UOPX Corporate Portals Benefits and Challenges 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)

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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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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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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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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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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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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Figure 4: Developed BDN
Figure 5: Framework linkage evidence
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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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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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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 requesting for
an appointment to be scheduled. Then the secretarywill ask the superior whetherthe
superior wishes to meet the personnel. Considering the superior wants to meet the
personnel, the secretarywill then arrange and schedule the appointment based on the
superior’s free time from other appointment or meeting. The secretary will inform
the superior first about the newly scheduled appointment before informing the
personnel about the appointment being made. But what if the superior doesn’t have
any free time or will not be around the office for about a week. Important decision
must be done as quickly as possible. Or else, it could turn out to be one of those
costly mistakes done because the person needs consultation from the superior for the
superior’s experience in that matter.
1.2.1.3 High Cost
Simply put, time is gold. Whenever there is delay in completing a job in
conventional system, the cost incurred will be higher. Shorter completion period
means lower cost. Documentation process also increases the cost of printing.
Successful organizations are the one who managed to decrease their operational cost
lower than their competitors.
1.2.2 Significant of the Project
The corporate portal to be developed will automate many routine jobs in a typical
company during this era of technology and knowledge.
1.2.2.1 Faster Response Time
By implementing the corporate portal, personnel from different department can share
and exchange documents over the company intranet on-demand. It means that
personnel requesting for a document doesn’t have to meet anyone but only has to
search in the document database. If the required document is not available yet in the
database, the personnel just need to inform the person in-charge on the document
through the portal and the document will be available in no time.
1.2.2.2 Remove Bureaucratic Issue
Seeking for advice or discussing a problem or matters with colleagues no longer
requires personnel to go and meet them face-to-face. Through the corporate portal,
colleagues can interact and share their knowledge with others wherever they are.
Even if someone is on the move, at their house or somewhere else, they can still
communicate by logging into the portal through the internet.
1.2.2.3 Cut Cost
Automated works will definitely decrease the operational cost of a company. When
there is no more hassle in completing a job, productivity will increase amazingly.
Just imagine a personnel going places to meet people to discuss some issues when
the same person just sits at his cubicle and had an online conferencing with others
through the corporate portal. Obviously the portal saves a lot of time and the
personnel energy thus help to decrease time to complete a job, increase personnel
productivity and definitely decrease the operating cost and increase the company’s
profit.
1.3 OBJECTIVE AND SCOPE OF STUDY
1.3.1 Objective
The system to be developed has a few objectives or goals to be met. Firstly, to enable
users to share documents and other information and access other data stored in the
database. The user also can communicate through instant messaging with other
users. Finally, the project aims to provide real-time environment for the user.
1.3.2 Scope of Study
For this project, the scope of study has been defined to study about how productive
collaboration can be achieved by using a web-like portal. The final product will be a
corporate portal that can be implemented to help users share information such as
documents and contacts and communicate with other online users through instant
messaging.
1.3.3 The Relevancy of the Project
This project development has implemented industry-oriented approach. Currently,
there are only a few systems that have been developed to enable document sharing
within an organization. Studies have shown that demand for this kind of application
is increasing parallel to ICT growth. By taking this situation into consideration, it is
hoped that the project will contribute in a way to improve the quality and
functionality of future corporate portal development based on productive
collaboration. It is also hoped that the system developed will be used as a reference
by other developers.
1.3.4 The Feasibility of the Project within the Scope and Time Frame
A period of four months has been allocated to complete this project. The first month
was scheduled to complete research and preliminary submissions and planning the
work method for this project. System development that includes writing the coding
for the portal, implement and test the system will proceed during the remaining three
months available. From time to time, some reports will be submitted at every stage.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 PRODUCTIVE COLLABORATION THROUGH CORPORATE PORTAL
Productive collaboration can be achieved through corporate portal. Corporate portal
can help to facilitate problem solving more quickly, and make better, faster
decision1. It is beyond one-way presentations and application sharing to enable the
focused collaboration and an exchange of ideas over the Internet or an intranet.
Empirical studies have shown that electronic brainstorming generates more and
better ideas, due to the combination of parallel idea generation, the facilitation of
more open group discussion and the use of tools to organize ideas and make
immediate decisions2. Decisions are made with a higher degree of consensus and
agreement resulting in a dramatically higher likelihood of implementation success.
