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Connecting Our Consultants The Challenge
We have an ongoing requirement for sharing key information and knowledge among our consultants across all of our offices nationwide. In the past, distribution of reference information, such as consulting best practices, key events, internal education offerings and client reference, was time consuming and often a manual process. We often experienced significant time delays for updating and receiving the most current version of practice manuals. In such a disconnected environment, it was difficult for geographically dispersed consultants to share knowledge and provide consistent solutions to their clients. The Solution
Our Integrated Technology Solutions group in cooperation with the Firmwide Technology Infrastructure Group built and implemented a suite of more than 20 integrated Lotus Notes databases nationwide. We built a Consulting Services Navigator application to provide an easy and consistent method for individual consultants to locate information of interest. We designed it to divide the applications into key groupings that allow for flexible growth and future applications. The navigator further subdivides the knowledge by individual consulting areas to more closely pinpoint information that is vital to each of the organization's specific consulting practices. The Benefits
Our consultants now have a single starting point for referencing all of the consulting services databases. The navigator application helps lead individuals to the information they require, without having to search and find the correct database. In addition, our consultants receive frequent updates through document links to corporate newsletters and "What's New" for each of the consulting practices. The new system provides a uniform user interface and navigation method across all individual databases to ensure the consultants have a consistent and easy method for finding and sharing consulting services knowledge. The system electronically connects the entire organization, regardless of the physical location, and provides the following features: - Access to the most current version of key information
- Remote access to databases
- Full security to ensure only appropriate access to data
- Capability of discussing and contributing to a repository of best practice knowledge
- Streamlined distribution of consulting materials
- Dramatically reduced hard copies materials
- Single point of entry for fast location of information in any of the integrated databases
The Details
The EMS system includes 40+ databases. The system resides on two internally accessed, centralized R5 servers. We currently store client data on a separate engagement server to allow for specialized care of client data (i.e. more frequent backups, security, archiving, etc.) We use an integration server to pull client information (to avoid the duplication of data and ensure accuracy) and time and billing hours summaries to allow for financial reporting. We built an archive system to keep the data stores clean and performing in a efficient manner. We back up client data nightly, and, each year, we archive a completed engagement out of active databases. A subset of this data remains available for reporting purposes.
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