Using a Portal to Solve Business Problems, Mark Wesker

A tight economy, disappointing corporate earnings, a wildly fluctuating stock market—we’re living and working in turbulent times. With less available capital for investments, it has become imperative to make the right decisions when it comes to selecting and implementing business technologies. One technology that has the potential to maximize investment return by leveraging existing systems is the portal.

However, most portals aren’t implemented just because it would be nice to have centralized access to data, but because it is mission-critical to access the information, automate a business process or connect with customers, partners and suppliers. The fact that portals can solve pressing business problems that speak to the bottom and top lines makes for compelling reasons to investigate portal solutions.

What is a Portal— And What is a Good Portal? In its earliest incarnation, Merrill Lynch defined the enterprise information portal (EIP) as “a single gateway to personalized information needed to make informed business decisions.” These early portals were predominantly internally facing, intended to increase employee productivity by reducing the effort required to find and obtain crucial information. The business driver behind EIPs was that speeding the access to up-to-date, accurate, pertinent information would increase employee productivity by reducing the time spent searching for information. This still remains a laudable objective, but it is not always a compelling enough reason for investing precious IT dollars into a portal solution.

However, these initial portals were successful, and inspired users and implementers to find new levels of portal functionality and utility. The concept of personalization grew to encompass more than just access to personal information (such as HR and benefits data) to include access to corporate information that is presented in a personalized fashion. Users could easily access the data they required on a daily basis, and the portal would deliver that data in a meaningful way, based upon the employee’s role in the organization. This type of portal could truly affect productivity by streamlining a user’s interaction with back-end data. The story is getting more compelling, but what about the business problems that a portal is supposed to solve?

This is where next generation portals come in. These portals speak to business problems by offering advanced features that enable B2B transactions and automate business processes. Organizations are now turning portals outward as a means of enhancing relationships with customers and partners. Many organizations see this type of portal functionality as the cornerstone of an e-business strategy that emphasizes automating and streamlining business processes, and increasing an organization’s speed of execution.

One of the portal’s strengths is connecting a company’s decision-makers with its network of suppliers, customers, and partners. Users gain quick and easy access to information, and its presentation can be customized to meet each person’s unique needs. This type of portal solution allows the rapid integration of complex, cross-enterprise business processes so the flow of information can be easily automated between organizations and their partners. The value proposition is clear—by connecting resources with those of partners, streamlining processes, and addressing common critical issues, companies can deliver value and reduce inefficiencies across the entire value chain.

This increased efficiency and focus on communication afforded by the portal enables a company to create a “virtual enterprise” where key production steps are outsourced to partners. Many organizations are implementing a corporate portal first and are then growing this solution into more of a B2B portal. By using a portal to tie in back-end enterprise systems, a company can manage the complex interactions of the virtual enterprise partners through all phases of the value and supply chain.

Linking disparate data sources and systems makes it necessary to rely on a common language or framework for an effective portal solution. XML has leapt to the forefront in this area because of its flexibility and cross-platform communication capabilities . Essentially, a good portal should offer several important features and functions. To summarize, these are:

• adaptability to changes in business processes and technology;;

• incorporation of XML as a basis for the product’s logic and messaging capabilities;;

• robust technical capabilities, such as business process automation and sophisticated rules evaluation;;

• integration of people into the portal’s design and functionality—after all, a portal serves people;

• scalability to enable the addition of users, servers, processes, and transactions—all at high performance levels; and;

• easy administration and configuration.;

Sequoia’s portal software, XPS™, built from the ground up around XML messaging, makes it possible to access information from disparate data sources and present it via a personalized user interface. As processes and partnerships evolve, XPS can quickly incorporate these changes so that companies within the virtual enterprise can effectively collaborate and exchange information. This makes XPS an ideal tool that grows with organizations that initially require a corporate portal or those that need to connect virtual enterprise business partners.

Real Problems, Real Solutions, Real Benefits The proliferation of packaged applications—such as ERP, supply chain management, and customer relationship management—has made integrating enterprisewide data increasingly difficult. The rapid increase in mergers and acquisitions has left many companies with highly disconnected IT infrastructures, impeding the seamless flow of information needed for maximum efficiency. Meanwhile, the pace of today’s business environment demands that information be readily available to ensure smart and fast decision-making.

The abundance of content, both inside and outside the enterprise, has made finding the right information increasingly difficult. Employees often spend more time looking for the right piece of information than actually using it, resulting in high frustration and low productivity. Further inefficiencies are found in the continued reliance on paper processes, manual approvals, and long transaction cycles.

XPS can address each of these common business problems, while also providing additional benefits.

