1. Discusses the facilities that corporate portals can offer to an organization, it presents the
criteria for evaluating, information technology, and the impact in the enterprise.
Introduction Information Officer) would take the hint
and in a couple of weeks would
produce a nice hard-cover report with
A highly advanced corporate portal
a series of estimates of how the
offers an organization most the IT
corporate portal would impact the
pieces that it will need to develop
bottom-line of the organization and,
sophisticated organizational and
hopefully, produce a nice ROI,
business models of the 21st century.
payback, etc. Is he/she right? The
In that respect, the decision to embark
answer is a great Yes and No.
on a corporate portal implementation
is a very strategic decision. A
This response deserves an
corporate portal can influence how an
explanation that starts with some
organization collaborate internally and
reflections on how the sources of
externally with partners, suppliers and
value have changed in the past few
customers and how, information and
years as we quickly move from the
people’s intervention enable corporate
Industrial Era to the
processes. Thus, a corporate portal
Information/Knowledge Era. It may not
implementation can not be seen
be obvious, but this cataclysmic
outside the broader spectrum of
transformation is directly impacting
business transformation. Some have
how IT projects will need to be
said that every company is becoming
evaluated. Compared to the role of IT
an Internet company, but we would
in the Industrial Era (automation, cost
argue that without a corporate portal
and time reduction, user productivity,
tying and displaying disparate data
etc), the role of IT in the new Era that
sources and applications, companies
is dawning at the beginning of the 21st
are really leveraging one of the key
century (at least in developed
aspects of the Internet: interoperability
countries and parts of developing
and advanced communications.
countries) is much more ingrained in
all business activities.
The claims in the above paragraph
can be, however, easily challenged by
IT must support what create value in
any astute Chief Financial Officer:
the Knowledge Economy: white collars
show “me the ROI”. The typical and
today spend countless hours in front of
wise IT manager (or even Chief
computers producing, analyzing and
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2. distributing information while depends to a large extent on how the
collaborating online with people across corporate portal implementation is
the room or thousands of miles away. positioned:
Thus, informed human decision-
making and creative skills are Is it part of a strategic blueprint
becoming increasingly important even for the evolution of an
as automation is increased. We also organization’s e-business
see an increasing role of the Service platform/infrastructure?
sector in the economy. Even o Cost-avoidance
traditional manufacturing companies o Reduction of
claim they are providing solutions; not Integration Costs
products. Souces of value in this o Speed of
scenario are: development of new
solutions
• Ability to make correct o Improved security
strategic decisions at the right Is it being justified as a set of
time; specific projects with known
• A brand that confers trust and value propositions?
innovative solutions o Revenue-
• Customer loyalty; enhancement
• Ability to collaborate to find o Cost-savings
quick solutions or to generate o Quality of customer
innovative ideas; service
• Etc. o Etc.
If we agree with the above statements Which of the two sets of benefits will
about sources of value and how IT be emphasized in a corporate portal
permeates almost all business implementation depends to a large
activities, it follows that IT projects extent on the specific software solution
should increasingly be ties to these that is being adopted. Some portal
intangible sources of value. Thus, our solutions clearly offer more out-of-the
response above: “Yes and No”. The box solutions, while others (usually
“Yes” part of the equation is about more application server centric) tend
being conservative, not confrontational to offer stronger development and
to traditional ways of seen value and integration tools. Clearly the former
to trying to be practical. The “No” part tend to produce better short-term
has a lot to do with a deeper returns, while the latter, better returns
understanding of how IT projects are later on when deep integration of
increasingly interconnected and applications and legacy systems are
dependent on the behavior and skills developed.
of future users.
The other aspect of estimating the
return of a corporate portal
Positioning a Corporate Portal Project implementation is user community
involvement. A corporate portal by
The methodology for the development definition is aimed at increasing
of a business case for a corporate
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3. access to information and productivity advanced services to customers,
to a large user segment in an speed to market of new IT systems,
organization. Therefore, if the user synergy among different business
community does not get involved, units, higher levels of security,
does not learn how to use the new employee morale, productivity and
wave of tools and the organization as continuous learning.
whole does not develop a good
governance model, the
implementation might not produce all 2. High-Level Impact on Different
the potential benefits. Community of Users
Following the discussion above, a While the corporate portal is a
typical business case for corporate pervasive infrastructure solution that
portal will include the following items: has the potential to impact how
everyone (including external partners,
1. The Vision clients and so forth) access critical
information, applications and
How the corporate portal will support collaborate, it is clear that some user
the vision set by top management. segments or business units will more
Often times, organizations miss this clearly and more rapidly benefit from
important and critical link. Corporate the portal implementation.
portals can touch almost every aspect
of the delivery of services in the Thus, in many cases, a detailed
financial sector. Therefore, it is of analysis of benefits across user
utmost importance that the corporate segments is highly recommended.
portal initiative to be framed within the Some benefits will easier to quantify,
corporate strategy. Typical issues while others will have a more
here are related to the deliver of qualitative aspect.
AUDIENCE QUANTITATIVE QUALITATIVE Observations
BENEFITS BENEFITS
Top Management
Prod.
Development
Risk Management
HR Professional
Tellers
Customers
This kind of analysis is very important eventually for effective deployment
for stakeholder alignment, support and
©TerraForum Consultores 3