Meetings take a fraction of the time employee would take in a traditional setting and
people walk away with documentation in hand, regardless of where they are.
Corporate portal also help to run meetings better in the meeting room or over the
intranet. Because the tools are web-based, employees can choose whether they want
to gather participants in a conference room, set up a distributed meeting or a mixture
of both. Employees can also decide whether the meeting should be real-time or
whether participants will contribute their ideas when their schedule allows. Either
way, employees get the same focus and productivity with significantly greater
scheduling flexibility. Through corporate portal, group productivity will increase
significantly.
2.2 INTRODUCTION
Portals are the hottest trend in e-business today, with virtually every company on the
web trying to capitalize on this phenomenon. As e-business interface, portals become
widely used among enterprises as their gateway to employees, partners and
customers.
Formerly, portal was intended as an organized directory of web pages such as
Yahoo, AltaVista, Infoseek, and Google. It was a landmark that in July 1996 Yahoo
launched a personalized portal service called My Yahoo!, once became most popular
pages in the internet. It provides a revolutionary way that after developing their
profile and interests, users will see a single page with up to date information
channels corresponding to them, without browsing and searching. Yahoo’s users
skyrocketed to more than 50% for the next three months after it was unveiled. Many
other internet portals began to provide their “my” version.
These kinds of internet portal have been solving the most basic problems of finding
and retrieving information faster with higher relevancy. But it was for personal usage
rather than business usage since enterprises need more relevant information from
their internal information, employee’s collaboration, and access to existing
applications. Thus corporate portal was born to capture these requirements.
2.3 CORPORATE PORTAL
The development of corporate portal software creates distinct purposes with the
public or internet portals. A public portal is aimed to get attention from a large
number of viewers, with the main target to reach revenues from advertisers or
product’s buyer. These are Yahoo, Google, AltaVista, and Amazon.
But a corporate portal will help corporate information or knowledge workers to make
decisions and stay ahead in front of competition3. Corporate portal integrates
application and information from internal source (intranet, documents, ERP,
collaboration) or external source (partners, customers, and internet) into a single and
personalized view.
Portals enable companies to create simple, task-based applications for self-service
users, such as customers seeking delivery updates or factory supervisors adjusting
production schedules. Therefore, rather than providing SAP, PeopleSoft, and Siebel
Systems clients to every user, a simple portal page can only incorporate the
combination of functionality a particular user needs from each application to
complete a transaction.
Corporate portal solves basic problems tomanage information such as4:
1. Increasing number of knowledge workers who collects, analyzes, makes
decision, and distributes information through out the company.
2. Increasing volume of information, as the company grows. Finding relevant and
accurate information becomes difficult, sometimes impossible, and often requires
searching multiple systems.
3. Too many login to use applications or accessing information and too many
guides to use each. Information is accessed through different methods, such as web
browsers, email clients, or other desktop applications.
4. Information is scattered throughout the intranet in a multitude of sources and
in all kinds of formats. Moreover, information that published on-line is often
structured in a disorganized way.
5. Lack of collaboration between employees, companies, partners, or customers. It
is ironic for companies that have internet connection, but employees use it in contra
productive way.
6. Personalization, since every employee has different needs and different roles of
using information and applications.
7. Interfacing to on-line databases of critical corporate operational information,
such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management
(CRM) application.
2.4 BENEFITS
Atypical corporate portal can provide the following benefits5:
Access to information – as universal access point, portals improve productivity on
providing integrated access to general corporate information, enterprise applications,
business intelligence and collaboration tools.
Reduced costs – less time to search information, less training and administration
with simple and consistent interface to learn.
Knowledge sharing – improve customer, partner, and supplier relationships as a
result of better information exchange, driving long-term retention.
Less paper – paperless office means easy to manage and faster information flows. It
reduces time needed to transform raw information into knowledge that decreases
management overhead for information gathering and decision making.
Process improvement – linking separated processes will lead company to seamless
business process, moreover if these processes come from various applications.
Common functionality – employees can work across departments and applications
without worrying about different conventions for things like product names and
production techniques.
Retain valued employees and customers – in times of tight labor markets, portals
can reduce employee frustration with unnecessarily bureaucratic tasks such as HR
benefits selection and managing retirement accounts.
2.5 BUILDING COLLABORATION
For most leaders, the world of predictability, long-lasting structures, and comfortable
change is gone. Today executives face a world of increasing uncertainties, rapid
change, constant reorganization, higher demands for performance, and intense
scrutiny of their actions by stakeholders. In response, we are hearing: “We need a
more collaborative culture.”
