Feature

posted 8 Apr 2005 in Volume 1 Issue 9

The journey to a portal

Choosing a portal product that fits your company’s needs requires research, testing, formal proposals and executive buy-in. The road may be bumpy, yet your travels will be worth making. By Dana Spoor

So, you want a portal. It should be simple enough. You just need to make a decision to purchase a portal, pick the right product and create an implementation plan. Be sure to make a list of everything you need to do and check it off as you go along. Perfect, if only it were that easy.

Choosing the portal journey is not for those who want overnight results. It is not the right path for companies seek to solve major communications issues. A portal may not be the correct option for your company once you begin your research. Portals are powerful tools when put in the right hands. Yet, if not thoroughly thought through and implemented with a plan, a portal is just another piece of costly technology.

American Century Investments, an investment management company based in Kansas City, Mo., first brought up the idea of a portal in 2000. Corporate communications had just finished an overhaul of the current intranet and wanted executives to consider the benefits of portal technology. It was new and expensive, with few players in the field. Our business case presented soft ROI. The executives listened, some even joined our cause. Yet, the timing wasn’t right.

Four years later, we were still talking about a portal. The difference was that so were other areas within the company. Business channels within American Century Investments were investigating portal technology and discovering that it could help employees find information quicker and do their jobs better. The company heard us, asked that all areas within the company join forces and work together to create a corporate portal. The creation of the corporate portal research team took form in late 2003, and our portal will launch to the entire employee population in May 2005.

Corporate Applications funded the corporate portal research team. It is a corporate project, focusing on migrating our corporate intranet to a corporate portal. Teams throughout the company were invited to participate, on the basis that their ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ would be documented yet not guaranteed to be implemented during the first phase.

Before we could do anything, we had to answer one question: What is a portal to our company? You’ll find that different people will give you a different definition of a portal. For the sake of success, create a definition for your project. At American Century Investments, we said:

'A portal is a front-end to access business content and applications. The long-term vision for American Century is to integrate major business applications into one interface where users only sign on once.'

An example from the internet is Yahoo! and the personalised MyYahoo! page. When you select content to display on your personalised page, you’re using portal technology. Yahoo! passes the information you want to your desktop based on your user profile. A good business example is American Express.’

First stop: Objectives

Our team was required to gather research. We were not charged with implementing a portal. That decision would be made later, if we deemed that the best answer. There was a chance that we would find that our intranet was good enough and portal technology was not the answer.

In late 2003/early 2004, our journey began. It is important to understand the portal environment, the company’s environment and the in-house technology environment. To help with that process, gather a team of no more than ten people to help, including:

Information technology (IT);
Communications;
Human resources (HR);
Major business channels.

Charge the group with:

Reviewing available technology. What is available in the portal market? Read industry publications. Review available research. Make a list of what different vendors offer with their products;
Considering your current technical environment. Determine which operating systems are in use and which software programs employees use on a regular basis. Get out your magnifying glass and find those programs that one team uses on a daily basis;
Doing an internal audit of technology. Take an informal inventory of your company’s available technology, both hardware and software. Investigate whether you already have a portal product in-house as part of another product. Look at projects planned for the upcoming year;
Setting a realistic budget or investigate if your company will budget. Don’t begin your project with the expectation that no matter the cost, the company will pay. It won’t happen. Get a commitment from day one. Identify your business sponsor and have that person assign you a budget. You’ll have an idea of how much portals cost based on your review of available technology;
Reviewing available technology based on budget. Now, review your list again. Your list will narrow due to budget constraints. Scratch off the vendors that are way above your budget;
Determining if you can find a product to meet most of your needs within your budget and technological constraints. Look at your vendor list again. Based on preliminary research, do any of the vendors meet your criteria? Can they work within your technical environment? Have they been in the marketplace for more than a year? If you determine there are vendors that can meet your requirements and you have confirmed budget dollars, keep walking the path.

Next stop: Preparation city

You are armed with some basic knowledge about portals and your environment. Yet, before you can decide to purchase a product, you have a lot more work to do.

