Productive Collaboration Through Corporate Portal Article Summary

Summarize these articles in 4 separate paragraphs

each paragraph contains 8-10 lines.

(Just include the information that is related to developing a portal)

Business Information Review
http://bir.sagepub.com
Corporate portal development: a practical approach ensures real business benefits
Simon Ryley
Business Information Review 2001; 18; 28
DOI: 10.1177/0266382014237961
The online version of this article can be found at:
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Portals
Corporate portal development:
a practical approach ensures
real business benefits
Simon Ryley
Felspar Limited
‘The excitement and the enjoyment for teams creating intranet sites
seems to be limited to the initial creation phase… most intranet sites
spring up without their creators giving any thought to exactly how
much time is needed to keep them up-to-date, or who will be responsible
for these updates.’
Abstract
Educated at Cambridge University and
Imperial College London, Simon worked
for six years in technology management
in the City of London with UBS and
Merrill Lynch. He has extensive experience of the operational and support aspects of IT, and has managed the
implementation of several large corporate
intranets.
Before
founding
LifeLink, an enterprise portal development company, Simon was responsible
for Debt Derivatives Technology for
Merrill Lynch EMEA. In 1999 LifeLink
merged with Felspar, a provider of next
generation Web-based billing and enterprise software solutions for the telecommunications, internet and financial
services sectors.
28
Corporate intranets have been a remarkable success story over the last few
years. The growth of Email as an everyday business tool, the connection of employees within large global organizations, and the astonishing ROI figures reported for some intranet projects all indicate that intranets, just like the
Internet, are permanently changing the way business is done. Intranets have
sprung up at an extraordinary rate, and most large organizations now have one.
Many companies established the necessary infrastructure with projects that
have more than paid for themselves in terms of cost savings. Now that the quick
wins have been implemented, those responsible for intranets are struggling to
cope with the practical problems of keeping content fresh, improving usability,
and effectively meeting user needs. So much so that, if you’ve ever used a large
corporate intranet, you will probably wonder what all the hype is about. Sure
you can look up people’s phone numbers or today’s lunch menu, but trying to
find useful business information is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Or
rather a flashing, spinning, multi-coloured mess of out-of-date, incomplete and
inaccurate information with no obvious order or organization. It is this problem
that led to the development of the corporate portal. Today there are many vendors who promote the benefits of implementing a corporate portal solution.
These vary widely in features and approach, but all aim to make it easier for information and knowledge to be shared in the organization. This article will explore the key issues behind the successful utilization of a corporate intranet and
the practical approach that needs to be taken if these are to be tackled through
the development of a corporate portal.
Business Information Review, 18(2), May 2001
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The attractions of intranets
The potential benefits that have had companies across
the globe racing to establish intranets are extremely significant in today’s business environment. Intranets
have the ability to dramatically improve internal communication and open up access to information, enabling
organizations to cut costs and increase revenues in ways
that were not previously possible.
Improve communication
The most often quoted benefit of an intranet is the improvement in internal communication. This can be
achieved in a number of ways, between the company and
its employees, and between the employees themselves.
Intranets are the ideal place for new and existing employees to familiarize themselves with an organization,
containing information such as:
• company mission, policies, and procedures
• department descriptions, responsibilities, and
contact details
• product sales, marketing, and technical information
• market analysis, news, and insights.
They also provide a simple and effective method for
distributing corporate information such as company
news, announcements, objectives and achievements.
This can be particularly effective in improving communication with far-flung offices that previously may have
felt little or no connection with the rest of the organization.
Communication between individuals can also be enhanced by providing corporate directories and
GroupWare applications such as discussion forums or
real-time chat. These allow employees who may previously have found it difficult to identify and communicate
with each other to get together and share information
and ideas much more freely than before.
Improve access to information
At the departmental level, intranets can also be used as
repositories for useful information and data with very
powerful consequences. Employees can look up commonly requested information as and when they need it,
and get the answers they require much more quickly
than when confronted with traditional ‘information bottlenecks’. This self-service approach frees up other staff
to undertake more productive tasks than just fielding
commonly asked questions. By making useful documents available to a much wider and often unanticipated
audience, employees can identify and utilize previously
unknown sources of knowledge to the company’s advantage.
More advanced intranets can be used to provide a personalized gateway into underlying IT systems, putting
the reports and data individuals need to perform their
jobs at their fingertips. Useful information can be easily
identified and separated from the deluge of Emails that
commonly plague today’s managers. Common archives
available to all who need them save endless searching for
old documents. Beneficially, they can also provide a
mechanism for capturing and retaining valuable expertise for use by future generations of employees.
Cut costs
Most intranet projects have been funded on the promise
of savings to be found by cutting costs. Savings include
reduced publication, distribution, and storage costs for
corporate directories, marketing materials, and product
documentation. Also made possible are reductions in the
headcount required for communication and reporting in
back office and support services.
Companies have saved millions by streamlining reporting processes to remove manual processes and duplication of effort. For example, some companies have
implemented intranet sites which have resulted in reducing the cost of issuing tickets for business travel by
75%. As a result, ROI figures reported on initial intranet
investments can often be 1000% or more.
Other more intangible savings can be seen in the reduced time required to access information, and by enabling users to access updates to tools such as product
manuals the moment they are made. It is estimated that
a typical user spends between a third and a half of the
time they spend on the intranet just searching for the information they require. Similarly, printed manuals and
directories are often out of date even before they arrive
on employees’ desks. Access to timely and accurate information leads to improved decision-making and fewer
mistakes, which can drastically improve an organization’s efficiency.
Business Information Review, 18(2), May 2001
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29
Improve revenues
Companies can improve revenues through the use of
their intranets and extranets by providing managers,
salespeople, and customer service staff with the information they require to make better business decisions,
and by improving communication and access to information with customers and suppliers.
Improved communication and access to information
leads to better business decisions throughout a company.
Managers can control their businesses better, spotting
new opportunities and potential problems sooner, giving
them more time to react appropriately. Sales teams and
customer service staff can be provided with all the information they require to provide potential and existing
customers with the best possible service. Improving both
communication between teams dealing with the same
clients and also client reporting, in order to coordinate
approaches and spot new opportunities, are functions to
which intranets are ideally suited.
Better access to information for customers and suppliers via extranets can be used to generate significant
competitive advantage as well as simply reducing costs.
Dell’s notable gains in market share represent a huge
success for their ‘mass customization’ approach
whereby customers can specify and order PCs via the
Internet which are built to their exact requirements.
Federal Express, UPS, and DHL all now provide customer access to internal data on the whereabouts of individual parcels. Many companies are trying to streamline
their supply chains and gain economies of scale by providing access to internal forecasting and inventory information to suppliers.
So where are we today?
Most large companies now have a corporate intranet established. However, the multitude of sites, lack of consistent approach, and poor navigation have usually
resulted in an intranet which mirrors the chaos of the
Internet itself. Many sites have fallen into neglect, and
overworked Webmasters cannot keep up with the demands being placed upon them. As a result most large
companies have very large and very fragmented
intranets with a few useful and well used sites interspersed between, quite frankly, a lot of rubbish.
It has become clear that many intranet teams just
cannot continue in the same fashion for much longer.
However it is much easier to get approval for specific de30
partmental projects with easily measured deliverables
than for implementation of corporate-wide intranet
tools. The lack of large central budgets combined with
expensive toolkits means that many Webmasters are reduced to simply trying to maintain the status quo.
Whilst it may be obvious that an intranet is slowly getting out of control, it is usually not at all clear how to
remedy the problem. Many intranets have quickly outgrown their initial requirements, but Webmasters are
too busy at the coalface and lack the political clout to deliver an effective strategy. Most Webmasters are technology experts rather than business enablers. Tasks tend to
be undertaken on a first come first served basis rather
than with a clear understanding of business priorities.
There is often little or no awareness of best practice, and
future expectations can be hazy. ROI figures delivered at
the start of the project are proving themselves very difficult to sustain, and need to be adjusted for the new
awareness of the costs of maintenance.
Combined with a lack of a clear strategy and confusion about what users really need from intranets, many
organizations are pausing for thought and considering
how best to move forward. The corporate portal or enterprise information portal would seem to be the solution
required.
Enter the corporate portal
In early 1998, companies such as Plumtree and Felspar
started to create specific corporate portal or enterprise
information portal solutions that looked to provide a set
of tools to allow companies to build the stable scalable
intranets of the future. Today there are many different
types of portal vendor, with solutions based around technologies such as search engines, document management
or business intelligence. The portal bandwagon has been
jumped on by a wide variety of software vendors who see
it as a new way to sell their existing technology.
