Enterprise Information Portals: Portals in Puberty, Robert Bolds

Remember that awkward time in your life when you suddenly underwent a lot of unexpected changes that affected just about every aspect of your life? The upside of these changes is that they are part of the maturing process. According to most analysts, we are out of the early adoption stage of portal technology, so it’s appropriate to say we must be in portal puberty. The signs are there: most vendors are beginning to stabilize on a host of common features and functionality; standards organizations are already complaining there are none; some companies are buying and implementing portals for unknown reasons; and the education and litany of portal buzz (this article included) has grown at a geometric rate. This article discusses how to gain business value by unleashing the often overlooked collaborative capabilities of Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) technology.

Understanding the Enterprise Information Portal Value Proposition Portal technology is defined in various ways, but a practical means of understanding the value of portal technology is by examining significant usage. Significant because, at a practical level, if the capability isn’t used to derive business value, no business benefits can be realized. The trick is to turn features and functionality into practical business benefits. The following table provides some common features and functionality of portal technology and the associated business benefits.

However, there are downsides to these capabilities. As stated previously, if discretion in how to use them is never realized, the benefits can be very easily turned into confusion. The real value then is not in having a portal with the most bells and whistles, but in realizing the benefit by capitalizing on the features that will provide the most value from the investment. In doing so, however, there must be a common level of understanding in order to facilitate the benefits.

Defining the Corporate Semantic A common level of understanding is a key goal in deriving tangible business benefits. This is a process that involves corporate standards, common and well-defined business processes and enterprise meta data and, more importantly, meaning. With a corporate semantic, a common understanding of business terms and processes exists at every functional level within the organization. This occurs when the portal and its underlying infrastructure supports context. In understanding the business grammar and the semantic structure of an organization, it becomes vital to help every person within the organization to obtain the necessary information to do their jobs and develop meaning from that information in the proper context. This translates into the portal being a context provider. As a context provider, then, the portal must provide the proper context through a well thought-out strategy. That strategy should include these logical constructs:

• Business integration vs. information integration or application integration. Integrating information and applications are first steps to support business integration. A portal can support application and information integration but the weakness at this point can be a lack of providing business context, or meaning, to the information. Business integration is the integration and translation through the meta data layer of information and applications to provide context.;

• Process Integration . In addition to providing context, the portal solution should support process integration. Process integration includes workflow, categorization and taxonomy services. These services provide the foundation for context. Information with workflow, categorization and taxonomy equals context.;

• Application & Information Integration. This is a strict reference to source systems from which information is generated. It also includes the data administration layers, such as cleansing, transformation, and extraction.;

• Enterprise Meta Data Repository. Meta data is vital as the mechanism for context. The repository should not include every piece of information that exists, only the information that will be utilized to provide meaning. The repository then becomes the "single version of understanding," not just the "single version of the truth.";

Defining the EIP as a context provider is the key to realizing business value and benefit because it provides knowledge workers with a single personalized interface that facilitates what they do—with meaning. In this manner, context will determine meaning.

Enabling Context through an Enterprise Information Portal By utilizing the key layers identified previously, the portal becomes an enabling solution for all knowledge workers, whether they are internal employees, customers or partners. But achieving the technical requirements needed to enable context to be unlocked from within the portal is no small task. However, these requirements for enabling context also drive business benefit. One of the first requirements is the need for role-based content. Role-based content means that the scope of content provided through the portal to an individual user is relevant for defining business benefit. A prime example is providing too much information through the portal, such as syndicated content, thereby overloading knowledge workers with irrelevant information. Role-based content requires relevant information.

The next requirement is the need for task-based knowledge. This differs from role-based content in that task-based knowledge is collaborative information that helps define additional value beyond any particular role. For example, if a material analyst analyzing usage patterns for a particular assembly notes a high quantity of rejected assemblies through the portal, collaboration through a threaded discussion—or via published findings in the workgroup with QA and purchasing—might reveal that a new vendor was selected. This task-based knowledge would then be instrumental in helping the analyst recommend that the cheaper vendor was actually costing more due to poor quality parts.

Another requirement is the need for quality in context. This requirement extends through every layer of the information infrastructure and into the portal. Quality of content through the integration layers, and residing within the repository, will produce proper interpretation of content. The interpretation of content on the basis of quality context produces better decision support, improved workflow and consistent benefits.

Standardization is another requirement for enabling context. Standardization extends not just to information but to processes, as well. According to Barry Boehm and Victor Basili, "Disciplined personal practices can reduce defect introduction rates up to 75%," (Pursue Better Software, Not Absolution for Defective Products, Software Engineering Institute). The principle here is that standard processes can reduce mistakes, resulting in higher operational efficiency. This is one of the primary goals of enterprise information portals.

The final requirement is that of unification. The notion of unification is the result of all the above requirements being fulfilled. It further implies that none of the requirements are mutually exclusive because the inter-relationship between the factors will provide additional benefit. Unification of the common technology features, the strength of the collaborative nature of the enabling requirements, the integration of knowledge to create context and the interaction of the worker with the portal all combine to produce tangible business benefits.

Summary Puberty is that maturing stage where many factors come together to produce a more experienced, mature and productive adult. By understanding the value proposition of portals we can understand not just the technology, but also the business benefits that can be realized by enterprise information portals. And it doesn’t stop at this point, because the technology in and of itself won’t produce benefits. Using the technology to enable context, we can derive business benefits by creating a corporate semantic through the integration layers, resulting in meaningful business value for every knowledge worker. The requirements for achieving this goal are to provide knowledge workers with role-based content and task-based knowledge to improve business processes. Additionally, the quality of context and standardization must be considered to produce increased operational efficiency. The combination of these requirements results in a unified, collaborative work environment. The benefits of the portal are not just inherent in the technology itself, but can be found to produce business value and benefit by creating business context and meaning through a planned, strategic infrastructure.

Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA) delivers the software that manages eBusiness. CA's world-class solutions address all aspects of eBusiness process management, information management, and infrastructure management in six focus areas: enterprise management, security, storage, eBusiness transformation and integration, portal and knowledge management, and predictive analysis and visualization. Founded in 1976, CA serves organizations in more than 100 countries, including 99 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. For more information, visit ca.com