denotes premium content | Feb 8 2012 
Regular
posted 31 Aug 2004 in Volume 1 Issue 3
The challenge of a portal project
To support their knowledge workers, many organisations have developed or studied the possibilities of implementing an enterprise portal. Furthermore, portal technology, with personalised access to information and web-based tools, is increasingly applied in business-to-consumer and business-to-business commerce. But do these projects always fulfil their promises?
More and more, the technical challenges can be dealt with. These challenges include building the web interfaces to (existing) databases and applications, connecting to user directories, and integration with the end-user technical environment. According to the technical designers and developers, the project is a success when the specifications have been met and there are no technical difficulties, such as log-on, stability, programming, and bandwidth problems.
People are supposed to be able to use the new technical work environment, but this is often where the bottleneck in portal projects exists: people have to change their way of working, often without being informed or consulted. In other words, in any portal project, you’ll face the typical change-management issues, which means that users have to be taken through seven stages: contact, awareness, understanding, testing, acceptance, institutionalisation and internalisation.
Unfortunately, there is often limited budget for the required communication and promotion efforts. Furthermore, professional change managers are seldom involved in the project. As a result, the efforts of business analysts, programmers, web managers, project managers and suppliers are not yielding the optimal results. Sometimes, people are so frustrated that they kill the portal project and decide to upgrade the original intranet or internet environment, accepting the loss of a lot of effort and money.
I believe portal projects can give valuable support to knowledge professionals, providing them with the right tools. However, the success rate of these projects is far too low; not because of inferior products, but due to a lack of attention being paid to the change-management issues that come with the transition to a new environment. By spending 25 per cent of the budget on communication and other change-related activities, an increase of at least 100 per cent in return on investment in portal projects can be achieved.
Paul Louis Iske
Chief knowledge officer, ABN Amro