What does it mean to be more collaborative, and how can executives move in that
direction? Effective collaboration requires people, who know how to collaborate, and
an environment that supports them. Collaborative organizations support flexible
thinking and acting; enable decision makers to respond to new problems and
opportunities and make quality decisions; increase understanding, communication,
and trust across divisions and departments; motivate people to contribute their
creative ideas and energy to achieve goals; stimulate exchange of resources among
stakeholders; and maintain accountability to ensure quality thought and committed
action at all levels.
Becoming more collaborative requires balanced change. Leaders must seek to align
the structure, information systems, reward systems, strategy, values and skills in
support of the change. Focusing only on one part of the system will limit
collaborative capability. To become more collaborative, you need to go about it
collaboratively!
Leaders who create more collaborative cultures observe five principles6:
1. Involve the relevant stakeholders.
Build ownership for the change effort at all levels. If the effort is driven solely from
the top, people will view it as just another desperate action. Design the effort to
include all relevant stakeholders. Appoint a steering committee and empower them
to make real decisions and serve as guardians of the process.
2. Build consensus phase by phase.
If stakeholders can’t agree on the problem, they won’t agree on the solution. People
must understand why the system needs to change, agree on what is not working,
appreciate what is working, confront the norms and behaviors that inhibit
collaborative action, talk openly about the functional and dysfunctional aspects of
the culture, and recognize ways they collude in continuing the old norms. They also
need to agree on a future vision—and link the vision to the strategy. Why will
becoming more collaborative help the company to be more productive, profitable,
competitive, or successful? How will collaborative action help achieve the mission?
If the change isn’t seen as necessary, it won’t be taken seriously.
3. Design a process map.
A process map is useful for designing and managing change efforts. The map
provides a “game board” for laying out the different rings of involvement, phases,
milestones, and activity. Creating the map forces change leaders and key
stakeholders to balance short-term and long-term issues.
It also helps people think through the sequence in which they address the variables of
culture, strategy, structure, skills, rewards, and technology. Strategy needs to be
addressed early to figure out how the effort can help achieve strategic goals.
Skills development should be launched early to provide the competencies necessary
to support collaborative planning and problem solving. The best way to build a
collaborative culture is to address issues collaboratively. The key process design
issue is deciding which short-term and long-term issues can be tackled over the next
year without overloading the system. Then the task is to ensure that each changeinducing activity is conducted in a way that models effective collaboration and is
supported by the process consulting and training it needs.
10
4. Designate process facilitators and harness the power of group memory.
Collaboration always involves meetings – getting people together to exchange
information or solve problems. The quality and productivity of meetings determines
the effectiveness of the change process. Meetings need to model collaboration by
balancing achievement on all three dimensions of success: results, process, and
relationship. Often there aren’t enough well-trained facilitators, recorders, or change
management experts to support a system-wide change effort. Companies often
depend on external consulting firms to initiate and support these efforts. To avoid
dependency and to build collaborative capability, however, they need to develop
internal process consultants and facilitators.
5. Become a facilitative leader.
Any collaborative change effort requires forceful and effective leadership. Managers
must have the will and the skills to be highly influential facilitative leaders. The
more that facilitative leadership is diffused, the more likely that change will lead
toward a more collaborative culture. Ultimately, the culture won’t change much until
managers are collaborative in dealing with everyday issues, and facilitative
leadership becomes the norm. To create more collaborative organizations, trust
people; involve them; and give them the skills, tools, and information to work
collaboratively. Apply the five principles to create a mission and value-driven work
environment, and people will respond by performing beyond your wildest
expectations.
2.6 TEN STEPS TO PRODUCTIVE COLLABORATION
Collaboration has become a bit of a buzzword these days. It is being applied to
projects, processes and all kinds of creative activities.
Many vendors are rushing to embed collaboration in their products, but customers
have long recognized that there is more to collaboration than just putting
collaboration tools in the hands of their knowledge workers and expecting them to
get on with it. Knowledge workers have considerable discretion in the way they
work. It is an important aspect of the way that they work. You would be unlucky to
encounter downright hostility to collaboration but indifference would be equally fatal
to a collaboration initiative.
