A Recipe for Success is an e-business consultancy offering project-based business services for organisations looking to develop an e-commerce strategy. The company is expanding rapidly. Over the next three years staff are expected to increase at a rate of 300% per year. These people are employed for their specialist skills and expertise, which means that they are often not available in the locality of the firm's offices. The question, then, is how to keep everyone, consultants and customers, firmly in touch?

A website, part public, part private, has provided the link in the shape of an on-line knowledge management system that enables staff and customers to share information and communicate over a distance (www.arfs.co.uk). As a result, A Recipe for Success can deal flexibly with people's location: for example, more than 90% of current team members are working remotely from Edinburgh to Wiltshire.

The driving principle behind the design of the website has been keen to keep it people-focused. Various types of information are stored on the system from securely-controlled documents to "tips and hints." They are arranged in hierarchically so that only the right people see the right data. The system, costing only about £10,000, has also dramatically enhanced the kind of service the company offers to its customers. For example, customers are able to access comprehensive, consistent and up-to-date information about work being carried out.

The main public website, which has been on-line for about a year, has some 2,000 visitors a month. Feedback is encouraged while comments and suggestions for improvements are leading to future plans including videoconferencing.