Create a portal team. You have a core group of people who are now a little more familiar with the portal world. They have spent time researching portal vendors and understanding your company’s technology arena. If they were productive, keep this group in tact and add to it. Make sure you have representation from all areas of the company. Outline the role of this team and present it to each member before you begin.

Thirty people from every area of the company joined American Century’s portal research team. I led the group with a partner from IT. Our formal project mission was:

‘This project team will research, evaluate and select a single portal vendor that will meet the majority of enterprise needs of the business and IT. The pilot implementation of the portal will enhance Exchange, our current intranet. The long-term vision is to use the portal to integrate applications from every business area.’

Draft list of ‘needs’ and ‘wants’. This may be one of the hardest parts of the project. Every member of the team represents an area within the company. Ask each member to create a list of needs and wants for the portal that pertain to his or her area. For example, HR wants the portal to post messages on the homepage only to members of one of its healthcare plans. Another example might be that executives want their daily financial reports delivered via the portal with the ability to manipulate the data and receive new charts and graphs. Have them rank the list by most desired to least desired. Depending on the number, you may need to have team members submit their top requests and hold the rest for later consideration. Compile all the lists into one master list and categorise similar requests;
Create governing structure. This is key to your future success. By creating your governance structure in the beginning, you’ll gain buy-in from key executives and players in all areas of the company and create a strong foundation for your portal. The governance should include three levels: executive, governing and community. Choose leaders for each level and ensure they are committed to the project. (See figure 1 for clarification of each group.);
Benchmark with other companies. Ask vendors for clients willing to share their stories. Attend chapter meetings with business communicators and information technology professionals to find others to converse with about portals. Attend a portal conference and ask specific questions. Try to locate someone who will share with you why they didn’t choose a vendor or what went wrong during portal implementation. Ask people to share documentation created during the portal research and implementation process;
Consider guidelines and regulations for the portal. What do you want the portal to do for the company and what do you not want it to do? Both of these are critical questions that need to be answered. Who is going to decide the guidelines and regulations? It should be your portal research team and your governance committee. You’ll find that your guidelines are broad in the beginning and narrow as you progress through the project. Make sure you include representatives from brand, legal and policies in your discussions.

Brake for information

You have your team in place. You have done your preliminary research. You have a list of what you need from the portal. You’ve talked to other companies. You now have come to a fork in the road.

Do you want to take the long route and send out a request for information (RFI) and then a request for proposal (RFP) to portal vendors, or take the shortcut and go straight to the RFP?

Our team chose to ask vendors to submit an RFI and an RFP. We had gathered our list of portal vendors from Gartner Group research, internal research and industry publications. We needed to narrow our long list of potential portal vendors and an RFI would help us do that.

We used the list of wants and needs for the portal to create the RFI. Vendors were asked to answer questions in three main categories, with the third area broken down into seven subcategories:

Introduction of the portal product;
Product background;
Product capabilities –

– Personalisation
– Content management;
– Integration;
– Administration;
– Technical infrastructure;
– Support service;
– Cost specification.

Not every company responded. Some companies sent us handfuls of marketing materials. For those companies who answered the questions, portal research team members scored the results independently. The results were compiled and the top scoring vendors were asked to participate in the RFP process, which is more intensive.

While we wanted the portal to meet everyone’s needs, it just isn’t realistic. Our approach is phased and the first phase of implementation focuses on corporate information and current information on the intranet, Exchange. Yet, we wanted to capture the true capabilities of the portal for future expansion. Therefore, we created an RFP based on our ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ and created two scoring mechanisms.

Vendors had three weeks to respond to 183 RFP questions, which were grouped into the following categories:

General business information;
Hardware;
Operating system;
Database;
Architecture;
Implementation and support;
Release and version support;
Miscellaneous technical;
Interfacing platform support;
Performance;
Vendor specific;
Training;
Application integration;
Content management;
General application features;
Personalisation;
Security;
Search, index, taxonomy.

We also asked for a price proposal and company background information. Every portal research team member scored the RFP based on his or her area of expertise. Again, those results were compiled. Then, we pulled out our critical success questions and rated the companies based on those results. The vendors that best met our criteria rose to the top.