11
Culture is extremely hard to change, as many a CEO will ruefully admit. But in
many cases, an organization’s culture has to flex to support collaboration. And
collaboration is going to be increasingly important. Without collaboration, there will
be no new knowledge and without new knowledge, there will be no sustainable
competitive advantage. There are ten key steps to develop a collaboration culture :
Step One – Understand the culture of the organization
Each organization has a unique culture and, although some cultures may support
collaboration naturally and easily, in some cases collaboration goes against the grain
of the organization’s culture and power structures. The matrix below shows four
main types of organizational culture. The culture type of your organization depends
on its degree of solidarity and commitment to a common goal, and the amount of
socializing and trust present amongst staff. (Ref: The Chameleon Consultant by
Andrew Holmes).
Cultural Intelligence
High
Networked
!5BBJBffciillty;
Communal
|_0iW
High
Fragmented
Mercenary
Low
Solidarity
fcnfctl«C*ifc»tf* rt l« CdfuTpHmrtHc fidl« •*! Jqim
Figure 1: Organizational Culture Matrix
Figure 1 shows the four main types of organizational culture. In a networked culture
of high sociability yet low solidarity, there will be a high degree of trust. People will
be very willing to share information so long as they can be given good reasons for
doing so. Being told to do so by the management will not work. Creative
organizations are good examples of this type of culture.
In a mercenary culture of low sociability and high solidarity, things are very
different. People are driven to get things done and will have a very utilitarian
approach to knowledge. The emphasis in this case will be on pragmatic solutions that
deliver value very early. These types of cultures will not be impressed by vast
12
accumulations of knowledge but by short-term solutions. Sales organizations are a
typical example.
In a communal culture where there is high sociability and high solidarity, willingness
to share will be combined with a very clear focus on what is needed. This can be an
ideal situation for the introduction of collaboration.
Lastly, in a fragmented culture of low sociability and low solidarity, people will tend
to work as individuals. In this case, organizations introducing collaboration will need
to appeal to the self-interest of the individual. Interestingly enough, although this
model often applies to consultancies, collaboration is quite common in these
organizations.
An Italian IT Services company with a strong hierarchy provides a good example of
a fragmented culture. In this case, we created effective senior sponsorship for the
development of a knowledge sharing culture by assiduously courting the heads of
department and letting them participate in setting the strategy. The key barrier to
collaboration, poor inter-department communication, was overcome by incentivising
the heads of department by measuring the intellectual capital that they owned and
generated.
Any culture is made up of the individual motivations of its members. These have to
be identified and targeted.
Step Two – Understand individual motivations
Any change plan must understand the fears and aspirations of the participants:
•
People may be upset by disruption of established practices and norms.
•
They may say they lack time and support to learn new ways.
•
They may fear that management will use their knowledge to redesign jobs
and make people work flat-out all day.
•
They may fear that management will take their knowledge and outsource the
work.
Change managers need to make a persuasive case to counter balance these fears. The
motivations could be:
•
The job will become more interesting.
•
The individual will gain recognition from their peers and managers for their
contribution.
•
In developing their knowledge, staff will also develop their careers.
13
Having overcome active resistance there is still a need to win the pragmatic
argument expressed as “Am I giving more than I receive and is everyone doing his or
her part?” This means encouraging and rewarding collaboration.
Step Three – Encourage and reward collaboration
Collaboration will need to be encouraged at the early stages by identifying and
rewarding the new behavior desired. This means catching people who are
exchanging knowledge and rewarding them in some way. Suggestion schemes point
to the success of what is often only token recognition.
Some people will take naturally to the task of developing their capabilities while
others will find it more difficult. Sustainable collaboration amongst knowledge
workers will only happen if everyone feels their contributions are recognized. One
way to encourage these contributions is to build collaboration into people’s job
descriptions. Organizations are starting to pose the question in annual appraisals:
“What new skills have you learnt this year?” and “What new ideas and best practice
have you created?”
Step Four – Start slowly and increase virally
There is significant risk and uncertainty in introducing collaboration and for this
reason it is a very good idea to use an incremental approach. Collaboration should be
introduced with a small pilot of enthusiastic users. This can be expanded as other
parts the organization see the benefits. A rollout plan can make use of the viral
adoption mechanism that works well with collaboration applications. In a viral
approach, new people are invited into a collaborations workspace and find it useful.
They then introduce the technique to their colleagues and the collaboration
population grows.