In trying to define the market around their technology, portal marketing literature lists seemingly endless
must-have features. Typically these involve information
taxonomies, tools to search for and identify valuable corporate information from file servers, mail servers, and
databases. Personalization features will profile your
needs and deliver the information you need automatically to your desktop in the style and format you wish to
see it.
Business Information Review, 18(2), May 2001
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So why aren’t companies singing the benefits of corporate portals from the hilltops? The reason is that most
fail to properly address the practical problems that are
facing managers of corporate intranets today. The biggest failing of most corporate portals is that even after
they are implemented, users still can’t find useful information quickly and easily. A Delphi Group report [1]
from April 2000 summarizes the issue: ‘Portals are not
yet the single point of access users would like them to be
… Over 40% of respondents feel that information is
poorly organized within portal interfaces. Although a
portal may provide access to business processes, most
portal architectures are not perceived as implicitly reflecting these processes in their design and layout.’
The reason for this is that they rely too heavily on
technology built for the Internet rather than the
intranet. Imagine for a moment walking into a library or
a bookstore to find a book, and only having a search engine with which to find it. Or browsing the shelves, not
finding what you’re after, but being certain that there
are many more shelves out there somewhere, – you’re
just not sure where. Or looking for an index to use as you
know the author or the title of the book, but there’s
nothing you can use to look up its location. This is what
navigating most corporate portals is like.
Taxonomies and search engines are only of
limited use
Most corporate portals start with the idea of an information taxonomy – organizing information into categories
like well known Internet portals such as Yahoo! Yet taxonomies are generally very poor tools for finding information, even if many months are spent trying to create
the best structure with which to store the many types of
corporate information. Taxonomies are useful when the
range of subject matter varies widely, and are a reasonable attempt to try and make sense of an essentially unlimited volume of information such as the Internet. But
the problem with taxonomies is that they are very personal in nature. What makes perfect sense to one person
is completely bewildering to another. And because the
nested folder approach can carry on for as long as you
like, you have to open each and every folder to discover
whether there is more information hidden away somewhere near the bottom of the structure.
To understand this, just attempt to understand the
folder structure created by your colleagues in their home
directories to store their own personal documents. Most
people have very few folders with many documents in
each. Others (especially techies) take great delight in
having many nested folders, sometimes even as many
folders as there are documents within them. As a result,
most users rarely attempt to browse taxonomies looking
for information, and instead rely on the search engine to
find the documents or Web sites they are looking for.
Search engines are enormously powerful tools, but
they are not usually the quickest tools for finding the information you are after. They are best when looking for
documents with very specific phrases, or when you
wouldn’t know where to even begin to start looking for
information. But as anyone who’s tried to find a document from a list of 1000 search results knows, it can
sometimes be enormously frustrating trying to find the
most simple and commonly requested information.
Intelligent agents aren’t so smart after all
As a result, search engines have become more and more
clever at profiling the information we look at or think we
need, and suggesting other documents of a similar nature. This concept, whilst sounding great in theory, is
disappointing in practice. As those who work in the media can tell you, it is virtually impossible to create successful TV channels that are tailored to the needs of
individual viewers, even with enormous amounts of historical data on viewing habits. Knowledge of people’s
preferences and history are just not very useful when it
comes to trying to find the information they’re after in
the present.
These frustrations are made worse by a fatal flaw
common to all automated search technologies and ‘intelligent agents’. This is that no matter how clever they are,
they cannot tell whether the information contained in
documents is accurate, relevant, or up-to-date. And if
you’ve ever examined the information held in corporate
data stores, you’ll know that over 90% of the documents
they contain are not accurate, relevant, or up-to-date.
The number of backups, temporary files, out-of-date
files, and generally useless information far outweighs
the few actually useful documents that could usefully be
shared with other employees.
These problems are not helped by the lack of attention
paid to publishing and maintenance processes. Corporate portals tend to have many tools for connecting information to the intranet from fileservers, mailservers,
and databases for example. The tools for empowering
teams and individuals to maintain and add to this information are much less advanced.
Business Information Review, 18(2), May 2001
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31
Corporate portals need to
solve real-world problems
Many intranets have become victims of their own ambitions and early successes. As intranets become ever
larger and more expensive to maintain, managers are
struggling to deliver real business benefits from them. A
focus on quick wins to prove the technology and its potential benefits, followed by extravagant promises from
suppliers and high expectations, has led to the rapid
growth of intranets within companies. Easy savings
have been made by switching to online corporate directories, and by eliminating publishing and distribution
costs for corporate manuals and other widely distributed
corporate information.
Most companies have intranet teams to create standards and provide a central development resource for
the rest of the company. These teams are blessed with
HTML, graphic design and Web authoring and development skills but, as sites grow ever larger, they struggle to
cope with demand. Alongside the central corporate
intranet site, ‘unofficial’ sites have proliferated simply
because setting up and creating sites is so easy. Any PC
running Windows can be set up as a Web server on the internal network, and the software required to get simple
sites up and running is readily available.
Intranet chaos
Internal Web servers have proliferated as more and
more departments within companies create a presence
on their intranet. It should come as no surprise that IT
departments usually have more intranet sites than any
other division within a company. The number of pages
on ‘official’ intranet sites is usually vastly outnumbered
by those that have sprung up elsewhere. Many companies are very surprised to discover how many Web sites
there actually are on their intranet when an audit is
done.
The vast majority of these sites are ‘home made’, and
few, if any, adhere to corporate standards. They are put
together with different tools, have different interfaces,
and contain information of wildly varying depth,
breadth and value. Many cannot be accessed directly
from the ‘official’ intranet, and are only known to a few
users. Inconsistent navigation means that every site
must be fully browsed in order to discover exactly how
much or how little information is available. Many sites
32
are not indexed by search engines, making search engine
results less useful than they should be.
This lack of coordination makes finding information
on the intranet much more difficult than it should be.
Corporate portals need first of all to address this issue
and allow companies to leverage the investments made
in their intranet to date. Corporate portals must make
sense of all existing intranet sites for users, and not just
add yet more content to an already confusing morass of
information.
Neglected sites
Using the intranet would be a difficult experience even if
all these sites were well maintained, but unfortunately
most are not. The excitement and the enjoyment for
teams creating intranet sites seems to be limited to the
initial creation phase: learning HTML, discussing what
menus there should be, and playing with various tools
available to create fancy graphics and rotating icons.
Creating, publishing, and maintaining useful business
information, however, is a much more mundane task.
Unfortunately it is only these mundane tasks that provide any lasting value. There are no benefits to be had
from a beautifully constructed site that contains no useful information.
Even worse, sites that have fallen out-of-date can actually be damaging. Without any human interaction, all
information posted on the intranet must be taken at face
value. This can be very misleading if no indication is
given of when it was published, by whom, and for how
long the information is valid. Unfortunately most
intranet sites spring up without their creators giving
any thought to exactly how much time is needed to keep
them up-to-date, or who will be responsible for these updates. Organizational changes also lead to big problems,
and out-of-date information is often left unattended. As
out-of-date or inaccurate information builds up, it destroys any trust users have in the contents of the
intranet, and means that many users don’t bother using
them any more.
To help prevent the situation from getting worse, corporate portals need to provide useful statistics on what
sites are being used and what aren’t, so Webmasters can
remove sites that are of little or no benefit. Without this
information, intranets become more and more bogged
down with irrelevant and out-of-date information.
Business Information Review, 18(2), May 2001
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Overworked Webmasters
Most corporate Webmasters are struggling to cope with
the demands being placed upon them. These include:
• keeping top-level content fresh by regularly
updating and adding to corporate pages
• designing, creating and implementing departmental
level sites
• managing the intranet infrastructure, including
checking for broken links and running the search
services and
• setting and enforcing corporate standards across sites.
A centralized approach worked when ambitions were
small and the number of sites was limited. As intranets
have become larger, however, the maintenance overhead
has outgrown the ability of a single team to keep up without using sophisticated content management systems.
Even then, most tools are specialized systems designed
for Web professionals, not departmental level publishers. This makes delegating responsibility for publishing
and maintenance very difficult. As a result, many
Webmasters are now running just to stand still, and the
central intranet team has become a bottleneck.
Differing management priorities, and the lack of budgets for central teams mean it can be difficult to coordinate approaches across the company. This often leads to
conflicts about the ‘best’ way of designing sites, ownership of sites, and how sites should be linked together.
