Executive Summary
The case “Knowledge Management at Anderson Consulting” takes a broad overview of Anderson’s knowledge management system (Knowledge Xchange) from its initial conception through various stages of growth and finally presents several potential avenues that could be taken to improve the system. Anderson’s knowledge management system was initially created in 1991 as a basic Lotus Notes email system which allowed them to get information into the field quickly, and rapidly expanded into the Xchange system which consists of more than one hundred documents housed throughout the world. Its success was due, in part, to knowledge management being considered a key part of Anderson’s overall business strategy. However, with its rapid growth came several problems: first, information and knowledge overload become a big problem, second, the structure of its knowledge base was becoming increasingly complex, and, finally, returns on their investment into the Xchange system are difficult to determine. So, Mr. Paulk (Anderson’s CIO) and Mr. Ahern (a senior partner) have created four potential options in which the current system can be augmented: first, they could pre-filter the submitted knowledge, second, they could use intelligent agents to search the knowledge, third, they could contextualize documents with a topic summary, and fourth, they could assign project knowledge managers who would write-up knowledge learned from engagements.
Analysis
Andersen Consulting considered Knowledge capital as one of its most valuable assets. It was constantly finding new and efficient ways of sharing and reusing helpful information across the organization. This would allow the firm to enable each client to receive the best thinking of entire firm. However, the task of providing each client with the best of thinking had become increasingly complex. Usage levels were increasing,