Step Five – Senior Management sponsorship is essential
It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that senior management support is vital
to making the introduction of collaboration a success. This must go further than just
kind words at the start of the pilot project. Research has shown that ideas travel
down a hierarchy 10 times more rapidly than they do upwards. Ideally, the sponsor
must be seen to be an enthusiastic and active participant in collaboration activities.
Step Six – Validate all contributions to the knowledge cycle
The role that people take in collaboration will depend upon their skills, knowledge
and the tasks they carry out for the organization. Collaboration supports a knowledge
14
cycle, shown below, in which knowledge is generated, used and which then creates
more knowledge and benefits.
The Learning Cycle will Build Capability
•Scanning •
Wbto
HML.”ir*>ffiwiHWilNiilO'(pritM-l6i’V(*u OUmI”
Figure 2: Knowledge Cycle through Collaboration
Figure 2 depicts the knowledge cycle through collaboration. In the first stage,
Personal Knowledge is created by personal study and thought; next, Proprietary
Knowledge is captured in communicable form. In the third stage, knowledge is
disseminated informally in meetings and discussions or more formally through
learning to become Public Knowledge; lastly, the cycle is completed as this new
knowledge is embedded as Common Sense and best practice, laying the basis for yet
more innovation.
People can make equally valuable contributions at any of the stages of this cycle. It
is of no purpose to have gurus creating much knowledge unless other people can put
it to use.
Not everyone is a guru – and for younger people it is hard to contribute valuable
insights until they have gained experience. Use of knowledge is as important as
knowledge creation and capture if the organization is to benefit from collaboration.
The value of these different roles must be clearly described and confirmed with
everyone. People should be encouraged to act in the part of the knowledge cycle
where they can contribute most. Innovation, capture, dissemination and reuse are all
valid activities that deliver company benefit.
15
Step Seven – Be prepared for political conflict
As a culture of collaboration and exploitation of knowledge develops, companies
must be prepared for some shift in the power structure. When collaboration is
valued, individuals who create and put knowledge to use may gain power at the
expense of the “action man”. We have to deal with this dichotomy in IT. There is a
sayingwith some truth in it that “IT Managers think before they act, if they act at all.
Business Managers act before they think if they think at all”. One role is not more
important than the other and a new balancemust be struck between them.
Step Eight – Be open to the benefits of external collaboration
Although the knowledge assets in the organization can be considerable, it would be a
mistake to focus all collaboration activities internally. As organizations operate
within networks of partners, there are increasing opportunities and requirements to
collaborate with partners and to gain the benefits of so doing. Collaboration between
partners can be the most difficult but the most rewarding activity.
The key enabler in collaboration is to establish trust between parties. Trust is not
present until it has been established on a peer-to-peer basis between staff in each
company despite all the high-level agreements made between the company directors.
In one case, two organizations were having difficulty in establishing the degree of
trust required to collaborate on a shared process. On closer examination, they found
that the staffs in each company were already sharing much more information than
the managers had agreed to. They had established a degree of trust in the security
and accuracy of the information they shared because that was the only way they
could do their jobs.
Step Nine – Establish and continually remind people of the aims of collaboration
It is very important to be clear to everyone what the organization is trying to achieve
and what it expects to get from collaboration. The Senior Sponsor needs to set out a
clear vision that describes how the organization expects people to behave and the
individual and organizational benefits it expects to gain. One example is shown
below:
“Learning is at the heart of a company’s ability to adapt to a rapidly changing
environment. It is key to being able both to identify opportunities and to exploit these
opportunities rapidly and
fully.”
John Browne – CEO British Petroleum.
16
Step Ten – Define and measure the benefits
Collaboration and knowledge management have not been high on organizations
priorities in the past because the objectives and attendant benefits were not clear.
These days, collaboration is finding applications in business processes such as
supply chain management and activities such as mergers and acquisition where the
benefits of speed and efficiency are easier to measure. The main benefits of
collaboration are:
•
Better coordination of activities through a richer, shared context for action.
•
Increased innovation as people gain a better understanding of the
organization’s problems and needs.
•
Reduced waste by avoiding reinventing the wheel either as information or
activities. For example, one oil company was about to spend £1M plus on an
exploratory well when an old hand said, “We drilled there before”.
•
Improved performance through creation and dissemination of best practice.
This is a key element of the Government’s plans to increase its efficiency.
•
Higher workforce capabilities and efficiencies through improved skills and
up to date knowledge.