Work Smarter and Faster The goal of any portal is to get the right information to the right user at the right time. XPS intelligently accesses information from back-end systems, delivers it through a personalized interface, and allows users to interact with the data—from anywhere at any time. The immediate availability of meaningful information, presented the way users need to see it, results in smarter and faster decision-making, and ultimately a more responsive and competitive organization.

Example: The Mills Corporation, a real estate investment trust that owns, develops, leases, manages and markets 12 retail and entertainment destinations, is using Sequoia’s XPS to compress the amount of time it takes to sign a new tenant. They use the product to collaborate, discuss changes to documents, and work with business partners online. This eliminates a large portion of the cost formerly spent on sending documents overnight between Mills Corp. lawyers, future tenants, and their lawyers.

Streamlining the process of signing up tenants ultimately shortens the collection period for receiving lease payments and gets cash in Mills’ pockets faster.

Work Your Way XPS adapts to an organization’s existing business processes without forcing changes to the business model. It also can continue to adapt over time. As processes and partnerships evolve, the product will quickly incorporate these changes so that companies within the virtual enterprise can effectively collaborate and exchange information.

The product’s open, XML-pure architecture also allows for additional functionality to be snapped in as needed. Finally, the solution’s scalability ensures the portal will be able to accommodate a growing user/information base while providing secure and reliable access.

Example: The EMI Group is using XPS to automate its Digital Release Management process—the workflow of digital assets associated with the creation of an album. Like most companies in the music industry, EMI’s various work departments rely on disparate databases for their information. Users frequently caused delays in the process, often re-keying data to transfer information across departments and failing to meet the established release date for albums. XPS aggregated disparate applications and databases and streamlined the entire approval process. EMI was able to leverage its existing processes and applications and keep its business model intact.

Example: Information exchange is critical for those companies who elect to operate in a virtual enterprise and outsource their non-core activities to contract manufacturers such as Flextronics. Flextronics is using XPS to pull together information from its various systems—from plant-floor statistical process control systems to master production schedules located in an ERP system—into a single point of access though which Flextronics and its customers can view, update, and act on the information. Customers are alerted when potential problems such as component shortages become evident, and they are better equipped to respond to urgent situations. XPS also provides the flexibility to bring on new business partners rapidly and efficiently into the Flextronics’ network in a repeatable, reliable and scalable process.

Get Started Quickly XPS offers more robust functionality out-of-the-box than any portal application. Rather than spending time on a lengthy implementation and complex customizations, companies can be up and running quickly with a complete portal. The product’s powerful features, flexible architecture, and out-of-the-box functionality reduce implementation time, and limit disruption to daily work activities.

Example: Waste Management, Inc, the premier company in North America providing comprehensive waste management service, wanted a portal that would provide critical information to its employees (such as CEO and industry news, access to a document management system, information on important events, employee directory, etc.) but wouldn’t take that long to implement. Waste Management selected XPS for its corporate portal needs. Once the environment was secure and stable, the product was deployed in just a few weeks and the employees were quickly accessing the information they needed to do their jobs.

Maximize Your IT Investments By offering a full range of e-business components within one package, XPS gives companies the right mix of functionality at a reasonable price. By integrating information from disparate back-end systems and automating business processes, XPS allows an organization to leverage its existing technology investments. This is a cost-effective way for an organization to focus on its core competency and increase collaboration with vital partners, customers and suppliers.

A Flexible, Quick Solution No matter what the specific business problem driving a portal implementation, it is important to choose a solution that adapts quickly and easily to the existing environment. A major factor in considering a portal is to leverage existing technologies by integrating them so they act as one system, even though they might be technically and geographically disparate. Very few portal software products offer this type of flexibility, and because it is based in XML, XPS offers the most flexibility of all.

Any organization that wants to improve access to information within and across the enterprise, streamline and automate business processes, and manage the complexities of a virtual enterprise should consider Sequoia Software’s portal solution.

Sequoia Software

As the leading provider of XML-pure portal software, Sequoia Software (Nasdaq: SQSW) is redefining what portals do for business. Sequoia’s adaptable software brings together information, processes, and people and strengthens relationships throughout the value chain. The versatility of Sequoia’s XPS allows companies operating in a virtual enterprise to more effectively collaborate, work smarter and faster, and maximize their IT investments. Sequoia has an international customer base, including General Electric, Eastman Chemical, Flextronics, SC Johnson, Rock-Tenn, Waste Management, BBC, and Lehman Brothers. For more information, please call 888-820-7917.

Note: On May 1, 2001 Citrix Systems, Inc. acquired Sequoia Software. As of this date, Sequoia Software assumed the Citrix name.