgeorgani-zation.We don't sell widgets.We'rethe product."And to say Frank is excited aboutsharing knowledge would be anunderstatement. sk him to define aknowledgebaseand he'll describe tas 'h dynamic organism,""a way tosynchronizeneural patterns," and"planets orbiting around conceptsand ideas."Whatevermetaphor youprefer, it's all about responding toclients asterandbetter.A little over a year ago,PeatMar-wick began aggressivelyolling outFirstClassompanywide.Nearly12000copiesofthe groupwarehave alreadybeen installed and the companydoesn'tplan to stop until all.of itsprofessionals orldwideare using.HelpAt HandFrom their PCs,Macintoshes, rlaptops,consultantscan click on anumber of different folders to gainaccesso hundredsofGbytesofinfor-mation. Folders contain detailedinformation on client experiences,proposals, esum6s,methodologies,bestpractices, endors,demos,andmore. "Help Wanted" is one of thepopular folders on the system.Here,any consultantcanposta request orhelp on a particular projec t. "Peopleusually get feedbackon their ques-tion within an hour," savsFrank."I t

is part of our culture to help eachother."Knowledge Manager was key tohelping John Klaffl


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sulting firm that hasdiscoveredFirst-Class. Booz-Allen & Hamilton hasused t for about three years. First-Class s a low-costgroupware solu-tion that requires ittle or no train-ing," says Paul Lenk, groupwaremanager at Booz-Allen, n Mclean,Va. "We feel it hasgivenus acompet-itive advantage."But Noteshas becomepart of thecorporate abric for other consultingfirms. Price Waterhouse,Coopers&Lybrand, and Andersen Consultingare three of the biggest Notes usersin the country.At Chicago-basedndersen,Notesis the cornerstone fAndersen's(nowl-edge-Xchange,n information man-agementsystem hat allows consul-tants to exchange nd sharedata."We use it to manageknowledgeand leveragepeople,"saysAndersenCIO Charlie Paulk, who remembersthe days at Andersen when everyoneknew everyoneelse n the firm. "Peo-ple knew if they had an insurancequestion they could call me," Paulksays.With 33,000peoplenow work-ing for the company, hat's no longera feasibleoption, he says.Uniuersal etworlrPaulk touts Andersen's globalreach as its competitive advantage."To the best of my knowledge, wehave the largestglobal implementa-tion," he says. Our strategy s to saythat if we havea consultant in KualaLumpur who is talking to a banker,that consultant should have neces-saryknowledgeavailable."Regardless fthe platform the con-sulting firms use, it is clear thatgroupware has become a criticalingredient to the firm's success."Time and intellectual reasonare allthey have to sell, and groupwarehelps everagehose resources," aysColeman. It's absolutely ritical totheir bottom line."Adds Andersen's Paulk, "Clientstoday expect deeper competence.Theywant accesso the experts."Ghangen Gulture'vVhilegroupware has helped con-sultants avoid re-inventing the wheelevery time they get a new client, ithas also changed he corporate cul-ture of the firms. Traditionally, con-sultants were rewarded or their per-sonal contributions and projects.Theyguarded heir data carefully.But using groupwaremeans shar-ing the work and the credit (IW May24, 7994,p. 52)."It's not easy o tryand change the organizational cul-

ture," saysColeman.A lot of group-ware users have a tough time withit."But many of the consulting firmstoday are providing employee ncen-tives and rewards for those whoshare what they know"Peopleused o horde nformation,but now they are recognized or shar-ing," saysLenk.Also,groupwarehas helped flattenthe organization , says Lenk. "Ourfirm is made up of pocketsof exper-tise where everyoneholds a pieceofthe puzzle.The interactivechat fea-ture allows our junior staff to com-municate with senior management.It 's used as an electronic meetingplace.The advantage s that it allowsus to get to the heart of the issues."Peat Marwick hopes to keep acompetitive edge by providing newways to navigate through its vast

repository of information. "We arebuilding an architecture hat is exten-sible,"saysFrank.Key to its future plans will beMicrosoft Exchange,a scalable,NT-basedclient-servermessaging lat-form that will providegroupwareandreplication capabilities.PeatMarwickis currently testing Exchange,whichwill likely take the placeof the Lotuscc:Mail electronic-mail software nowusedat PeatMarwick. "We don't see[cc:Mail] as a long-term strategy,"Frank says.Exchange sn't expected o be com-mercially available until later thisyear,but Frank says he architectureis flexible enough to start planningfor it now.Internet access ools will also bekey to Peat Marwick's future. Aresearch and development team isworking on ways o use HTML hyper-

Teamwork:PMG eat anruickKlaffkyon client yusing nowledgeanager.


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text mark-up language),a formattingand hypertext linking technology, onavigate across Internet databasesand World Wide Web home pages.InualuableccessPeat Marwick users will soon beable to use the MosaicWeb browseras a front-end interfaceto KnowledgeManager.A consultant could open afolder on bestpractices n the trans-portation industry.By double-clickingon the name of

one of the consultantson a project,the user could then get more detailedinformation and open a link to a fold-er that contains information on thatconsultant's ualifications.t's accessto information that is invaluable."The way we view Mosaic andIITMI is it gives users the ability torepresentknowledge n the samewaywe build linkages n our brain," saysFrank."It will point to the samedata-bases irstClass oes.But it wil be ikegoing into a library and not having to

look at an index hierarchically."With FirstClass, Microsoft Ex-change, and Interne t access ools,Peat Marwick consultants will havenumerous wavs to collaborate andshare informition. Says Frank: 'Asknowledge gets placed into theknowledge base, anyone can drinkffom it."And ifall goesas planned or PeatMarwick, there will be a lot of con-surtantsining"p "r rl;,lli|fi,?r,n

Copyrighto 995by CMP Publications, nc.,600 Community rive,Manhasset, Y 11030.Reprintedrom NFORIVIATlONWEEKit hpermission.

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