17
2.7 CASE STUDY ON PRODUCTIVE COLLABORATION – Perficient brings
peers together with WebSphere Portal
Customer: Perficient, Inc.
IBM Business Partner: Perficient, Inc.
“We are convinced that WebSphere is the cornerstone for our e-business
infrastructure needs.”
Joe Klewicki, Managing Director, Portal Solutions, Perficient
Challenge: Improve employee collaboration, productivity and knowledge sharing
while reducing the need for IT-related resources and support
Solution: MyPerficient.com, a B2E portal for Perficient employees worldwide
Business Benefits: Projected $3-4 million increase in annual revenues; 30% savings
on travel; 15% savings on document shipping and conferencing costs; 3% reduction
in administrative overhead; improved productivity; better staff retention through
enhanced sense of community
“Need the answer? Look it up.” Simple advice, one might think. But in today’s
environment, employees often need to search through mountains of information to
find the answers to questions as simple as “What is the per diem expense rate for my
trip to Chicago?”
In recent years, companies have increasingly turned to business-to-employee (B2E)
enterprise portals to provide workers with the ability to easily access information and
communicate with
peers.
Business strategy consultants The META Group predict that by 2005, more than 90
percent of Global 2000 organizations will have an employee portal; ‘ by that time,
says Butler Group, the enterprise portal product market will have exceeded $4 billion
in sales internationally.”
“With ourfirst-generation Plumtree portal, creating and maintaining collaboration
sites required advance coordination, IT support and costly third-party solutions.
With WebSphere Portal and its integrated Lotus QuickPlace and Sametime
components, we no longer have this problem.”
Eric Simone, Senior Managing Director, Perficient
Perficient, a leading e-business solutions provider to Global 3000 and mid-size
companies, has built portal solutions for some of the world’s largest companies.
With offices across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, and with
consultants at client sites across the globe, Perficient’s success hinges upon
maintaining an effective internal communications network. Although enterprise
portals are a mainstay of its business, Perficient’s employees paradoxically found
themselves hampered by a portal, developed with Plumtree software, that did not
provide the crucial collaborative resources or scalability the company needed.
WebSphere – cornerstone for
e-business
Frustrated, Perficient made a strategic decision to evaluate portal solutions based on
one of its key areas of specialization, the Java^) 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition
(J2EE) architecture. After looking at several vendors-including BEA, SAP, Vignette
and Epicentric-Perficient chose IBM WebSphere Portal for its integration and
collaboration capabilities.
“WebSphere Portal provides the sound infrastructure and standards-based
technology on which IBM has centered its e-business framework,” says Joe
Klewicki, managing director of portal solutions at Perficient. “You do not get that
with a first-generation product like Plumtree. We are convinced that WebSphere
is the cornerstone for our e-business infrastructure
needs.”
Perficient senior managing director Eric Simone agrees, “With our first-generation
Plumtree portal, creating and maintaining collaboration sites required advance
coordination, IT support and costly third-party solutions,” he notes. “With
WebSphere Portal and its integrated Lotus QuickPlace and Sametime components,
we no longer have this
problem.”
Simone reports dramatic benefits from Perficient’s WebSphere Portal solution.
Savings on travel, document shipping and conference calls are estimated at 30
percent. The substantial reduction in paper-based tasks has cut administrative
overhead by three percent. Because the organization no longer relies on ad- hoc
solutions for building and maintaining its portal, its IT personnel can be redeployed
to more productive tasks. Productivity, too, is on the rise: employees are now
spending an estimated one hour per week more on productive work, rather than on
searching randomly for information-a figure Perficient believes will rise as the
company’s knowledge base continues to stream into the portal.
19
Collaboration and functionality at employees’
fingertips
Dubbed MyPerficient.com, Perficient’s porta! enables employees to log on from
anywhere in the world. The opening screen presents intuitively arranged tabs and
links, each accessing a mission-critical information source or application. For
example, users can access an indexed knowledge base or engage in ongoing
discussion forums on projects and technical issues. The majority of Perficient’s
employees-consultants who are located across the globe at any given time-are
using the portal to deliver presentations to customers and partners over the Web.
Managers are able to review deployment of resources and facilitate real-time chat or
audio conferences with employees and customers.
“IBM has revolutionizedour business. The possibilities for our customersand us are
endless … and the WebSphere software platform is the glue that holds it all
together.”
