Posted: 18 March 2007 at 8:27pm | IP Logged

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Build a business case for smart portals

Mar 22, 2002 by Ed Hammerbeck 

The next wave of intranets and extranets will have you building fully customized Web portals, à la Yahoo or Excite, that will give employees individualized information and applications based on their job and security clearance. Employees will be able to publish information to the company intranet or extranet themselves. And you’ll be able to archive all of this new information in existing databases and storage networks.

How? By combining portal technology, content management systems, and an application server, according to Andrew Warzecha, a vice president with the Massachusetts-based research firm META Group.

 “We believe it’s not a question of if you will invest in this technology. It’s a question of when you will invest in this technology,” Warzecha said during a recent e-seminar co-hosted by META, Corechange (a portal vendor), and Stellant, which produces content management software.

But the technology surrounding enterprise portals isn’t cheap. Smart portals are built using a combination of technologies: portal, content management systems, and application servers. In one META case study, the cost over four years was nearly $14 million, but the productivity and cash flow benefits reached over $29 million in the same period.

But touting the efficiencies of smart portals won’t be enough to sell upper management on the investment, Warzecha said.

“If you’re building a case for this technology, you’re going to want to categorize this into three different buckets: those being benefits associated with strategic imperatives, those that are associated with cash flow, and those that are associated with efficiencies,” said Warzecha.

Here’s how to build a convincing business case for a smart portal.
 
The push toward smart portals
For more on why companies are moving to enterprise portals, check out "KO your agency’s information disorganization."
 

Think strategically
The first step in building your business case is to make sure your executive ducks are all in a row: You'll need participation and buy-in throughout the organization if the portal is to succeed.

“Make no mistake: The higher up you can get executives surrounding this technology, the better off you will be,” Warzecha said. “The main reason for this is that a third or less of what it takes to be successful is technology-related. The business side controls the people, and the process changes. You have to have the support from the business managers, who are going to have to motivate their employees to deal with these people and process changes around the technology.”

Most CEOs or company presidents will have eight to 10 strategic goals for the company each year, Warzecha said. Start your business case by tapping into those goals and identifying how the smart portal will help the company reach them. Given the breadth of impact a smart portal can have—including increased efficiency, reduced travel expenses, global collaboration, and improved information access both internally and with business partners—you shouldn’t have a problem identifying at least one way a smart portal will support at least one of the company’s strategic goals.

Another way to gain executive buy-in is to sell content creation as a cost of doing business. This is already true in many verticals, including high tech and pharmaceutical, he said.

“Justify the creation, publishing, aggregation, and personalization as a cost of doing business,” he said. “It will increasingly be looked at that way from your senior execs, and to tie into that, find out what your competitors are doing.”

Build alliances
But chief executive buy-in alone won’t be enough to build the business case. The second step is to build alliances throughout the organization. This strategy involves more than politics. Working with the business units early on will help you identify the company’s needs and inefficiencies. During this step, you should identify the sources of content throughout your agency and understand how that content is created. Then, you should consider how the portal will help you aggregate and filter this content.

Look for the big picture
It’s also important that you consider how the technology will work throughout the enterprise before you invest, a step organizations often fail to take, Warzecha said.

“In many cases, we see this technology getting bought tactically, but you have to take a look at how this will roll out to the enterprise,” he said. “You will find [that] the technology will grow inherently within your organizations in an organic fashion. It is absolutely critical to understand the high-level requirements across the enterprise.”

Go for the quick ROI
If you’re going to convince anyone this technology is worthwhile, you’ll need to find some quick return on investment (ROI) examples to offer executives, Warzecha said. While you’re lining up allies within the company, be sure to look at how this technology will benefit them in both the short term and long term.

“Rolling technology out for technology's sake generally has a poor adoption rate,” Warzecha said. "If you can show on a group-by-group basis how the technology can help them perform their day-to-day business function, this is how you gain success; this is how things move through the enterprise.”

In particular, you’re searching for key spots where the technology will reap the greatest benefits for the least investment. Warzecha calls this "identifying the low-hanging fruit." From an IT perspective, this means searching for where you can get the biggest business benefit for the lowest cost and the least risk, he said.

“This has actually become a huge, huge issue for getting approval for this technology,” he explained. “So looking at this, you have to try to minimize your risk from an IT perspective.”

He recommended that you examine how to leverage existing infrastructure investments, gain access to knowledge that already exists within the organization, use the technology to share that knowledge with business partners and consumers, and leverage the technology fully. Remember, this infrastructure can be used both within and without the company, for internal communications, business-to-business interaction, and business-to-consumer sites.

According to META, some of the typical ROI benefits you can expect from portals are:
· Increased sales
· Print/mail cost savings
· Travel savings
· HR benefits enrollment
· Customer contract management

But, while you’re building your business case and looking for savings, remember that whatever sum you throw out is likely to reappear in your budget next year—as a reduction.

“If you tell me that Web content management system you’re going to deploy is going to save us seven full-time equivalencies, your budget next year is going to be reduced by seven full-time equivalencies,” Warzecha said. “So you need to be prepared for that and the associated cash flow benefits or savings.”

Translate efficiency into real numbers
Efficiency is an often-touted quality but is difficult to demonstrate. While smart portals can provide any number of efficiencies, including solving the much-ballyhooed Webmaster bottleneck, don’t expect executives to hand you a check based on efficiency alone.

