ABSTRACT
The large consulting firms are usually long established and highly experienced companies with vast reservoirs of industry knowledge. This experience and knowledge sits in the heads of the personnel staffed to deliver projects, but also in tools, methodologies and spreadsheets kept in the consulting firm's libraries and intranet. In the case of a management consultancy, deep technical knowledge could mean deep knowledge of an industry sector, or in the case of systems integrators or technical consultancies in deep product technical knowledge. In the case of the latter, the systems integrator will ordinarily have strong experience and knowledge in its staff that enables it to address a certain implementation or similar technical challenge, but it may also have an extensive portfolio of intellectual property, which could include codes, adaptors or fixes that can be extremely valuable. All companies are resource constrained and during times of expansion or cost-cutting find that key resources and management time are scarce.