Eric Simone
Simone notes one of the key attractions of the WebSphere platform is the bundled
collaboration capabilities provided by Lotus software from IBM. With Lotus
QuickPlace, Perficient’s employees have the ability to create collaborative online
workplaces-providing document exchanges and virtual communities. Additionally,
Lotus Sametime enables employees to collaborate in real-time through instant
messaging and virtual white-board sessions. Notes Simone, “That kind of
collaborative functionality-without the need for IT intervention-sets IBM apart in
the portal
arena.”
MyPerficient.com utilizes IBM WebSphere Application Server as the development
environment as well as the runtime environment for the Java servlets that provide the
business logic. WebSphere Application Server also handles Java Database
Connectivity (JDBC) calls to retrieve information from IBM DB2 Universal
Database, which manages the data on the database tier. Java Server Pages (JSPs)
deliver content from the database to the presentation layer as HTML files. Security is
provided by IBM SecureWay Directory.
20
WebSphere introduces new revenue
opportunity
For more than four years, Perficient has helped many of the world’s largest and most
successful companies through the key technical issues and business challenges that
they face when evaluating and implementing enterprise portal solutions. Although
Perficient has extensive experience in delivering solutions around all of the leading
portal platforms, the company is so convinced of the value of WebSphere Portal that
Perficient has developed a Plumtree-to-Web Sphere migration utility and is
encouraging its existing Plumtree customers to migrate to the IBM platform. In
addition, Perficient has developed an entire suite of service offerings around
WebSphere Portal-ranging from programs to JumpStart(tm) portal initiatives to
custom development and integration services.
Says Simone, “IBM has revolutionized our business. The possibilities for our
customers and us are endless: enhanced relationships and more productive
collaboration with employees, customers and partners; new standards-based
capabilities with full support for Web services and J2EE; and stronger, easier
integration with other enterprises. And the WebSphere software platform is the glue
that holds it all together.”
I “BackWeb Technologies.” M2 Presswire, M2 Communications Ltd., 13thNovember,
2001.
II Bennett, Madeline. “Portal spending soars.” VNU Net, News Service, VNU
Business Publications Ltd., 16th November, 2001.
This case study illustrates how one IBMcustomeruses IBM and/or Business Partner
technologies/services. Many factors have contributed to the result and benefits
described. IBM does not guarantee comparable results. All information contained
herein was provided by the featured customer and/or Business Partner. IBM does
not attest to its accuracy.
21
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
3.1 PROCEDURE IDENTIFICATION
The project system development consists of five phases which are research and
analysis, system requirements identification, functionalities identification, interface
designing and coding.
Research and
Analysis Phase
User Requirements
Identification Phase
Functionalities
Identification Phase
Interface
Design Phase
Modules Integration
Phase
Figure 3: System Development Life Cycle
(The five development phases used in this project)
22
Figure 3 shows the system development life cycle diagram. During research and
analysis phase, study on productive collaboration and corporate portal has been
conducted using articles from the internet as the main source. From there on,
common problems that occur in traditional or conventional organization has been
identified and stated under problem identification. Analysis on how productive
collaboration can be achieved through corporate portal was also conducted.
Then user requirements identification was carried out. User requirements were
identified by reading an article which stated how a typical corporate portal should
look like and what service or function should be provided for users in order to
collaborate and work together with other colleagues through a web-like portal. User
requirements are important so that the system to be developed will satisfy users’
needs.
After that, functionalities of the system were identified by reading corporate portal
product descriptions and comparing the user requirements with functionalities
included in a typical corporate portal system available in the market. Two corporate
portal systems which are HotOffice developed by Thruport Technologies Inc. and
Plumtree Corporate Portal developed by Plumtree Software were used in identifying
the system functionalities.
Next, interface designing took place based on functionalities identified earlier. In
designing the interface, storyboard for the system was firstly prepared according to
the functionalities. Interface designing focused on the layout of the portal and how
the user will interact with the system. This includes the placement of icons and links
on every page in the portal. It stressed on consistency and simplicity to minimize
time needed for new user to learn how to use the portal. PHP-Nuke 7.1 was used to
design the user interface.
By using PHP-Nuke 7.1, I selected the modules needed to fulfill the system
functionalities and meet the user requirements. All the modules are then integrated
into the main interface. Database for each module was created after been integrated
and configured successfully to work with the main interface. Finally the system will
be implemented and set up and running in a workstation or a PC.