Corporate portals need to provide a way for central
intranet teams to retain control over the development
and management of the corporate intranet, but without
becoming an administrative bottleneck. This requires a
mechanism for delegating as much responsibility for
publishing and maintaining information as possible to
the business units themselves. All these issues must be
overcome if the intranet is to become a powerful business tool used by employees on a daily basis.
users? By concentrating on eliminating the problems
outlined above: organizing the intranet for ease of use,
enabling publishers to focus on content, maintaining
sites to regain user trust, and enabling Webmasters to
focus on delivering business benefits.
Corporate portals should provide a new strategy for
developing the corporate intranet which properly takes
into account the maintenance overheads required to ensure sustainable growth.
Organize for ease of use
Companies need a corporate portal to make sense of the
intranet for the average user. The portal must be trusted
as the starting point from which users can find any site
and any information that may be useful to them. It is important therefore that the portal takes into account all
sites on the intranet rather than just a portion, and provides comprehensive browsing and indexing, as well as
search facilities, for users. Without such a facility, users
will remain unaware of large portions of the intranet,
and it will fail to properly leverage the efforts made to
construct and maintain useful departmental sites. The
challenge is to create a navigation tool that is more useful than the user’s list of favourites.
Information should be organized along lines much
more familiar to users – the shelves of a bookshop, or the
old reliable filing cabinet. Both of these information
storage devices make it very easy for the user to quickly
find the area he thinks information should be in. All the
available information can be browsed quickly, and there
are no hidden areas that may be easily missed.
A homepage on the intranet should be much more like
the table of contents of a book, than its cover. As a business tool, the aim is to let people know what information
is available, and to get them to it as quickly as possible,
rather than trying to attract them into a site and force
them to browse around to see what delights it contains.
Menu structures should be made as simple as possible,
hierarchies removed where unnecessary, and information about site ownership, document author and publication date, and contact details prominently displayed.
Enable publishers to focus on content
A practical approach is
required
So how do corporate Webmasters go about trying to regain control of their intranets and the trust of their
The intranet will contain far more useful, accurate, relevant and up-to-date information if the emphasis is put
on individuals and teams to publish information rather
than relying on automated processes. Departmental
publishers must be freed from having to worry about the
technical aspects of intranet publishing so that they can
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33
concentrate solely on providing and maintaining useful
content. Most departmental publishers work only part
time on the intranet, so it is important that the tools they
are provided with are suited to their role.
Corporate portals should be designed from the start
with future maintenance in mind. For example adding
new information should not require new graphics to be
created, or documents to be converted. Menu structures
should not need to be changed very frequently, and
straightforward updates for departmental publishers
should be as simple a process as sending an Email. It is
worth remembering that organizational changes occur
relatively often, and sites should be able to cope with
such changes easily.
Publishing processes must be simple and intuitive, so
that, even after weeks without use, publishers can pick
up where they left off without the need for any retraining. Most professional Web publishing tools are designed
for the creation of Internet sites, where version control,
dynamic delivery capability, and approval processes are
key to ensuring the integrity of the site and its information. This additional functionality actually hinders
rather than helps the departmental publisher by forcing
them to learn and use unnecessary and complex functionality.
Departmental publishers require simple and easy to
use publication, approval, and security processes that
are appropriate for the intranet. Overburdening publishers with time-consuming or confusing processes will
guarantee that they will instead continue to rely on
Email to distribute informaation around the organization
Maintain sites to regain trust
Maintenance is crucial to the success of an intranet.
Poorly maintained sites with broken links, out-of-date
and inaccurate information, error messages, or incorrect
HTML alienate many users. Corporate portals need to
provide tools that can be used to deal with these problems as soon as they occur. Otherwise users will assume
the content available is as poor as the navigation provided, and mistrust the information available within the
portal.
Users will only revisit sites if they can trust the information they find there. This means that content must be
frequently checked and updated, but not necessarily
continually added to. New content is only of value so long
as all the existing information is also accurate and
34
up-to-date. Content owners should schedule regular
maintenance checks, or be notified automatically when
content needs to be reviewed.
Corporate portals should be able to provide meaningful usage statistics that can be used to determine the
value of information over time. If no one is using it then
unnecessary content should be removed. In this way departments can properly assess the value of providing and
maintaining information on an intranet, and ensure
that they do not outstretch their capabilities.
Develop the intranet as a
business tool
A corporate portal should put in place the tools and procedures necessary to allow departments to quickly and
simply create, maintain, and update their own Web sites,
and provide appropriate navigation that ties them all together. Webmasters need to be freed up to focus on adding value and concentrate on developing the intranet as
a business tool. Their resources should not be drained by
the endless creation and maintenance of menu structures for departmental sites, updating hundreds of
pages every time the organization changes, and fixing
problems caused by over-complicated publishing tools.
The more time Webmasters can spend with departments discussing the value of their content, encouraging
and cajoling them into providing more and more useful
information, the more valuable the intranet as a whole
becomes. This in turn attracts more and more users to
the intranet, generating further demand for information. Eventually those departments which have shown
no interest in using the intranet and which still don’t
have an internal Web site will be persuaded of its merits,
and the true value of a successful intranet will be revealed.
It is a long and slow process, however, and until an
intranet becomes well organized, well maintained, and
easy to use, Webmasters will continue to struggle to just
stand still. It is this problem that corporate portals need
to solve.
Reference
[1] Corporate and B2B Portals: Implementation
Datapoints, The Delphi Group, April 6, 200, available from
www.delphigroup.com
Business Information Review, 18(2), May 2001
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Knowledge Management
Assessment Two
Organizational issues regarding corporate memories:
the implementation of a corporate portal
Steven Kelly
-1-
Knowledge Management
Assessment Two
Abstract
Corporate memory is a relatively new concept within the field of knowledge
management. Organizations are continuously turning to technology to
increase the flow of knowledge and information throughout their business.
Introducing a corporate portal is one method an organization can use to
enable employees to gain easy access to digital knowledge and information in
the form of documents. The ease of document access which is relevant to an
employees work should mean that the employees within the organization
become more efficient and productive. This should lead to the organization
gaining a valuable competitive advantage of its rivals. However, creating and
sustaining an effective corporate portal is not an easy task and there are
many issues which an organization should contemplate before implementing
a corporate portal. Several organizational issues are presented in this report
with a view that each issue is important and that by neglecting these issues,
an organizations corporate portal is destined to fail.
-2-
Knowledge Management
Assessment Two
Contents
Abstract _____________________________________________________ 2
1.0
Introduction _____________________________________________ 4
2.0
Organizational issues regarding the implementation of corporate
portals _________________________________________________ 6
2.1
Organizational alignment should be priority 1 _________________ 6
2.2
Organizational change does not happen by chance ____________ 7
2.3
Focus on user’s needs: Get to know your different audiences ____ 8
2.4
Quality of content is more important than quantity of content _____ 9
2.5
The corporate portal should reduce information overload and simplify
access to information, templates, and expertise from within and
outside an organization _________________________________ 10
3.0
Conclusions ____________________________________________ 12
4.0
References ____________________________________________ 14
5.0
Bibliography____________________________________________ 15
-3-
Knowledge Management
Assessment Two
1.0 Introduction
With the introduction of computers, organizations began to automate many of
their existing processes, such as financial transactions by using specialist
software. As organizations were (and still are) usually split up into different
departments, it was not unusual for organizations to have several different
database systems with some overlap and inconsistencies within this stored
information. To combat these problems, software has been made available
which allows information to flow more efficiently throughout an organizations
different database systems and processes have been used by organizations
to amalgamate several smaller database systems into one large database
system.
Organizations have been quick to realise that the principle of faster
information flows can also be applied to faster knowledge sharing and that by
sharing knowledge and information more effectively, the organization may
become more competitive. By developing a knowledge repository where all of
the employee knowledge captured can be stored, an organization can
develop a corporate memory. Corporate memories (also referred to as
organizational memories) are defined by Conklin (1996) as being “the record
of an organization that is embodied in a set of documents and artifacts.”
These documents are usually in a digital format so that they can be stored
and accessed via computer systems.
On the subject of corporate memories, many authors, such as Conklin, 1996,
and van Heijst, van der Spek and Kruizinga, 1996, comment that at present,
there is no methodology for setting up a corporate memory which will provide
answers to real questions and improve business performance. Corporate
portals (also referred to as a ‘corportal’) are one method which organizations
are using to improve their business performance. Whatis.com defines a
corporate portal as being “a model that emphasizes the exploitation of a
company’s information resources. A corportal can be internal (an intranet), a
public site, or, with appropriate safeguards, both combined.” This assignment
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looks at the organizational implications of implementing a corporate portal
with a view to increasing overall business performance and thus gaining
valuable competitive advantage.