Vendor highway

We had scored the RFIs and RFPs. Our list had been narrowed to our top choices. The race was close. Now what? It was time to make the vendors prove their statements. Invitations were sent to the top vendors to showcase their products.

In a morning or afternoon, you can see the portal perform and ask questions. Give each vendor the same amount of time. Provide vendors with criteria for the presentation. Try to schedule the presentations close together for better comparisons. Ask each member of the portal research team to attend and grade the portal products.

Our top vendors were given four hours. They did a typical corporate presentation first. Then, each vendor spent time showcasing how the portal works, what it can do and some of its unique features. It was an interactive session with our team members asking questions throughout the process. Afterwards, we got together privately to discuss our reactions.

We narrowed the list. We invited two vendors to bring their products in-house and let us prove they would work in our environment. Each vendor spent a few days helping us learn the portal product, then we were on our own. This is the best time to test the equipment. Ask the vendors to leave the equipment for at least two weeks.

Test the product and then test it some more. Create test scripts that are realistic. Don’t expect that you will be able to do everything with the portal in two weeks. Yet, you should be able to figure out the basics and even some of the more advanced features.

Involve members of the portal research team in the testing. If something doesn’t work, determine if you are going to ask the company about it or move on. Document everything.

At the end of the two-week trials, get the group back together and discuss the results. Create a scoring sheet of the top ten to 15 requirements. Did the vendor meet the requirements? Use the test scripts to evaluate. Add the scores and create a final grading sheet. Discuss, at length, the products, their capabilities, their faults and their positives.

It is vital that you review all possible information. While your scoring sheets may show one vendor as the choice, you may find that during your discussion the vote changes.

Toll booth up ahead

After each stage, you should be reporting to senior management your results. Now it’s time for a formal report. Write up the results of your RFI and RFP scores. Compile your impressions of the vendor presentations and the results of the testing. For management, you must include costing in your report. You can take preliminary pricing from the RFP, knowing that it will change during negotiations.

If you have determined that a portal will serve your company well, ask management for approval to move forward. Once you receive that, have your finance representative contact the portal vendor of choice to negotiate the contract. Consider your training and consulting needs as part of the contract. Determine if you will have to hire any contractors or if you can complete the project with in-house personnel. When you have a signed contract in hand, put the key back in the ignition, gather up your troops and began the implementation journey.

Dana L. Spoor is intranet/communications program manager, American Century Investments

Portal governance model

The objective of corporate portal governance is to articulate, execute and manage the long-term strategy for the corporate portal. This governance model applies to any portal content or system integration that uses the corporate-portal system deployed.

Corporate portal governance is divided into three groups with communication points between the groups to ensure compliance with corporate strategy and standards:

Executive Business Council

The Executive Business Council ensures the portal is aligned with the company’s strategic priorities. This group should meet twice each year.

Corporate Portal Governing Body

The Corporate Portal Governing Body oversees development and delivery of the corporate portal strategy and ensures corporate portal standards compliance. As part of this, the group maintains brand management of the portal and creates templates for the content community to use for the information portion of the portal. The Portal Governing Body defines the portal navigation and usability standards, and creates the portal look and feel.

This group is the heart of the portal. It evaluates and approves portal projects and application integration points. Members define the portal taxonomy and provide recommendations on collaboration and content management tools. This group also defines portal service-level agreements.

Meeting monthly, the group then communicates to the Executive Business Council. As part of that communication, it analyses and recommends future tools for the portal and drafts the portal strategy each year.

Corporate Portal Community

The Corporate Portal Community is the voice for the company. This group provides updates for and about the business areas and upcoming projects impacting the portal.

The Corporate Portal Community maintains contact with the individual(s) who is responsible for the content within the information portion of the portal for the business channels and/or individual communities. The group ensures that the content for each community remains fresh and is reviewed and approved prior to publication. These steps will protect the interests of the company and the business areas. One business and one IT representative from the Corporate Portal Governing Body chair this group. This group should meet quarterly, at least. Consider bringing outside speakers to add interest.