The main objectives of this Case Study is sharing and reusing knowledge within a large, globally distributed consultancy, and identifying the right person for a task or to provide specific expertise.  Such a person could be identified from anywhere in the worldwide pool of Accenture consultants. Initially the users will be 30,000 consultants worldwide, with a potential to expand to Accenture’s 150,000 employees.

The data consists of Word, excel, powerpoint, pdf, text and html files.These files typically contain text, images, analytical models, organisation charts, and flow diagrams. The system will be based on: SQL server, IIS web server, FAST search engine, Flex RIA front-end.

The support organization will be the research team in Accenture (based in France) who will participate in ACTIVE project.  This team has already developed the knowledge sharing system described above. In common with most consultancies, improving the internal knowledge management system of Accenture has been identified as a high priority.  ACTIVE has the support of both the CTO and CIO of Accenture.

Consultants are highly motivated to reuse knowledge in order to avoid the cost of reinvention and in order to meet deadlines. Accenture consultants work under very significant time pressures.  The system must have low barriers to initial use, plus clear user benefits.

Accenture’s work with customers, e.g. through the Innovation Workshops mentioned above, will be a major dissemination opportunity for the ACTIVE project.  Accenture’s presence worldwide will provide a global reach to the project’s dissemination activities.  In particular Accenture’s R&D labs are located within three continents: North America, Asia (India) as well as Europe.  Within Europe, the R&D labs are located within France, and this will enable French-language dissemination activities, to complement the work of other ACTIVE partners in other parts of Europe.

The current Accenture knowledge sharing system employs social computing, one of the pillars of the ACTIVE project.  Work on social computing within ACTIVE will extend this aspect of the Accenture system.  Work on formal semantics will further extend the system’s capabilities by enabling reasoning over the informal metadata created by social computing.  ACTIVE’s context pillar will enable a more targetted and prioritised delivery of knowledge, both within the Accenture knowledge sharing system and within the  other knowledge productivity tools used by ACTIVE consultants.  ACTIVE’s process pillar will both enhance the understanding of context as well as enable the improvement of knowledge workers productivity within their particular informal processes.