Microsoft Office System Customer Solution Case Study

Professional Services Firm Maximizes Knowledge Sharing with Collaborative Intranet

Overview Country or Region: United States Industry: Professional services—Management services Customer Profile With roughly 350 employees and 13 officesin five countries, Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership is a lead-ing consulting firm that combines deep industry knowledge with specialized expertise in organizational transformation and leadership development.

Business Situation The firm’s intellectual property was previously split among several disparate intranet systems, which inhibited know-ledge access, sharing, and reuse. Solution Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership established a cohesive intranet using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, enabling collaborative content devel-opment, information reuse, and enterprise search. Benefits

Improved workforce productivity and collaboration

Better business efficiency Enhanced knowledge management and security

“Using Office SharePoint Server 2007 and other Microsoft technologies, we are now able to focus on our content instead of the software tools to manage it.” Bill Leo, Director and Chief Information Officer, Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership

Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership, a global

consulting firm, has intellectual property that was previously

dispersed among multiple hard-to-access intranet systems.

Consequently, the firm’s consultants and business users had

difficulty finding and using information for new business proposals

and client projects. In fact, they often were forced to re-create what

already existed. To improve information access, sharing, and reuse,

Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership established a

cohesive intranet using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007.

The easy-to-use intranet facilitates collaborative content

development, information reuse, and enterprise search, and has

improved the productivity of, and collaboration among, the

workforce. The solution has also created new business efficiencies

and advanced the firm’s knowledge management and security

capabilities.

Situation As a leading consulting firm, Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership combines deep industry knowledge with specialized expertise in organizational transformation and leadership development. A staff of 350 can be found in and around 13 cities in five countries worldwide, splitting time between the firm’s offices and customer sites. To stay competitive, its consultants must be able to quickly develop new business proposals, assemble project teams, and deliver best practice services to its clients. “We have consultants spread around the world,” says Bill Leo, Director and Chief Information Officer of Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership. “It can be difficult keeping everything and everyone connected.” In addition to supporting a widespread and largely mobile workforce, the firm struggled to harness and maximize its intellectual prop-erty. While the content for each of its client projects is customized, the core knowledge is proprietary to the firm. The ability to access and use the latest versions of intellectual content, which evolves with time and experience, frees the firm’s consultants to dedicate more time and energy to serving client needs and creating new knowledge capital. “We’re always seeking to make the most of our enterprise knowledge base, while meticulously guarding confidential client information,” says Leo. “By improving the use of our content and best practices, we can enhance our business agility and bring our full intellectual muscle to each client project.” Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership’s intellectual property was previously spread among multiple knowledge-management repositories and accessed via several intranets built on IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino software. The intranets

were specific to business function and dedicated to marketing, finance, human resources, and information technology (IT) teams. Consultants and business users would submit documentation related to proposals, client work, and research to multiple individuals. These administrators, dedicated to knowledge-management tasks, would vet and post the information to the most appropriate intranet. The firm’s intellectual property was therefore split among data repositories and intranet sites, which limited access, sharing, and reuse. Newly acquired companies brought with them their own knowledge management systems that had to be integrated with already disparate systems, further fragment-ing the firm’s knowledge base. Moreover, the software tools used to retrieve information had been customized to the point where they were difficult to learn and operate. “Our data was in various locations and there was no consistency. Also, the Lotus products were difficult to manage for our IT team and cumbersome to use for our consultants, especially those operating at customer sites,” says Leo. “Needless to say, we weren’t taking full advantage of our information resources, and it was clear we needed to revamp our knowledge environment.” Solution To improve intellectual property access, sharing, and reuse, Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership created the Knowledge and Insight Marketplace, better known as KIM. Built using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.0, KIM is a cohesive intranet for use by all employees, from consultants and business users to admini-strative representatives and executives. It ties into back-end data repositories using Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database

“We are no longer re-creating the wheel every time we generate a proposal or engage in a client delivery project. Our consultants can tap the historical knowledge of the entire firm.” Bill Leo, Director and Chief Information

Officer, Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization &

Leadership

software and replaces the firm’s former Lotus Domino–based intranet solutions. Employees access KIM through a Web browser or a direct link found in the firm’s Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client software, which has replaced its Lotus Notes program. Users can retrieve and search for information using key words or several general categories, including pitch library, tools and models, marketing materials, client deliverables, and content offerings. Instead of sending content to multiple knowledge-management administrators, employees now post intellectual property to the firm’s knowledge base themselves. Using KIM, they fill out an online form that indicates whether the documentation is considered “best practice” or “client confidential.” Best practices are automatically made available to all users via KIM’s search engine, while client-confidential information is limited to those with authorization, such as the associated project team.

