Portals guide could prove very useful

A free guide to implementing web portals has just been published by Tibco, in association with KPMG Consulting, Reuters, Company i, Netegrity and Interwoven. Go to www.portalsforprofit.co.uk Entitled ‘Delivering value back to the business’, it provides independent advice drawn from their experience, and could help all businesses looking at going the portal route with several pointers to investing wisely and avoiding shortcomings. With the emphasis on this method of aggregating and making available real-time, self-service information, it’s come at a good time. The guide discusses the benefits, outlines where they can generally produce best ROI, and examines the challenges that organisations will face as they run up to deployment. You get quite a lot for nothing but your time. It includes views from analysts and presents a series of case studies looking at successful projects, from companies like Reuters, BP, Deutsche Telecom and Pirelli, demonstrating how real-time data can translate into opportunities, initiatives and ultimately cost reductions and improved profits. It also covers some of the technical hurdles, providing information useful on the run up to partner and technology selections. Most valuable, it outlines what its authors see as the ‘Eight Requirements for Web Services’, including a ‘roadmap’ for creating future-proof, extendable portals, and covering issues like security, single sign-on, content management and integration. Interestingly, KPMG has included a ‘Six Steps to Successfully Winning the Argument’ section, which presents everything you need to know in terms of speaking the business language, setting expectations, expressing ROI and demonstrating rigour on returns. Then there’s the ‘10 Golden Rules for Implementation’ represent a distillation of Company-i’s consultants. Reuter’s Dan Dosen, provides an insight on the financial markets, what works and why, while Tim Dempsey of Netegrity gives another six point plan, this for portal security. The authors argue that most portal projects deliver success on the first release and then stall, becoming static after one or two releases. This guide looks at how extensibility generally determines a portal project’s success, allowing organisations to add ‘killer features’ very quickly, and argues that as business becomes comfortable with portals they will flourish.