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2.0 Organizational issues regarding the
implementation of corporate portals
There are many different issues that an organization which is contemplating
implementing a corporate portal should consider. Terra and Gordon (2003) list
twelve lessons which an organization should learn from in order to create a
corporate portal (CP) which takes into account both the human, organizational
and key business elements. These twelve lessons are:
1. Organizational alignment should be priority 1
2. Be clear about the business case, value proposition, and metrics
3. Innovative rewards and recognition strategies are critical
4. Organizational change does not happen by chance
5. Communicate, communicate, communicate!
6. New roles and responsibilities need to be clearly assigned
7. Focus on users’ needs: Get to know your different audiences
8. Online communities require careful planning, infrastructure, and
ongoing support
9. Quality of content is more important than quantity of content
10. The CP should reduce information overload and simplify access to
information, templates, and expertise from within and outside an
organization
11. Set priorities on the integration of IT applications
12. Develop a careful due-diligence process to select the CP platform
All of the above lessons have different impacts on the way in which the
organization implements and views the CP. Several of these lessons shall
now be considered in more detail, with a view to ensuring that the
implementation of the CP is a success.
2.1
Organizational alignment should be priority 1
The organization must ensure that every member of the organization shares
the same view of the CP and that employee’s views and behaviours may
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need to change in order for the whole of the organization to view the CP in the
same way. This is because the workplace culture and business processes
within the organization will need to change in order for the full potential of the
CP to be realised by the organization. As with many projects, senior
management involvement is crucial in ensuring that the project is a success.
The reason for this involvement in a CP project is because internal and
external sources of information and knowledge will be needed for different
groups of employees within different departments of the organization.
Regarding the support which senior management should provide, Terra and
Gordon (2003) note that, “This includes providing long-term resources,
budget, and time to develop sound IT applications and corresponding new
processes and management policies.” This works on the premise that if
employees at an organization see senior management fully committing to and
also outlining the benefits of the project (in this case, improved knowledge
sharing), then employees will be more inclined to support and in the future,
share knowledge with each other via the CP. If senior management lack the
commitment required to ensure that the implementation and use of the CP is
a success, then it is quite likely that the CP will become under-utilised and / or
fail because its purpose will not be aligned with the organization’s needs.
2.2
Organizational change does not happen by chance
Research has shown that many organizations fail when implementing a CP.
Terra and Gordon (2003) note that one reason for this is because
organizational change requires “a balance of sophisticated technology, new
processes, and human capital strategies to support change efforts.” The
different project stakeholders should be fully involved with the implementation
project and be kept informed of progress at all times to ensure that the
implementation can be steered in the correct direction. Regarding the issue of
involving stakeholders, Terra and Gordon (2003) note that this is especially
important because “future deployments will cut across organizational
boundaries; and for continued investment support, the most senior executives
need to actively nurture and support the CP deployment.” Sometimes gaining
the support of senior executives can be extremely difficult and risky for
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employees, especially if the end result will change business processes, and
so broaching the subject of project sponsorship should be approached
carefully, or through an external consultancy. Terra and Gordon (2003)
suggest that this could also be achieved by enlisting support from “experts”
within the organization. This is because the views of the “experts” are likely to
be respected and thus more employees will be inclined to support the
implementation of the CP. In order for a CP to succeed, change management
needs to be implemented within the organization so that employees learn why
the CP is necessary and how it will help them to become more productive
through increased knowledge sharing facilitated by the introduction of the new
portal.
2.3 Focus on user’s needs: Get to know your different
audiences
Employees will have different views of the CP and these views should be
researched thoroughly so that employees at all levels within the organization
use the CP in their daily tasks. With regards to developing an Intranet site that
will allow employees to access large amounts of structured and useful
information, Rayport (2000) notes that “If deep, rich information is the lifeblood
of business, then users should develop a thirst for it at the source. This is
tantamount to addiction – and, for information officers building information
resources, that has to be the goal.” Most importantly, the CP needs to be;
useable by all members of the organization and also easier to use than
previous sources of knowledge. Terra and Gordon (2003) give several
examples of how functions within a CP can be used to influence employees to
use the CP, such as; making it easy to post information, setting up automatic
quality and categorization and providing e-mail alerts which are linked to
public folders. To decide which services a CP should provide, the organization
has to undertake a detailed requirements analysis so that the CP can be
tailor-made to individual groups within the organization. After the analysis, a
test CP should be built so that prospective users can make comments on
what information they need access to and how the interface of the CP should
be structured to enable more efficient searching and locating of relevant
information. If the end users are ignored, then it is probable that they will be
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Assessment Two
dissatisfied with the CP and therefore, it is highly unlikely that they will use the
system, resulting in its failure. As CP’s use web browsers to display
documents and HTML to provide links to content within the site, training end
users on how to navigate and publish content onto the CP is necessary to
enable users to publish their own knowledge / information and search for
knowledge / information which may be necessary to a project they are
working on.
2.4 Quality of content is more important than quantity of
content
If the information contained within a CP is often incorrect or corrupt then users
will not rely on the CP for information and the flow of knowledge / information
throughout the organization will be severely impaired. This points to the fact
that the quality of knowledge / information within the CP must be extremely
high. Terra and Gordon (2003) list a number of different strategies which
should be considered when implementing a CP. Several of these strategies
shall now be briefly introduced.
•
A content strategy should be developed before the CP is developed.
•
There should be validation checks on the information supplied to
ensure that the content is up-to-date and trustworthy. These checks
could be carried out by experts or quality committees.
•
The process of publishing content should be simplified as much as
possible to ensure that users are encouraged to contribute knowledge
to the CP.
•
Information which employees cannot either find or access within the
CP and the reasons for this should be investigated and resolved by the
organization.
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•
Assessment Two
Users should be frequently consulted and surveyed so that the CP and
the information contained within it remain relevant to the information
which is required by the users. Also, search terms could be monitored
to find which information employees are constantly searching for so
that more relevant information can be provided in a faster time through
the process of query optimization.
•
Users should be able to comment on information contained within the
CP. Terra and Gordon (2003) note that this is because “Knowledge
grows as it is applied or reused.” Comments should be able to be
viewed alongside the original document(s) and also posted to the
author(s) of the document(s) so that a dialogue can be entered into. By
doing so, value can be added to the documents within the CP.
2.5 The corporate portal should reduce information overload
and simplify access to information, templates, and expertise
from within and outside an organization
Employees mainly use CP’s to find information and knowledge to make their
jobs easier. As employees who undertake different types of jobs constantly
search for distinct types of knowledge / information that is essential for their
job, they build up search profiles. These profiles can then be used to
personalise the information which the employee receives. This can be
achieved by creating different user taxonomies within the CP. The Oxford
Dictionary defines taxonomy as being a “classification.” The classification of
knowledge / information is extremely important as it goes some way to helping
ensure that relevant documents can be found by the CP’s search engine.
Regarding the use of taxonomies within a CP, Terra and Gordon (2003) note
that “The taxonomy should make it intuitive for employees to browse for
specific information and “bump” into related but not anticipated topics or
categories.”
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Whilst it is the aim of CP’s to provide access to knowledge / information,
access to too much knowledge / information can leave employees bewildered
and lost meaning that the knowledge / information is often ignored and in
extreme cases, deleted. To ensure that employees do not suffer from
‘information overload’, some organizations allow employees to select which
categories of information they would like to receive and how frequently they
would like to receive this information. This guarantees that only the
information which the employee has requested is sent to them.
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3.0 Conclusions
In conclusion, whilst only a few organizational implications have been
presented in this report regarding the implementation of a corporate portal,
these implications are of great significance as they affect the use of the
corporate portal by employees and should be researched thoroughly by an
organization which is considering implementing a corporate portal.
Firstly, aligning the corporate portal with the organization is important because
the corporate portal must offer the resources which employees need access
to. If the corporate portal does not, then employees will find little use for it and
it will be under-utilised. It is also especially important that the project is
supported by senior management as they control many aspects of the portal
such as its budget.
Secondly, the organization needs to be willing to change some of its
processes so that it can benefit fully from the corporate portal. The
management of this change will be critical to the portal’s success and
therefore, an external consultancy may need to be brought in by the
organization.
Thirdly, different employees will need access to different types and amounts
of knowledge / information. Functions, such as e-mail access will need to be
built into the portal so that it keeps the employee addicted to using it.
Employees should be heavily involved with the design of the portal to ensure
that the layout is appropriate and that the knowledge / information which is
returned to the employee following a search is relevant and helpful. It may
also be useful to include the employees in the arrangement of the various
taxonomies which will be used in the corporate portal.
