Cases

Global Strategy Consulting Firm

Coherence Group was retained by a rapidly growing and very successful global strategy consulting firm to design and implement a knowledge management strategy and build a system that would enable the firm to better serve their clients.  This comprehensive project addressed the people, process, content and technology aspects of knowledge management.

Initially, the client firm possessed a minimal knowledge management capability and management was not confident that all of their knoweldge and business insight was being applied in each engagement.  Our team worked with the client to develop a robust vision of how knowledge management would add value to the entire practice.  The Coherence Group team worked around the world to ensure the solution meet the requirements of the consulting staff. The solution included an implementation of a knowledge management system, and delivered the practices, policies, processes, change management and capabilities that the implementation required.

One success factor in the project was that we identified and isolated the most important drivers of  value for the client.  With this insight we were able to ensure that the resulting system would effectively support the most critical business processes in the firm. 

The knowledge management system was launched in 2006 on time and on budget and immediately started to add value.  At the close of the project, the client noted that Coherence Group's extensive experience with professional service firms played an important role in the projects success.

According to the V.P. responsible for the project,  "Coherence Group had a quick understanding of the solution requied in our situation and executed efficiently."

Large Electric Utility

Coherence Group led a project to develop the business case for an Enterprise Architecture framework for one of the largest electric utilities in the US, providing power to 11 million individuals, 427 communities and cities, and 5,000 large businesses.  The solution included an Enterprise Protal (B2B, B2C and B2E), an Identity Management Solution and an EAI framework.

The project included:

• Conceptualization of the future enterprise architecture integrating the portal and security solution with the middleware platform
• Assessment of the current state of the systems and process
• Logical and technical architecture detailing the components of the portal, Identity Management and Enterprise Application Integration solutions
• Development of an alternative solution and its cost benefit analysis
•  Software selection
• Effort estimation for detailed design and a multi-year implmentation
• Building an integrated business case for the Enterprise Architecture comprising the Portal, Indentity Management and Enterprise Application Integration.

The client benefits from this project included:

•  A clearly articulated vision for IT investmetns and resource planning over a multi-year period with 80% confidence level
• Technical feasibility cconfirmation
• Flexible effort estimation model
• Availability of professional product selection experise
• Enterprise Architecture design and business case package created and delivered in an aggressive time frame

 Global "Magic Circle" Law Firm

• Directed a project to train partners to assume a firm management role in addition to their client serving responsibilities.  Created the teaching cases, developed knowledge bases and a collaborative work environment to provide a platform for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Global Engineering, Construction and Project Management Company

• Led a project with one of the world's largest engineering, construction and project management companies to capture and codify knowledge created on project teams working on multi-year engineering and construction jobs. Created the processes and technology infrastructure to rapidly transfer best practices and complex engineering knowledge.
  

Global IT Consulting Firm

• Directed a project to completely redesign and substantially lower the cost of the knowledge, learning, software development methods applications, and the IT infrastructure as part of the post merger integration activities. Selected the technologies, designed and implemented new content repositories and user interfaces.  Standardized the enterprise taxonomy, the intranet's look and feel, and implemented technology architecture standards for intranet applications.  Migrated content from legacy applications and managed user adoption.

Global Management Consulting Firm

• Created the enterprise portal, content and knowledge processes, people management policies, collaboration technologies, technology platform and content management practices, for a global consulting firm with 56,000 employees.  Implementation involved building global and regional communities of practice in industry sectors, service lines and professions.

U.S. Mutual Fund Family

• Led a project to reengineer the fund accounting processes of a $130 Billion mutual fund company.  Analyzed fund accounting practices and workflow.  Recommended changes to streamline the daily processes to calculate the Net Asset Value (NAV), reducing the cycle time by 50%. 

Ernst & Young LLP

• Created Ernst & Young's Center for Business Knowledge (CBK), a global organization that managed business research libraries, fact-based business research analysis, practice experience and knowledge, organizational learning, and knowledgebase development.  Leveraged internal and external information and knowledge sources to accelerate the rate and quality of improvement in E&Y's Audit, Tax and Consulting businesses.

Bain & Company

• Created and managed the firm's business research infrastructure, including the research libraries and knowledge centers globally.  Created the Bain & Company Global Experience Center to codify strategic insight.  Applied information technology and initiated training and seminars to distribute practice knowledge worldwide.   

Large Canadian Provincial Telecom

• Led a project to reengineer the provisioning processes for large business accounts in a Canadian Telecom.  Worked with Union representatives and management to take 45% of the costs out of the work processes, Decreased the cycle time required to respond to client requests, improve order entry systems, and after sales support..  Reduced the cost of order to delivery process and systems by 60%.

Major U.S. Financial Service Company

• Improved sales processes efficiency in a global financial service company by integrating target company information, references, and competitive analysis into Customer Relationship Management Systems.  Redesigned the process for creating and publishing sales collateral.  Implemented a new access framework for finding and aggregating sales materials, and for communicating new offerings and promotions to sales executives.