BrightStarr White Paper - Top Ten Benefits of Portal Technology

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THE TOP TEN BENEFITS OF PORTAL

TECHNOLOGY

Will Saville

WHITE PAPER

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Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................ 2

Business Challenge ................................................................................................................................................. 3

Enterprise Content Management ........................................................................................................................... 4

Business Process Management .............................................................................................................................. 4

Collaboration .......................................................................................................................................................... 4

Employee Engagement ........................................................................................................................................... 5

Carbon Footprint .................................................................................................................................................... 5

Knowledge Management ....................................................................................................................................... 5

Business Intelligence .............................................................................................................................................. 5

Information Discoverability .................................................................................................................................... 6

Portal Framework ................................................................................................................................................... 6

Customer Engagement ........................................................................................................................................... 6

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Executive Summary Portals are very much on the minds of business and government leaders. According to Gartner, enterprise

portals are on CIOs’ lists of top ten technology focus areas.

Forrester Research reports strong growth in portal development and usage, especially in financial services,

retail and government.

Successful businesses are those that can provide timely information to employees through technology so they

can deliver an excellent, branded experience at every customer touch point.

Whilst portal technology is not a silver bullet, it can become the conduit for communication and information

flow across an organization. This paper identifies the ten most important benefits that an investment in a

portal initiative can bring to an organization.

1. Enterprise content management

2. Business process management

3. Collaboration

4. Employee engagement

5. Carbon footprint

6. Knowledge management

7. Business intelligence

8. Information Discoverability

9. Portal framework

10. Customer engagement

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Business Challenge In June 2008

1Harvard Business Review conducted a study to identify the seventeen fundamental traits of

organizational effectiveness. The survey comprised of 26,000 people in 31 companies. Amongst the results of

the study were five key traits that centered on information and communication. These were as follows:

Important information about the competitive environment gets to headquarters quickly (Ranked - 2)

Information flows freely across organizational boundaries (Ranked - 4)

Field and line employees usually have the information they need to understand the bottom-line

impact of their day to day choices (Ranked - 5)

Line managers have access to the metrics they need to measure the key drivers of their business

(Ranked - 6)

Conflicting messages are rarely sent to the market (Ranked - 8)

Overall, information mattered most for successful strategy execution. As outlined in the study “when

information does not flow horizontally across different parts of the company, units behave like silos,

forfeiting economies of scale and the transfer of best practice. Moreover, the organization as a whole

loses its opportunity to develop a cadre of up and coming managers well versed in all aspects of the

company’s operations. “

The following sections of this document highlight the top ten benefits of investing in a portal technology as

identified by the author of this paper.

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Enterprise Content Management Within many organizations there is a wide array of knowledge which has often grown over a period of many

years. This knowledge comes in many forms such as documents, briefs, proposals to presentations and policies

and is often managed in very different ways by different people. A need for enterprise content management

commonly arises when multiple versions of key information exist in different locations and when information

cannot be found and shared across the organization. Portals provide a platform for storing content in a central

location and enable information to be managed in a consistent manner.

Traditionally, organizations have stored their IP on a machine basis – local hard drive, local server, shared

server – allowing users to create folders within folders and applying very little control or governance over the

location, classification or structure of the files in an enterprise context. ECM attempts to address this issue. It

reflects best practices and organizational processes by applying organization-specific classification to all files,

allowing them to be made easily available to all accredited personnel wherever the author or user resides.

Without the ability for Information Workers to find information that is accurate and relevant to them, there is

potential for major process inefficiencies – and cost.

Business Process Management Business processes are a set of activities that require completion to achieve a specific business task.

Automating these processes using software applications has been heavily discussed over the years and early

attempts at reflecting real life processes were fraught with failure. However, this technology is now generally

considered to have come of age. It is now possible and practical to use systems which both reflect and improve

on current organizational practices across the enterprise. A simple form residing on a web page may be

completed and submitted by the user and this alerts colleagues and co-workers using email to complete the

process or move it on to the next process stage. More complex workflows with multiple parallel processes can

be accommodated relatively easily, all designed to simplify working practices.