Fourthly, the content within the portal should be of a high quality and updated
regularly to ensure that the latest information is always available. This is
because, if there is a large amount of content, but it is of poor quality, then it is
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likely that employees will not use the portal as they don’t trust it. The
organization should also be aware that value can be added to existing
documents by allowing employees to comment on them.
Finally, whilst a corporate portal is aiming to give employees access to more
knowledge / information, it is important to realise that access to too much
information can confuse employees and this can lead to employees ignoring
future knowledge / information and ultimately poorer business decisions being
made. Personalisation of information is one way in which employees can be
exposed to limited amounts of knowledge / information, whilst ensuring that it
is relevant to the task they are performing.
If these issues are considered by an organization when contemplating
implementing a corporate portal then it is likely that the portal will be
welcomed and well-used by employees. If this is the case, then both the
management and employees should see the flow of knowledge / information
throughout the organization increase, and this should contribute to an
amplification of the organization’s competitive advantage over its rivals.
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4.0 References
Conklin, E. J. 1996, Capturing Organizational Memory [Online] Available:
http://www.wlcho.com/02/14/01/60/96/01/0103.htm [2003, May 14]
Rayport, J. F. 2000, Information resources: don’t attract, addict, in Mastering
Information Management, eds D. A. Marchand, T. H. Davenport & T. Dickson,
Prentice Hall, pp. 42 – 45
Terra, J. C. and Gordon, C. 2003, Realizing the Promise of Corporate Portals:
Leveraging Knowledge for Business Success, Butterworth-Heinemann
The Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 1987, Oxford
Whatis, Corporate Portal [Online] Available:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893,sid9_gci534563,00.html
[2003, May 4]
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5.0 Bibliography
Bukowitz, W. R. and Williams, R. C. 2000, The Knowledge Management
Fieldbook, Financial Times Prentice Hall
Choo, C. W. & Bontis, H. 2002, The Strategic Management of Intellectual
Capital and Organizational Knowledge, Oxford University Press
Fuller, S. 2002, Knowledge Management Foundations, ButterworthHeinemann
Gamble, P. R. and Blac, J. 2001, Knowledge Management: a state of the art
guide, Kogan Page
Heijst, Gertjan van, Spek, Rob van der and Kruizinga, E. 1996, Organizing
Corporate Memories [Online] Available:
http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/KAW/KAW96/vanheijst/HTMLDOC.html [2003, May
12]
Pearlson, K. E. 2001, Managing and Using Information Systems: A Strategic
Approach, Wiley
Saint-Onge, W. & Wallace, D. 2003, Leveraging Communities of Practice for
Strategic Advantage, Butterworth Heinemann
Swanstrom, E. 1999, Knowledge Management, Wiley
Vasconcelos, J. A. B, Kimble, C, Gouveia, F. R. and Kudenko, D. 2001,
Reasoning in corporate memory systems: a case study of group
competencies [Online] Available: http://wwwusers.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/research/ISMICK-2001-paper.pdf [2003, May 8]
Suleiman, J. and Watson, R. 1994, Groupware: A Gateway to Organizational
Memory [Online] Available:
http://www.terry.uga.edu/groupware/news/jan94/doc1.htm [2003, May 11]
Webb, S. P. 1998, Knowledge Management: linchpin of change: some
practical guidelines, Aslib
Wiig, K. M. 1993, Knowledge Management Foundations: Thinking about
Thinking – How Organizations Create, Represent and Use Knowledge,
Schema Press
– 15 –
Creating Value From Intangible Assets: An Employee Portal Case
Study
David Mendes1, Jorge Gomes2 and Mário Romão2
1ISCTE, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
2ISEG, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
davidmendes@hotmail.com
jorge.gomes@phd.iseg.ulisboa.pt
mario.romao@iseg.ulisboa.pt
Abstract: Today’s increasing business competition and information technologies development have both led to huge
corporate organisational changes and have raised the importance of intangible assets along the value chain. Nowadays it
became essential to understand employee portals’ business value and to build adequate change management programmes.
The importance of using visual representations of strategic intent to understand how organisational resources are used to
create value is obvious. Strategy Map (SM) and Balanced Scorecard (BSC) clarify how intangible assets are aligned with
strategy, in order to create value for the organisation. However, these seem not to address organisational concerns related
to change management. To conveniently address these matters, the authors propose a framework to map the cause-effect
relationships that generates business value, as well as to provide top management and decision makers with the information
needed for a suitable top-down commitment and sponsorship, essential to bring about appropriate change management
and benefits’ realisation. SM and Benefits Dependency Network (BDN) were combined, resulting in a suitable framework to
help organisations enhance their knowledge usage, improve risk reduction of investment failure or misuse, and ultimately
contribute to capture more value from investments in intangible assets. In this paper the authors show how a corporate
employee portal contributes to the intangible assets value creation process, explain the relevant innovation and support
processes involved and also the changes required guaranteeing benefits realisation. The case study allowed us to conclude
that, although the “promotion of organisational culture and corporate alignment” is not among managers’ most frequentlyexpected outcomes, neither it is a business driver for the implementation of Employee Portals, it should be considered as
being a benefit that helps decision makers to understand the value realised from this type of investments.
Keywords: intranet, employee portal, business value, knowledge management, strategy maps, benefits management,
change management, corporate culture
1. Introduction and purpose
A skilled workforce, patents and know-how, systems and technology, strong customer relationships, brands,
unique organisational designs and processes, amongst others, altogether generate most of corporate growth
and shareholder value (Lev, 2004). Enterprise portals are Web browser interfaces into a single point which are
used within organisations to promote the collection, sharing and dissemination of information throughout their
organisations (Detlor, 2000).
Employee portals are relevant informational assets which perform an important role in an organisation’s
strategy. However, justifying returns from investments in these solutions is not an easy task as their
implementation demands large changes in culture, behaviour and processes. Although Employee Portal benefits
are widely studied (Benbya et al, 2004; Dias, 2001; Lai, 2001), it is common sense that is difficult to identify the
return on investments from Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects, especially as the
majority of their benefits are intangible. In ICT projects, elements like networks, computers and software are
just a small part of the entire implementation costs. In these projects the delivery of major business benefits
come from complementary investments (Ward & Daniel, 2006). Brynjolfsson, Hitt & Yang (2002) point out that
successful projects required careful attention to management, employee training, and changes in areas that are
apparently non-related to the business. Therefore, it is essential to understand how employee portals’ add
business value and then build adequate change management programmes.
The objective of our research was to understand how an employee portal contributes to the creation of
intangible assets value and additionally to discover what were the relevant innovation and support processes
involved, as well as the changes required to guarantee the foreseen benefits’ realisation. The results showed
that the employee portal improved strategy communication and corporate alignment in the organisation.
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David Mendes, Jorge Gomes and Mário Romão
2. Literature review
The significant growth of intangible assets became clear by the changes within the tangible and intangible asset
structure in modern organisations. According to Armitage et al (2006), three of the most important aspects of
organisational capital are: leadership, teamwork and communication. Together, these are responsible for the
main changes necessary for implementing an organisational strategy. Marr et al (2004), following other authors,
highlight the relevance of corporate culture and state that it influences employee competencies, and vice versa,
reinforces the achievement of overall goals and provides a common and distinctive method for transmitting and
processing information. The importance of developing an adequate corporate culture for the promotion of
collaboration, knowledge sharing and innovation, is consensual among academics and practitioners alike. In fact,
Bharadwaj (2000) describes knowledge management as being a social driven process that requires an enormous
organisational change, and he states that creating a culture for knowledge management involves both
technological and social aspects, such as changing the organisation structure, control and communication
systems and also reward structures. The use of collaboration practices in companies is the starting point for
creating innovative processes, products or services that differentiate the company from its competitors (Nieto
& Santamaria, 2007). To make these changes possible, companies must: Implement a culture of collaboration,
trust, knowledge sharing and competences (Lai, 2001); Implement tools for exploiting collective knowledge,
experience and communities (Martensson, 2000); Create the habit to use these tools (Martini et al, 2009). The
development of such skills and abilities is the foundation for the success of intranet initiatives and this demands
both time and investments in communication and education, in order to modify behaviours and overcome
existing barriers to non-use (Martini et al, 2009). Intangible assets have been asserting themselves as a major
source of competitive advantage and yet no tools were designed to identify and describe the value they create
(Kaplan & Norton, 2000). The concept of BSC was introduced in 1992 to capture this value creation through the
measurement of an organisation’s performance in four perspectives. The SM provides a common framework
and language that can be used to describe any strategy (Kaplan & Norton, 2000). Reading the SM from bottom
to top, one understands how employees need certain knowledge, skills, and systems – learning and growth
perspective, to innovate and build the right strategic capabilities and efficiencies – internal process perspective,
in order that they can deliver specific value to the market, based on customer perspective, which will then lead
to greater shareholder value from a financial perspective (Kaplan & Norton, 2000). Armitage and Scholey (2006)
propose a completed generic SM, which shows all three types of capital working together to help the company
execute the various elements of the internal business perspective. Aligned learning and growth and internal
business processes, i.e., “how we plan to accomplish it”, help facilitate the achievement of customer and
financial strategies, i.e., “what we want to accomplish”. Information technology, by itself, does not create any
benefits. Rather, it is business and organisational changes that produce most of benefits (Ward & Daniel, 2006).
