EIP: Choice and implementation

At this stage there are several techniques and scenarios according to which the enterprises or IT heads stake on this or that corporate portal, the solution. Nevertheless, the conscious choice is given far not at once. Corporate portal, often, this person of IT department as such, its business card. It is what will be estimated by all employees, beginning from volume management and finishing with "pawns". Today according to research companies it is possible to count about 60 noticeable producers (at the moments of blossoming of the market of EIP it was possible to count also more than one hundred). Unfortunately, most of them in the future or will lose the competitiveness and will be absorbed, or will just stop the activity.

Market separation

In the market of corporate portals long did not exist any segmentation, separation. There were attempts to offer division into the good shrink-wrapped software products and products providing the platform for integration. But it is only poles of functionality of such product as the portal. It is differentiation, than segmentation rather. When the company implements at itself the portal, of value not the portal, but technologies which the portal integrates in a whole is for it:

• Search opportunities;
• Qualifiers;
• Content management and documents;
• Analytical opportunities (Business Intelligence);
• Application integration;
• Application server.

A set of these technologies also creates portal "ecosystem". Analysts of Gartner suggest to segment the market of portals as follows:

• APS (Application Platform Suits)  — in basic set includes the application server (Application Server), integration services and actually the portal (the brightest players of this segment of the market  — BEA and Fujitsu).
• SES (Smart Enterprise Suit)  — in basic set includes the search engine, content management (document flow), the Business Intelligence tools and abilities to integrate (players  — Epicentric, Plumtree, Hummingbird, Computer Associates, Vignette, Broadvision).
• APS/SES (The combined approach) is used by such giants as IBM, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Novell (SilverStream).

Selection

As a rule, there are three standard scenarios when choosing the solution for a corporate portal:

• Purchase of ready-made solutions (platforms or systems of high readiness);
• Development from scratch (custom developments);
• The combined approach (development of specific modules, but based on already ready-made solutions or platforms).

Each of approaches has the pluses and minuses, but, as a rule, when choosing the solution there is assessment of all approaches by the following set of criteria:

• the cost of the solution (including licenses, the equipment and works);
• speed of implementation and delivery of a ready system;
• uniqueness of business processes of the company or existence of specific requirements;
• corporate standards and preferences on technologies;
• presence of qualified specialists in the company and their specialization;
• innovative or conservative style of a company performance;
• approach to system implementation (a system is customized under business processes of the company, or the companies business configures processes under functionality of a system).

The detailed analysis of a situation at each specific client and individual approach when choosing the solution is anyway necessary.

Implementation

The implementation methodology the intranet portals, in general, is similar to implementation of any information system with a large number of users. Certainly, implementation of such systems requires professional approach from developers, the qualified project manager and a project team, an industrial development approach and to system implementation (design, development, testing, training, commissioning). But the most important what it is worth to remember about,  is that at implementation corporate the intranet portal to the forefront there are not technical difficulties, but administrative problems, questions of information security, knowledge transfer from the developer to end users. Features of implementation of a corporate portal in many respects depend on the purposes and tasks which are set for this system by the customer, from his corporate culture and the current level of automation in the company. Two companies competing in the market can impose different requirements to a system, and implementation of a corporate portal in these companies will be carried out by absolutely different method.

As a rule, all companies face an identical set of problems at implementation of corporate portals. It is possible to carry the following to their number:

• need of change of business processes of the company owing to already carried out automation, need of redistribution of responsibility;
• lack of formalization of processes and their documentation that does not allow to make accurate problem definition;
• habit to work at "personal contact";
• the low culture of use of computers in the companies;
• resistance from personnel of the companies at system implementation;
• insufficient resolution of the management at system implementation in the company;
• the low level of understanding of potential benefits from use of corporate information systems by the management and the staff of the company;
• complexity with formalization of distribution of access rights to information;
• attempt of transfer of the information disorder which is available in the company in the automated disorder by means of the portal;
• lack of operating experience of the similar systems, and as a result low level of understanding of possible options of use of the portal.

It is impossible to tell that all these problems are unsolvable. Just it is necessary to involve experienced specialists and consultants who have experience of implementation of similar of a system to their more effective solution and will offer the companies of a way and methods of the solution of these problems which are already approved at other clients taking into account knowledge of specifics of the Russian business.