Collaboration A key part of an organization’s strategy is working with teams and individuals to achieve common goals.

Portals provide tools to facilitate effective collaboration with the use of wikis, blogs, directory systems,

calendars, forums, video conferencing and project management systems.

Through the use of social media and social networking tools, users are able to review, discuss and manage

information. A portal can become a platform for information and knowledge sharing, which leads to

continuous improvement, implementation and adoption of best practice. Engaging employees through portal

technology results in users who trust the organization because their ideas are being considered and

implemented in an open forum. When employees feel they are providing a useful contribution to their

organization they are more likely to feel useful, engaged and part of the organizational culture - working more

effectively as a result.

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Employee Engagement According to a study by Yankee Group, 82 percent of respondents cited employee self-service as a primary

business driver for portal-based initiatives; 80 percent cited improving customer and partner self-service.

Portals can become a driver for employee engagement through increased collaboration and improved business

processes. Employee engagement is the degree to which an employee feels a sense of attachment to an

organization. The level to which an employee engages with the business has a direct effect on business

performance. If employees are engaged with the business, their productivity levels increase. Portals

encourage employee communication and act as a driver for employee engagement through the development

of clear communication channels with employees and a direct understanding of the corporate objectives and

strategy.

Carbon Footprint With the increasing importance of climate change issues, organizations are under pressure to reduce their

carbon footprint. Portals can play a critical role in the implementation of a green strategy. The increased

efficiency and streamlining of business processes through the use of online workspaces encourages

substantially fewer physical activities such as meetings and the printing of documents.

Employees are also enabled to work remotely, resulting in a saving in the amount of physical workspace the

company needs to provide and in time spent travelling.

Knowledge Management Managing the dissemination of knowledge through an organization is key to its success; it is imperative that

when people leave the company or department that the knowledge does not leave with them.

Making knowledge explicit involves it being recorded in media that allows another person to use it. Portals

can help make knowledge explicit by ensuring that through the use of information collaboration tools such as

blogs, wikis and discussion boards it is captured and stored on a central platform and can be harnessed and

used both now and in the future.

The storage of useful information and knowledge is only half the battle. Making it available in the right

context is paramount to getting the most out of the technology. As discussed in the enterprise content

management section, classifying information within the taxonomic context of the organization makes it even

more useful. Every industry has its vocabulary and it is the adoption of this vocabulary within the knowledge

system which permits the surfacing of relevant data to the user. This ability to find information is covered in

more detail in the following section.

Business Intelligence In today’s competitive and fast moving world, having accurate and up-to-date metrics about the performance

of the organization is vital for successful decision making. Business intelligence harnesses data from across an

organization, analyses it and presents it back to the relevant user. Portal technologies are able to connect to

disparate information sources and retrieve vital data, surface it in the form of charts, graphs and reports and

provide personalized targeted dashboards enabling users to see the big, and relevant, picture.

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Information Discoverability People spend a great deal of time trying to find relevant information they need to do their job at work. Often

this data resides in disparate systems making it hard to find and track down. Making information visible and

easily accessible is key to enabling information to flow quickly across and through an organization. A well

designed portal that has benefited from the use of design methodologies such as User Centric Design (UCD) in

its implementation focuses on the needs of the user, and information architecture as well as a powerful and

flexible search engine can ensure that information is always only a few clicks away from a user. Furthermore

the use of data tagging using a structured and relevant taxonomy can ensure that information is categorized

and easily accessible to the users.

Portal Framework Technology is a necessary part of everyday working life for most people these days, but it is often the case that

they are overwhelmed by the many different systems they are required to master to carry out their work.