According to Kaplan and Norton (2004), for this to occur, they need to be adequately aligned with the
organisation’s strategy, and integrated programmes need to be implemented to enhance all intangible assets in
a coordinated way. Hughes and Morton’s (2006) research shows that the productivity earnings and the
competitive advantage to be gained from IT lie not in the technology per se, but in the way that certain assets
can lead to new products and processes, creating further sources of sustainable competitive advantage,
examples being: organisational processes, embedded know-how, people skills and new organisational structure
innovations. The main goal of implementing an intranet is to facilitate knowledge sharing within the organisation
(Boersma & Kingma, 2006). Intranets, central document repositories and knowledge databases are important
information capital assets which perform an important role in the corporation’s strategy when used effectively
(Armitage and Scholey, 2006). These tools evolved from a communication and information-sharing stage to a
consolidated workplace (Forrester Research, 2010), and they are essential for promoting communication,
collaboration and the sharing of information within an organisation (Urbach et al, 2009). A corporate portal
enables an organisation to provide users with a single gateway to the personalised information that they need
to make informed business decisions (Shilakes & Tylman, 1998). Going a little further down the evolution of
these tools, according to some known maturity frameworks (Forrester Research, 2010; Hawking & Stein, 2003),
the intranets evolved to becoming portals, which are now much more complex solutions that provide other
organisational objectives. A portal can be seen as being a way to access disclosed information within a company,
which is stored in multiple and heterogeneous systems, using different formats. A portal is, therefore, a single
point of access to internet resources and an integration platform that focusses on organisational business
processes unification. Portals synchronise knowledge and applications, creating a unique vision for organisations
that have evolved by integrating a variety of services (Benbya et al, 2004). An Employee Portal aims to provide
employees with the in-time relevant information that they need to perform their tasks and to make efficient
business decisions. As one of the tools for communicating a new strategy, getting employees to use this common
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David Mendes, Jorge Gomes and Mário Romão
platform may lead the company to experience some of the following benefits, among others (Dias, 2001; Lai,
2001; Nieto & Santamaria, 2007): Improved corporate communication and greater opportunity for
collaboration; Improved sharing of knowledge, which may be crucial for maintaining a competitive advantage
over the competition, as technological collaboration and the sharing of information impacts positively on
product innovation; Improved employee service/convenience in accessing information and services with more
autonomy for employees in managing human resources processes and information, which results in reducing
costs and in improving employee productivity and organisation competitiveness; Greater operational efficiency
and improvement in decision quality. It is consensual amongst academics and practitioners that ICT investment
should be carefully justified, measured and controlled (Milis et al, 2009), and yet a surprising percentage of
enterprises failed to adopt fundamental best practices regarding portal sponsorship and governance. Research
strongly indicates that the feasibility study of capital investment in today’s companies and organisations is
mainly based on financial cost-benefit analysis (Milis et al, 2009). This may occur because most ICT investment
decisions still remain with finance managers, and also because capital investment-appraisal techniques are well
known, understood and practiced (Milis et al, 2009). The benefits generated by the intranet not only serve the
initial development, but also for ensuring that the intranet becomes a tool that brings added value to the
business (Cury & Stancich, 2000). The benefits management approach was developed to enable organisations
to improve the value realized from specific investments, but it can also be used to formulate, manage and
implement strategic change programmes and also to help formulate and implement business strategies (Ward
& Daniel, 2006). The BDN is a key output from the activity of determining both the changes required for the
delivery of each benefit and how the ICT assets will enable these changes to come about (Peppard & Ward,
2007; Ward & Daniel, 2006). The BDN provides a framework for explicitly link both the overall investment
objectives and the desirable benefits with the business changes that are necessary to deliver these benefits, as
well as the essential IT functionality required to enable these changes to occur (Gomes & Romão, 2013; Peppard
& Ward, 2007). There is a clear understanding that benefits only result from the active involvement of business
managers in defining and owning these benefits and in carrying out the changes that deliver them (Ward &
Daniel, 2006).
3. Overcome the strategy map limitations
SMs are important tools for communicating strategy and for showing how intangible assets align with strategy
to create value for an organisation. However, for this tool there is little evidence of an interrelation between
assets, the identification of support processes, the impact of internal processes in intangible assets and the
identification of strategic enabling changes (Mendes & Romão, 2013). Therefore, the model can be
complemented and reinforced with these elements, which will result in a stronger framework for helping
organisations enhance their strategic knowledge, reducing the risk of projects failure and also to capture real
value from their investments. Therefore, some enhancements were made to the SM in order to overcome the
identified limitations (Mendes & Romão, 2013).
Strategy Map do not evidence an interrelation between assets – Many academics support the resource-based
view of the firm, where different assets depend on each other to create value as they are interconnected (Marr
et al, 2004). Contribution of a particular asset can rarely be expressed independently from other assets, namely:
skills, expertise, or corporate culture (Marr et al, 2004). In SM, intangible assets are presented as separated
categories, they are connected with value-creating processes independently, but they are not related. Exploiting
asset complementarily allows assets to be used more efficiently to strengthen an organisation’s competitive
advantage (Hughes & Morton, 2006). Marr et al (2004) claimed that without understanding the
interrelationships and interdependencies between assets, it is impossible to have efficient management of all
organisational assets. Kaplan and Norton (2004) states that the value of intangible assets is derived from their
interrelationships, and cannot be measured independently To overcome this limitation in SM, and based on the
importance of identifying and communicating synergies amongst assets, the authors introduced the “asset
synergy” concept in the proposed theoretical framework.
Lack of evidence on how internal processes positively impact assets – Ulrich et al., (2004) identify organizational
capabilities (collective skills, abilities, and expertise) as relevant intangible assets to the value generation. These
capabilities “are the outcome of investments in staffing, training, compensation, communication, and other
human resources areas. They represent the ways that people and resources are brought together to accomplish
work” (Ulrich, et al., 2004 p. 119). Casadeus-Masanell, et al., (2007 p. 5) define business model as “a set of
choices and consequences” and identify intangible assets as consequences and not choices. They also describe
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David Mendes, Jorge Gomes and Mário Romão
virtuous cycles as feedback loops generated by business models dynamics that iterate and strengthen some
components of the business model (Casadeus-Masanell, et al., 2007). Another example of this kind of feedback
regards to organizational change required to perform efficient knowledge management processes. It is known
that SM does not show how internal processes impact assets. According to Norton and Kaplan (2000), value is
created in the organisation through its managed internal processes and the development of human, information
and organisational capital. They group internal processes into four main clusters: operations management
processes, customer management processes, innovation processes and regulatory and social processes (Norton
& Kaplan, 2004). Ulrich and Smallwood (2004) identify organisational capabilities as being relevant intangible
assets for value generation. These capabilities are the outcome of investments in staffing, training,
compensation, communication, and other human resources areas. They represent the ways that people and
resources are brought together to accomplish work (Ulrich & Smallwood, 2004). But creating a culture for
knowledge management requires changes to intangible assets like organization structure, information systems
and reward structures (Bharadwaj, 2000). To overcome the described limitations in SM, it is suggested the
introduction of the “virtuous process feedback” concept in the proposed theoretical framework.
The BSC internal perspective does not consider support processes – In the BSC there is no focus on support
processes. Examples of investments in human resources areas (Ulrich & Smallwood, 2004) include organisational
capabilities such as: talent, speed, shared mind-set, coherent brand identity, accountability, collaboration,
learning, leadership, customer connectivity, strategic unity, innovation and efficiency. Social aspects related to
organisational change need to be considered in knowledge management processes (Bharadwaj, 2000), which
are managed in organisations’ support processes. Because they are not usually implemented, we’ve suggested
the introduction of a “support processes group” in the internal perspective of the proposed theoretical
framework.