Executives are typically more concerned about the bottom line than the efficiency you can gain through using an enterprise portal. Efficiency can, however, affect the bottom line. In particular, look for reduced travel costs, increased sales due to a quicker response time, improved customer satisfaction, and other areas where efficiencies translate into real numbers.
Consider these issues before building a smart portalMar 28, 2002 by Ed Hammerbeck

Workers spend as much as 25 to 35 percent of their time searching for information they need, according to the META Group, a Connecticut-based IT research firm. Many companies are reducing that time, however, by linking content management systems, portal technology, and application servers to create “smart portals.”

This year, META predicts that many companies will shift from building their own solution to packaged solutions. Already, a consolidation is occurring between portal and content management systems, according to META Group analyst Andrew Warzecha, senior vice president of META’s Electronic Business Strategies division. In some cases, vendors are collaborating to create packaged solutions.

“As you take a look at the business landscape today, however, and as you kick tires on products, keep in mind that many vendors who are currently in this space will not survive over the next 12 months,” Warzecha said.

Before you invest, here are the issues you need to consider when investing in content management systems and portal solutions.
 
The push toward smart portals
During a recent e-seminar, META Group analyst Andrew Warzecha explained why the best practice for company intranets and extranets is to use a three-part combination that uses content management systems, portal technology, and an application server. See parts one and two of this series,  “KO your agency’s information disorganization” and “Build a business case for smart portals,” for more information.
 

Content management questions
Gone are the days when one Webmaster could post the occasional Web page, designed for viewing on two very similar browsers and two screen sizes. As companies move toward wireless solutions, employees may also be accessing Web content via a handheld unit or mobile phone.

The first step in assessing your needs is to consider your content. Warzecha recommends that you ask the following questions:
· What are the sources of content, and how is content created?
· How can the content be aggregated and filtered?
· How is this content going to be assembled and published?
· What devices will the content be delivered to? Is it strictly for a Web browser, or will employees also access it through WAP-enabled phones, Blackberries, and other types of mobile devices? “We would argue that putting in place an infrastructure that does not support wireless devices, even though the needs may not be readily apparent today, is a huge mistake,” Warzecha said.
· Does it need to be rendered into PDF so it can be printed out?
· And most importantly, how can you personalize this content?

Traditional Web content management systems focused on delivering content that was created for the Web and public. Most second-generation enterprise content management systems are designed for e-commerce or dot coms and are therefore geared toward business-to-commercial production. Increasingly, these vendors are beefing up their offerings to support business-to-employee and business-to-business uses, which means, among other things, that you are faced with supporting the need for business documentation, Warzecha noted.

Enterprise content management system products can process “unstructured content” that’s not Web-ready, such as images, documents, reports, streaming media, catalogs, or transactional data. This ability is “absolutely critical,” Warzecha said.

You want to think about content management as technology that’s designed to empower business users to create content. The system also needs to provide a way to manage that content over the course of its life cycle, Warzecha said.

Portal vendors
Most currently available portal vendors focus on the business-to-employee market, though products are emerging that support B2B and B2C use on a common framework. Products that can be used for all three purposes will help you leverage collaborate capabilities, so you can realize a quicker return on investment, Warzecha said.

Like Web content management, the portal market is still maturing and consolidating. So what are the key issues to examine when considering portals? Warzecha recommends that you examine the following:
· Content from an aggregate standpoint. Take a look at what type of content you’re going to be dealing with as an organization, particularly the unstructured content. That means that in addition to your databases and data marts, you’ll need to consider business documents, such as financial reports and your competitor’s Web information. It’s important to test the cataloging capabilities of the portal tool. Ask what types of filters it uses—and realize that vendors call filters by different names, including agents, brokers, and crawlers. You should also know what type of search engine is embedded in the system. Is it their own or someone else’s engine?
· Collaboration on content. Putting groups of like interests together is becoming very important to organizations, Warzecha said. A portal can help you break down these geographical boundaries, identify subject matter experts, and share best practices. Look at its categorizing capabilities. How does it categorize people and content?
· Integration issues. Portals are a strategic investment that will affect the entire enterprise. It’s likely to become the desktop interface your employees will use. Is the solution robust enough to meet your needs? What support is there from the vendor for scalability and integration capabilities? Will it tie into your mission-critical applications and expose that information? Also, what type of gadget, portlets, connectors, etc., are supported by the vendor? “At a minimum, you’re going to want support for your mail and messaging environment,” Warzecha recommends. “Ideally, you’re going to want support for your back-office and front-office applications, i.e., an SAP, a PeopleSoft, a Siebel. You want the vendors to provide integration into those common applications.” You may still have to customize support for your applications, but don’t assume this is so. The vendor may be able to get you 80 percent of the way there, Warzecha said.
· Syndication. Your portal will not exist in a vacuum. If employees are going to view your portal as the launching point for their work, you’ll need to offer more than company news. So ask what type of syndication facilities—newsfeeds, competitive intelligence, and other types of information—the provider supports. Since you’ll also be creating content, ask what type of outbound syndications capabilities it supports that would allow you to repurpose content for your business partner to rebrand and use on their own sites? And while you’re looking at syndication, be sure to ask about security. Ask what relationship, if any, do they have with single sign-on solutions. “The hard part, when you’re looking with these portal products, is you’ve got to take a hard look at how they’re dealing with the security aspects, the single sign-on issues,” Warzecha said.
· The users’ needs. The most important consideration is how this technology meets the users’ needs: It must deliver relevant content in context of each individual employee and what he or she does.