KM Systems ― Elements, Advantages and Benefits for Your Firm and Industry Groups

In a nutshell, a knowledge management (KM) system’s key elements and advantages to your firm can include:

• Establishes the company’s intranet as the primary knowledge-sharing platform. Once a firm becomes larger than one or two offices in nearby geographies, an intranet portal is essential to efficiently share knowledge across the entire firm.
• Enables all employees to access the same up-to-date, approved versions of essential documents and work papers, which helps to improve accuracy and efficiency.
• Creates a “one-firm” mentality and culture when all employees are provided easy access to the same internal messaging.
• Promotes the firm’s desired business culture using internal communications enabled by a firmwide intranet platform.

Industry groups, in particular, derive huge benefits by maintaining and using the firm’s intranet platform. Each industry group should have its own industry-specific pages on the firm’s intranet so it can easily share the following types of information, within their group and across the firm:

• Industry knowledge. Each industry group can openly but safely share content to help team members continually improve their industry knowledge – ranging from foundational information about industry business models, industry players and financial drivers, to continually updated industry trends and economic factors that impact clients and prospects.
• Sales and presentation materials. Marketing collateral, proposals or standard proposals, pitch presentations and other marketing tools can be made easily accessible to all on the intranet platform. 
• Deliverables and work papers. Relevant industry-focused work papers, templates, engagement letters and even best-in-class engagement deliverables should be shared on each industry portal. This ensures consistent service methodologies and deliverables across the firm for similar engagements. It also increases efficiency, since professionals can access approved versions of content or methodologies and no one has to recreate the wheel by starting from scratch.