23
3.2 TOOLS REQUIRED
Beside articles from the internet, other materials that will be needed to develop the
system are the hardware and software. By standard, the hardware needed to develop
the system is just a normal mid-range PC. It was decided for the development phase
to use software such as Macromedia Dreamweaver MX for coding editing tools,
PHP-Nuke 7.1 for interface design and modules integration, MySQL database, PHP
programming and Apache web server.
24
CHAPTER 4
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
From the user requirements identification phase, user requirements have been
identified. User requirements for the project listed such as:
•
User can share and access documents stored in the database
•
User can communicate through public and private messaging system with
other online user
•
User can remind themselves and inform their colleagues on any upcoming
events or appointments
•
New user can register as member of the system enabling them to use the
service provided by the system
•
User can view list of current running project along with the project status,
tasks to be done and personnel designated for the project
System functionalities for the system were derived from the system requirements
stated above and also functionalities included in corporate portals currently available
on the market. There are five main functionalities defined for the system. These
functionalities were made up to meet the user requirements and based on the
common functionalities of a typical corporate portal. The functionalities are:
•
Login – user can log into the system using valid username and password.
New user can create new account through this function
•
Upload – user can share documents to be stored in the database and enabling
other user to have access to the documents stored in the database
•
Messages – user can send private or public messages to other users
•
Calendar – user can post upcoming events in the calendar to inform other
user
•
Workboard – user can view list of projects along with the current status, task
to be performed and personnel assigned to the project
25
After defining the functionalities for the system, a storyboard showing how the pages
will be linked together was drawn up. The storyboard for the portal is shown as
below:
Main Page
(Home)
1 ‘
‘
Upload
Login
T
”
‘
Calendar
Messages
Workboard
Figure 4: Storyboard for the system
(All the functionalities are linked directly to the main page)
Home
Info
Messages
Logout
Calendar
Upload
Workboard
Content
Figure 5: System interface page layout
(Links from the main menus will be shown in the content area with Home as the
default page)
26
Figure 4 shows the storyboard for the system. From the storyboarddrawn, the main
page was designed to link all the functionalities of the portal as depicted in Figure 5
that shows the system interface page layout. Comparison and reviews on corporate
portals that are available in the market during research phase has helped to determine
the appropriate conceptand design of the interface. Below is the interface designed
showing links to all the functionalities defined in the system user requirements.
Welcome fcholrijiofIdit
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27
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Hello there! Welcome to MyOfficeportal This portal has been developed to help users to collaborate with
each other, Afew useful functions are available to registered users. IF ycu irt a new user, please register
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Figure 7 shows the Home page – index, the first page each user will see before
browsing through the portal. The red arrow shows where the user will key-in their
valid username and password to log into the portal. AH the links visible are disabled
so that only validated user can use the services provided and protect from sabotage
done by anonymous user.
28
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Figure 8: Your Account page
Figure 8 shows Your Account Page. This page has the all the links to the system
functionalities. From this page, user can browse to Calendar page, Upload page,
Workboard page and Messages page. User will see this page after successful login.
29
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Figure 9 shows the Calendar page. Clicking on the Calendar link will bring the user
to this page. Here, user can create events and view other events created by other
users on any date shown in the calendar. Events created will need Admin approval
before being shown in the Calendar to avoid misuse.
30
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0\< You havefl private messages). Web site engine code is Copyright El £003 by php-n.»c. AllRights Reserved, PHP-Nuke is Free Software released under the amijaH.iiM.je. Figure 10: Upload page Figure 10 depicts the Upload page. Clicking on the Upload link will bring the user this page. Here, user can upload documents into the database or download documents stored in the database. Admin will assign certain user, for example, a project manager, to have control over a folder. The project manager will then can set the privilege for the folder so that only certain authorized user can read, write or modify documents in the folder. 31 IT. J^t ''•^'' HSUIS ' iBBlU ' Dnmnload* • 'Your flrcount • Subm|tr.ctti. • Tnn 10 Welcome khalH_hafldil {Modules Work Board - View project * 3 • Home ' Calendar • Members List Project Name 1 Stories Archive tsr|fyp " ia _ •_ ^ —"• • Unload. PrajectStaaitlEi/InformaUon_^^;> %T f * ‘,,
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Project Details:
final year project
Status “* * Priority Assigned To
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Figure 11 shows the Workboard page. Clickingon the Workboard link will bring the
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tasks to be done and personnel assigned to the project.
32
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