To facilitate and ease the document upload process for users, KIM employs Office SharePoint Server 2007 templates that make it simple to create, edit, and link an individual Web page. Also, the firm is taking advantage of the blog capabilities of Windows® Share-Point Services 3.0 to share interesting articles and highlight newly created intellec-tual property and uploaded documentation. Benefits Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership’s new Knowledge and Insight Marketplace enables collaborative content development, information reuse, and enter-prise search. In doing so, it has improved the productivity of, and collaboration among, consultants and business users, created new business efficiencies, and enhanced the firm’s knowledge-management and security capabilities. Improved Productivity and Collaboration Because KIM provides a single Office SharePoint Server–based repository for all of the firm’s intellectual property, employees are now much more productive. Consultants and business users spend less time searching for best practice content and don’t waste time developing materials that already exist. Instead, they are able to focus on specific client project requirements and new business initiatives. “We are no longer re-creating the wheel every time we generate a proposal or engage in a client delivery project,” says Leo. “Our consultants can tap the historical knowledge of the entire firm to deliver exceptional service and dedicate themselves to the unique needs of each client.” KIM is also extremely easy to access and use. Whereas the firm’s former intranets were difficult to access—especially for consultants stationed at customer sites—KIM can be used

Figure 1. Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership’s Knowledge and Insight Marketplace (KIM) can be used from any Web browser or through Office Outlook 2003 desktop software.

from any Web browser or through Office Outlook 2003 software on each desktop. According to firm leaders, the solution’s accessibility and ease of use have fostered participation and collaboration among the firm’s workforce. “KIM looks and feels more like an interactive Web site than a database, and our users have quickly figured out how to access information and contribute to the knowledge base,” says Christina Mott, Director of the firm’s Solution Development Team. “We have put the technology in the hands of our knowledge workers and enabled them to access, create, and share intellectual property. They’ve really embraced it, and our workforce is collaborating more than ever before.” Better Business Efficiency Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership has also realized several busi-ness efficiencies with KIM. Because it is just as easy for consultants and business users to upload newly acquired knowledge and con-tent directly to KIM as it is to e-mail this information to someone, there is no longer a need for dedicated knowledge-management administrators. The firm has redirected those individuals to other projects to reduce knowledge-management administration costs. The initial training burden for new employees has also reduced. “Frankly, we don’t have to train people how to use KIM. It is remarkably intuitive, and our users immediately under-stand how to search, browse, and upload information,” says Mott. “We do, however, point new employees to specific areas in KIM so that they can get immersed in the knowl-edge and insights that make us unique.”

Enhanced Knowledge Management and Security Because its intellectual property is no longer splintered among several intranet systems, Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership has been able to enhance its knowledge-management capabilities. “Now that our intellectual property is better integrated and more accessible, we’re learning new ways to take advantage of it,” says Mott. “Office SharePoint Server 2007 is very flexible and will allow us to fine-tune KIM over time to maximize our information resources.” The firm is currently taking advantage of Office SharePoint Server 2007 reporting capabilities to evaluate which documents are uploaded and accessed more than others. This will enable continual refinement of the search and information delivery features of KIM. In addition to providing advanced knowledge-management capabilities, the solution has bolstered the firm’s information security. Although intellectual property is more accessible than in the past, documents labeled “confidential” upon upload are visible only to authorized users. This helps protect sensitive information and reduces the risk of accidentally misusing it. “Using Office SharePoint Server 2007 and other Microsoft technologies, we are now able to focus on our content instead of the software tools to manage it,” says Leo. “We’re producing better proposals, our workforce is more efficient, and the collaborative use of our intellectual property has had an impact on our consultants’ productivity.”

“Now that our intellectual property is better integrated and more accessible, we’re learning new ways to take advantage of it.” Christina Mott, Director, Solution

Development Team, Oliver Wyman – Delta

Organization & Leadership

Microsoft Office System The Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact. For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to: www.microsoft.com/office

For More Information For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com For more information about Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization & Leadership products and services, call (866) 909-8239 or visit the Web site at: www.oliverwyman.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published July 2008

Software and Services

Microsoft Office System − Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 − Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

2007 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio − Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Technologies − Microsoft .NET Framework − Windows SharePoint Services