Old article but still true...

I came across an article from the Financial Times from 8/11/1999: "Lessons from professional services firms" by Laura Empson. I didnt see the date first but when I saw that Anderson consulting was referred to as a model for others I had to check the date...

However there is some very simple and good thruth in the article where it talks about KM in professional service firms:

In accredited professions like engineering and architecture, all members share a common body of codified knowledge acquired through professional training. A large part of their competitive advantage, therefore, derives from possessing a unique base of expertise.

Traditionally, professional services firms have been regarded as organisations of highly trained, extremely clever technical specialists, who apply their esoteric knowledge to the creation of innovative and sophisticated solutions of clients' complex problems. It is certainly true that some firms operate successfully in this way. However, in reality there are not that many extremely clever people to go round and most clients' problems are not that sophisticated.

As a result, most highly expert professional services firms remain small and specialised "boutiques". Firms such as McKinsey would like us to believe that they are exceptions to this rule. But such claims should always be treated with caution.

A professional services firm wishing to grow large must learn to codify the esoteric and tacit knowledge accumulated within experienced staff and disseminate this throughout its organisational structure. If this knowledge can be expressed in terms of established procedures and applied to a wide range of client problems, the potential for leverage increases. Codification relaxes some of the more stringent constraints of the apprenticeship model of knowledge transfer. Increasing the number of juniors supervised by a senior professional increases the degree of leverage and, therefore, profitability.

Another thing that would interest me is how these figures look today or if they have changed significantly over the last 5 years:

According to statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the professional services sector accounts for 17 per cent of all employment in the US and major western European countries. The sector has enjoyed annual growth of 15 per cent in revenue terms over recent years. PwC, the accountancy firm for example, is now the single largest recruiter from UK universities. With 155,000 professional staff worldwide and annual revenues of $15bn, PwC, if publicly quoted, would qualify as a Fortune 100 company.