A lack of detail on enabling changes – SM does not identify the enabling changes (e.g.: training, new working
practices, communication) needed to foster benefits realization. Those changes are prerequisites to achieve the
business changes and are essential for bringing the system into effective operation within the organisation
(Ward & Daniel, 2006). Bharadwaj (2000) also highlights the difficulty for organisations in managing effectively
both ICT and the social aspects of knowledge management. He states that this social process requires
tremendous organisational change and identifies organisation structure, control and communication systems
and rewards structures as being the assets that are required to promote effective changes (Bharadwaj, 2000).
As seen before, the importance of adequate change management and sponsorship in guaranteeing the success
of projects is common sense among academics and practitioners, and SM does not have an answer to this
concern. To overcome this limitation, we´ve suggested the introduction of the “enabling changes layer” in the
proposed theoretical framework.
4. Theoretical framework
The BDN from the BM approach maps the objectives, benefits and required changes, and show the way to
achieve those (Gomes & Romão, 2013). Although its main focus is to determine the changes required for the
delivery of each benefit and how ICT assets enable these changes, BDN can be used as a complement to SM,
helping to overcome some of the previously identified limitations. Ward and Daniel (2006) define “investment
objectives” as being agreed organisational targets to be achieved from investments in relation to the drivers.
These organisational targets can be related to human or organisational capital. Throughout the reviewed
literature, examples of business benefits were found that consist of strengthening intangible assets. Value
creation through fortifying such assets as knowledge, culture, loyalty, image, brand, collaboration and custom
orientation is identified as being a benefit by Allee (2000) and Bharadwaj (2000). According to Ulrich and
Smallwood (2004), organisational capabilities are the outcome of investments in staffing, training,
compensation, communication and other human resources areas. “Enabling changes layer” consists of the
addition of a new layer in SM (figure 2), which corresponds to the BDN-enabling changes layer (Mendes &
Romão, 2013), shown in figure 1.
A “virtuous process feedback” should be addressed by the transposition of the BDN “investment objectives” layer
into the SM “Intangible Assets” and “Long-term objectives” layers (Mendes & Romão, 2013). “Support processes
group” consists of the addition of this process group and the usage of BDN to identify all relationships. “Asset
synergies” consist of the visual representation of direct dependencies and interrelation between assets. As we
explain later, there is evidence that the proposed framework has revealed suitable to communicate
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David Mendes, Jorge Gomes and Mário Romão
organisational strategy, it allows an understanding on how business value is generated and provides the
information needed for an appropriate top-down commitment and sponsorship, which are essential elements
to perform advisable change management and benefits management.
Figure 1: Enabling changes layer
Figure 2: Virtuous process feedback
5. Case study
The Company (CO) used for the case study is one of the largest Portuguese private business organisations, and
until 2015 had clients spread throughout various business areas around the world. The research was conducted
based on corporate documentation (communication with shareholders, annual reports, investors’ day
presentations, internal news magazines, intranet news and internal presentations), literature review and
knowledge about the company, which allowed for the development of the BDN. These intermediate results were
then validated by two of the major stakeholders, according to the selected business changes to validate their
different perspectives.
We applied the collected data to the developed theoretical framework and triangulated it with employee climate
surveys data. We interviewed people involved in the Corporate Communication and Innovation Management.
We analysed the employee satisfaction survey results from 2002 to 2011 in order to triangulate and confirm the
previous gathered data (there were answers from more than 10.000 employees, with overall adherence index
grows up from 42% in 2002, to 65% in 2005 and continued to grow until 86% in 2011).
Careful analysis of the company Employee Portal timeline led us to conclude that its functional evolution is
somehow aligned, but that there is no perfect match, as previous CO intranets were older than the corporate
intranet, and they had their own evolutionary path. Analysis of corporate intranet versus maturity frameworks
should take into consideration all intranets and the corporate intranet in an integrated viewpoint. We focussed
on the full period when analysing alignment and teamwork, but only focussed on the last years when analysing
culture. Innovation has always been a characteristic of this company, and its cultural transformation and change
in mentality over the past few years has underlined its importance. We found evidence in the reviewed
documentation that the employee portal was a tool for guaranteeing the accomplishment of strategic objectives
related to culture and alignment. The BDN depicted in figure 4 was reviewed by the interviewed people in order
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David Mendes, Jorge Gomes and Mário Romão
to validate the linkages between the various components and to identify other components which, although
relevant, were not so obvious in the evidence gathered.
Therefore, the internal perspective tier of the framework depicted in figure 5 considers those business changes
identified in the BDN. The Enabling Changes tier of the framework was directly mapped with the identified
enabling changes in BDN, which are related to the following selected communication and collaboration
Employee Portal areas and functionalities. SM information capital matches the ICT enablers of BDN, and SM
organisational capital internally matches the investment objectives of BDN. We focused our analysis in two main
investment objectives (“new corporate culture” and “strategic alignment of each company with the group”).
Table 1: Framework correspondence
Framework “Internal perspective” tier correspondence
Internal Process (figure 5)
BDN Business changes (figure 4)
IP1 – Innovation processes
C4 – Improve and enlarge CO offer
SP1 – Internal communication support process
C1 – Create a Corporate Communication Unit with all
the inherent communication processes and
procedures
Framework “Enabling changes” tier correspondence
Enabling changes (figure 5)
BDN Enabling changes (figure 4)
E1 – Implement corporate communication functionalities
E1 – Implement corporate communication
functionalities
E2 – Implement collaboration functionalities
E2 – Implement collaboration functionalities
E3 – Carry out an innovation change management programme
E3 – Carry out an innovation change management
programme
E5 – Content management and workflow training
E5 – Content management and workflow training
E6 – Plan and implement the communication plan
E6 – Plan and implement the communication plan
E9 – Implement Benefits card website
E9 – Implement Benefits card website
Framework “Learning and growth perspective” tier correspondence
Intangible assets – Organisational capital (figure 5)
BDN Investment objectives (figure 4)
OC1 – Corporate culture
O2 – New corporate culture
OC2 – Strategic Alignment
O4 – Strategic alignment of each company with the
group
OC3 – Teamwork and knowledge sharing
O2 – New corporate culture (based on CO corporate
documentation, we considered culture includes “team
spirit” and “information sharing”). The business
change identified in BDN as C3 (promote collaboration
& information sharing culture) also highlights the
importance of this organisational capital intangible
asset.
Intangible assets – Information capital (figure 5)
BDN SI/TI enablers (figure 4)
IC1 – Employee Portal (communication and collaboration
I1 – Corporate Intranet
functionalities)
I2 – Teams
I3 – Innovation platform
I6 – Benefits card website
The fluxes A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, SP1 and SP2 identified in the framework (figure 5) were identified both from
the BDN, the interviews performed and the employee climate surveys data.
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David Mendes, Jorge Gomes and Mário Romão
Figure 4: Developed BDN
Figure 5: Framework linkage evidence
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David Mendes, Jorge Gomes and Mário Romão
6. Results and discussions
This chapter discusses the validity of the results and whether they could be generalised to other domains. The
discussion serves as the basis for our conclusions which will provide an answer about the applicability of the
theoretical framework. We cross-checked the information, triangulating it with the employee climate surveys
results, and found that, together with the employee portal projects timeline (Figure 6), it confirmed the previous
statements.
Figure 6: Employee portal projects timeline
However, despite all the validation and triangulation, we understood that CO went through a big cultural
transformation with multiple initiatives and a large technological transformation with various distinct projects.
The following results show the indicators analysis.
Corporate culture – The increase of these indicators during the successive employee portal phases is consistent
with the literature (Table 4). These data are also relevant for benefits monitoring and they evidence the
achievement of one of the business objectives.
Alignment – We believe that the general increase of all alignment-related indicators (Table 4) are strong evidence
that the employee portal can be seen as a tool for promoting alignment between internal communication and
corporate strategy.
Teamwork – With regards to teamwork and the importance of the distinct factors that promote it, the interviews
recognise that both the commitment and sponsorship of top management are essential aspects for promoting
collaboration and therefore its communicating to employees is of major relevance. Considering the relevance of
interrelationship between the different organisation units of the company and the mechanisms for knowledge
distribution, we analysed the following indicators which were evaluated by employees under the employee
climate surveys carried out between 2002 and 2011 (Table 4).
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David Mendes, Jorge Gomes and Mário Romão
Innovation – In 2008, the indicator “CO invests in developing innovative products and services” was introduced
to the corporate employee climate surveys. From this year up until 2011, this indicator recorded an increase of
16 points in the employee appraisal (Table 4).
