In Taking a business-centric approach to portals the following is noted:
Enterprise portals (generally known as just ‘portals’) rose to prominence several years ago. Complementing or replacing earlier technologies, portals promise to deliver a more coherent information management platform, and a more seamless user experience for staff.
Now that the early hype has died down, it is not surprising to find that portals are not a ’silver bullet’ solution to all the information delivery challenges within organisations.
Like all technologies, portals have their strengths and weaknesses. These need to be well understood if they are to be successfully implemented within businesses.
This article outlines the characteristics (good and bad) of enterprise portals, and proposes a business-centric approach to selecting and implementing portals.
This is an excellent article on a once very hot topic. Since many CRM solutions now include “Dashboard” home pages that are essentially a portal for the underlying data detail, most of what is disciussed here can also be applied to the design, creation and management of user dashboards.
Here’s the conclusion of the article:
There is a clear need to deliver better information management solutions for users and for the business as a whole. The existing mess of overlapping (or even competing) information systems with most organisations must be addressed and resolved.
Enterprise portals may be able to assist with resolving these issues. If they are to succeed, however, organisations must be fully aware of both their strengths and weaknesses (just like any technology).
Most importantly, these projects must be driven by clear staff and organisational needs, as well as a clear vision of the user experience that must be delivered.
Where portal projects are driven solely by IT considerations, they will fail. They do not offer a ’silver bullet’, nor will they eliminate the need to better manage the underlying information.
By taking a business-focused (and user-centric) approach to portal projects, organisations can take valuable steps towards the goal of providing a single information environment for staff.