There is frequently no single place to find information and no space of their own to store documents and

information reflecting their expertise and skills. By its very design, portal technology can provide a single place

to find information, business data and it allows connections to other lines of business systems without having

to bother the users with different user interfaces or a new set of login credentials. Technologies like

SharePoint are also able to provide users with their own website for storing data and information about

themselves. A portal framework can increase productivity by providing a single gateway into a company’s data

and systems and also increase IT user adoption by providing a familiar consistent user interface.

Customer Engagement The Yankee Group study also cited improving customer and partner self-service as an important business

driver for portal-based initiatives.

Engaging with customers is important in building and maintaining strong relationships and delighting them

with your services. Repeated interactions with a customer will strengthen the emotional, psychological or

physical investment a customer has in your relationship. Organizations around the world are discovering that

Web 2.0 technologies and user-generated content are amazing ways to make lasting consumer connections.

Streaming and mobile media, podcasts, rich internet applications (RIA) and syndication technologies like RSS

engage and involve the user. Similarly, consumer-generated content, in a variety of forms; video, photos,

blogs, wikis involve the user in the active life of the site. Portal technologies provide platforms to engage your

customers in a Web 2.0 context and play their part in involving your customers at every stage of their journey

with you.

It is no longer enough to send a monthly newsletter to your customers. To compete in difficult financial times,

it is important to provide your customers with useful information, enabling them to make better decisions and

ultimately tying them to you by providing services that your competitors do not.

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BrightStarr Flow This is a research-based initiative that will look at the potential use of portal technology across organizations.

The main emphasis of the study is to ascertain whether portal technology can facilitate communication and

information flow across organizations.

Through quantitative research this study will ultimately benchmark organizations on their ability to use portal

technology as a means of facilitating information flow.

The study will comprise of a questionnaire sent out to key employee populations and will act as a diagnostic

tool to determine how technology is being used to facilitate information flow and how organizations measure

up against the ten benefits outlined in this white paper.

Taking part in this study The results of this report can be a great tool for organizations unsure about their own strengths and

weaknesses in this area and enable them to:

create a business case for portal investment

generate high level business requirements

engage with employee populations and allow them to have their own say on new ways of working

find suitable employee populations for a proof of concept projects

follow-up post portal implementation

benchmark themselves against other organizations

See the following section for the type of report that will be provided back to you

How to get involved To take part in Flow and receive a complimentary report that will analyze the response of employees based on

the ten factors discussed in this paper please email: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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Extracts from the GPI Report

02468

10

EnterpriseContent

Management

EmployeeEngagement

Collaboration

CarbonFootprint

KnowledgeManagement

InformationDiscoverability

BusinessProcess

Management

PortalFramework

BusinessIntelligence

CustomerEngagement

02468

10

EnterpriseContent

Management

EmployeeEngagement

Collaboration

CarbonFootprint

KnowledgeManagement

InformationDiscoverability

BusinessProcess

Management

PortalFramework

BusinessIntelligence

CustomerEngagement

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References 1. Harvard Business Review June 2008. The secrets to successful strategy execution.

Gary L Neilson, Karla L Martin, Elizabeth Powers.

About the Author William Saville graduated from Portsmouth University Business School in 1998, with an Honors degree in

Business Management. In 2004 he was responsible for the delivery of a psychometric platform, a $1.6 million

bespoke ASP.Net web application that delivered and managed work-related tests and questionnaires around

the world. In 2005, Will co-founded BrightStarr – a Microsoft Gold Partner that specializes in the delivery of

large portal solutions. He has delivered global intranets, extranets and websites to both private and public

sector clients including; Standard Bank, NHS, Nokia Siemens, Hyder Consulting and Abbott Laboratories. Will is

dedicated to helping businesses benefit from new technologies and facilitating the impact of efficient

information flow across organizations. He is a Microsoft Certified Professional.

Copyright statement ©BrightStarr 2009. Authority acknowledges that this document contains copyrighted and proprietary

material owned by BrightStarr. All rights reserved. BrightStarr logo is trademarks of BrightStarr US LLC.

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