Table 4: Indicators
Period Scale 0-100)
Corporate culture
There is a common culture shared by the entire organisation
I identify myself with corporate culture
I identify myself with the OT external institutional image
I’m proud to work in CO Group
Alignment
There is a good communication between the company and its employees
Management discusses and disseminates polices and business objectives
Business strategies are published in an understandable way with employees
My company informs me of the relevant business events before any other source
My company informs me of the relevant business events before any other source
I know CO strategy
My team knows what is their contribution to achieving CO strategic objectives
Acknowledgement of my contribution to the achievement of CO strategic objectives
Teamwork
There is a good functional interrelationship between different areas of the company
I can rely on the cooperation and involvement of other departments
I am able to get the information I need to perform my job well
I am able to get the information I need to perform my job well
Innovation
OT invests in developing innovative products and services
2008-11
2008-11
2008-11
2002-11
+17
+11
+10
+11
2002-05
2002-05
2002-06
2002-05
2005-11
2008-11
2002-05
2005-11
+5
+6
+8
+9
+19
+11
+1
+6
2002-05
2008-11
2002-05
2005-11
+7
+5
+4
+11
2008-11
+16
7. Conclusions
The major objective of this study was to understand how an employee portal fosters the creation of intangible
assets value. We found evidence corroborating the literature review, which establishes that an Employee Portal
works as a strategic tool for promoting corporate culture and alignment through information and
communication fluxes and also through the teamwork of collaborative functionalities. These findings were
identified in the corporate literature and through interviews, and were validated through the results of
employee climate surveys. We confirmed that communication processes and practices are essential for the
implementation of corporate culture, alignment and teamwork. Furthermore, corporate culture seems to be
highly relevant for creating alignment and for promoting collaboration, sharing knowledge and innovation, and
teamwork can definitively help reinforce corporate culture. We concluded that communication positively
impacts on corporate alignment, which became even more evident in the case study when all company intranets
were phased-out between 2009 and 2011. The study also allows us to validate the importance of identifying
strategic projects and change management initiatives. The importance of integrating internal support processes
that generate value to intangible assets was validated in the strategy map, and the representation of flows of
value-creation was made between the intangible assets. These findings allowed us to conclude that, although
the promotion of organisational culture and corporate alignment is not among managers’ most frequentlyexpected outcomes, neither it is a business driver for the implementation of Employee Portals, it should be
considered as being a benefit that helps one understand the value realised from these investments. Finally, to
illustrate these challenges we’ve shown how to combine SM and BDN in an extended framework that helps
organizations to enhance their knowledge usage, contributing to capture more value from investments in
intangible assets.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.
Productive Collaboration
Through
Corporate Portal
by
Khairi Hafidz bin Ahmad
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the
Bachelor of Technology (Hons)
(Information Systems)
JUNE 2004
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS
Bandar Seri Iskandar
31750 Tronoh
Perak Darul Ridzuan
CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
Productive Collaboration
Through
Corporate Portal
by
Khairi Hafidz bin Ahmad
A project dissertation submitted to the
Information Systems Programme
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS
in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the
BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY (Hons)
(INFORMATION SYSTEMS)
Approved by,
(Mr. Khairul Shafee Kalid)
UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI PETRONAS
TRONOH, PERAK
June 2004
CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY
This is to certify that I am responsible for the work submitted in this project, that the
original work is my own except as specified
in the references and
acknowledgements, and that the original work contained herein have not been
undertaken or done by unspecified sources or persons.
KHAIRI HAFIDZ BIN AHMAD
ABSTRACT
The objectives for this project are to study the concepts of productive collaboration
through corporate portal and to develop a corporate portal that can be implemented
easily in any organization. Several problems have been identified during the early
research and finally have come up with three main issues occurred in traditional
company to be solved by the system, which are time consuming practice,
bureaucratic barrier and high operating cost. Manually done job has created these
problems. How the system will solve the problems recognized will be explained.
This project concerns on developing a corporate portal to enable productive
collaboration between personnel working in an organization. System development
will consists of five phases namely research and analysis, system requirements
identification, functionalities identification, interface designing and coding phase.
Result and discussion will show the output of the methodology used in completing
the project. Finally, conclusion will summarized all the work been done and some
recommendations for future expansion are also included inthe final chapter.
in
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Most gratefulto Allah that I finally be able to complete my final year project.
I believed this is a result of priceless contributions from many parties. I would like to
express my sincere and heartiest appreciations to:
•
Mr. Khairul Shafee Kalid, final year project supervisor for his great help,
kindness, guidance and valuable ideastowards completingthe project.
•
My parents and family for their moral and financial support.
•
My colleagues especially Johari Julis Juffri and Nor Syarina Mohamad
Nordin, which are my source of inspiration and motivation and other final
year students of Information Technology & Information Systems, who have
together, strive through the semester completing the final year project.
•
Finally thank you to everyone involved directly or indirectly with this
project. Your assistance and ideas are appreciated.
IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
i
CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY
ii
ABSTRACT
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
iv
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1
1.1 Background of Study
1
1.2 Problem Statement
2
1.2.1
Problem Identification
1.2.2 Significant of the Project
2
3
1.3 Objective and Scope of Study
4
1.3.1 Objective
4
1.3.2
Scope of Study
4
1.3.3
The Relevancy of the Project
5
1.3.4 The Feasibility of the Project within the Scope and Time Frame…5
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
6
2.1 Productive Collaboration through Corporate Portal
6
2.2 Introduction
6
2.3 Corporate Portal
7
2.4 Benefits
8
2.5 Building Collaboration
9
2.6 Ten Steps To Productive Collaboration
11
2.7 Case Study on Productive Collaboration
18
CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY
22
3.1 Procedure Identification
22
3.2 Tools Required
24
CHAPTER 4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION
25
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
36
5.1 Conclusion
36
5.2 Recommendation
37
5.3 Disadvantage of a Corporate Portal
37
REFERENCES
38
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1
Organizational Culture Matrix
Figure 2
Knowledge Cycle through Collaboration
Figure 3
System Development Life Cycle
Figure 4
Storyboard for the system
Figure 5
System interface page layout
Figure 6
System interface
Figure 7
Home page
Figure 8
Your Account page
Figure 9
Calendar page
Figure 10
Upload page
Figure 11
Workboard page
Figure 12
Messages page
Figure 13
Context Diagram of the system
Figure 14
Entity-Relationship Diagram of the system
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY
Productive collaboration is about working together as a team to reach the goal of a
project. The corporate portal is a central gateway to the processes, databases,
systems and workflows of an enterprise. It provides a seamless, single point of
access to all of the resources that employees need to do their jobs. What productive
collaboration through corporate portal actually means is enabling staff across a
multi-department enterprise or an organization to work together as a team by
communicating their thoughts, ideas and work through a portal even without even
meeting other teammates. It also means that member of the team can be working
from their house or on the road yet still they can contribute to the project they
involved. The words productive collaboration already suggested that it will be
fruitful when working as a team where each member complemented others with their
own specialty and skills. A famous quote says that no man (or woman) is an island.
In business today, that is an understatement. Mergers, acquisitions, partnerships,
supplier and franchise relationships, matrixed organizations and cross-functional
teams are the name of the game. With little to no direct control over key players,
business leaders and professionals must engage a critical new set of skills – to
influence and collaborate productively with others. It can’t be denied that people
need interaction between themselves to bring out the best from all of them. When
staffs communicate with their colleagues, they will share their knowledge and
expertise thus increasing their competency, skills and value. Productive collaboration
seems the emerging trend in this new era of information communication technology.
Successful companies worldwide has turned to ICT and recognized it as an
opportunity to increase their value and competency edge in competing for market
share for the future.
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
1.2.1 Problems Identification
A lot of readings and study has been done to identify the problems that have
plaguingmost company. In a traditional organization or company, almost everything
is done manually such as requesting for company documents, scheduling for
meetings, asking for expert advice from colleagues and responding to problems
arise, all these jobs were done by hand and physically. Thus, the manual operations
being used have created many problems to conventional corporation. Some of the
general problems faced by many institutions are explained below.
1.2.1.1 Time Consuming
It is time consuming when people request a document from other department; they
need to inform the intended department upon their request. Obviouslythey will have
to see someone who is responsible in keeping the requested document. Then the
person will search for the document. If the person manages to find the document,
then they need to make a copy of the document to avoid the original copy being lost
while in possession by other person. But what if the person who has the document
can’t find it or is on leave? Then the personnel requesting for the document had to
wait until a new copy of the document to be retrieved back by or even worse had to
wait until the person responsible over the document return back from holiday. A
simple job like this might consume a few days. Imagine how much time needed to
complete other complicated jobs.
1.2.1.2 Bureaucratic Issue
A simple, daily routine job might require a few procedures to be taken before it can
be completed. For instance, if people need to see their superior to have some
discussion, then they firstly need to call the secretary of the superior requestin…