4. and use of the corporate portal costs related to the corporate portal
infrastructure. implementations. Investment and
costs will generally escalate with
3. Evolution of the e-business breadth and depth of the portal.
infrastructure
The key variables that impact the
A horizontal corporate portal investment side of a portal
deployment will eventually affect how implementation and that need to be
all data sources and applications are taken into consideration are:
linked, processed and presented. It is
the blueprint for how IT supports Volumes
business processes and goals. The - # of users
establishment, therefore, of a blueprint - # of business units with
for the evolution of an organization e- unique requirements (in
business infrastructure needs to be terms of interface and
tightly linked to the choice and specific integration of
deployment of a corporate portal. In applications)
particular, the following components of - # of distribution
an e-business blueprint architecture channels
will need to be laid out: - # of device types for
rendering the portal
User Access Standards and services
Strategies - Volume of content
Security
Identity and Role Management Ease and Speed of Integration
Search - Unfamiliar development
Taxonomy environment
Collaboration & Workflow - Small number of native
Access to Structured and applications within the
Unstructured corporate portal
Information solution
and - Deep integration of
Applications existing applications &
Access to Web Services legacy systems
Enterprise Application - # of E-business
Integration services to be
Standards for Development integrated that are out-
Environment of-the box
Network Management - # of E-business
services to be
4. Required Investment integrated that required
deep customization
Based on the vision for the evolution
of the e-business infrastructure, a few Performance
scenarios must then be developed to
estimate the investment and on-going
©TerraForum Consultores 4

5. - Speed, caching, load issues and opportunities that will need
balancing, uptime to be examined are the following:
requirements Current costs, organization and
- Security Level required infrastructure for web
publishing, UI development,
Readiness Level etc;
- Lack of good & On-going application
organized corporate development that may present
directory future integration costs;
- Level of non-audited Accuracy, efficiency and speed
content spread in of information delivery and
different departments employees access to critical
and business units information and applications;
- Lack of content Improve use and leverage of
management software previous investments on
and processes in place business intelligence
applications;
Opportunities for streamlining
5. The Imperative for a Corporate Portal IT services and corporate
Implementation communications
!
" ! #
Development of more efficient
While it is hard to argue that in the push and pull e-learning
medium and long-term all major strategies based on role-based
organizations will implement a customization and employee’s
corporate portal infrastructure, it is preferences;
critical to highlight the most pressing Training costs of developers
needs for a corporate portal and users of applications;
implementation. Cost avoidance, On-going integration costs of
rework, integration decisions and data, information and
speed to market tend to be typical applications;
issues that are closely related to Relevant security issues;
making a decision about a corporate Opportunities for immediate
portal solution. cost saving through out-of-the-
box functionality and self-
In this regard, in the process of service administrative process
developing a business case for a savings:
corporate portal, the project team - New-hires
needs to focus on a few items that will - Employee move-
clearly demonstrate the quantifiable add-change
return of a corporate portal transactions
implementation. The most typical
©TerraForum Consultores 5

6. - eHR and Hardware and software
administrative tasks investments;
(performance Development & maintenance
review, costs.;
compensation Direct cost savings;
planning, learning Cost savings related to
management, travel estimated productivity gains;
and expense, etc.) Revenue enhancement
- Training opportunities.
- Printing & Calculations of ROI, IRR and
distribution costs Payback.
- Help desk and
related support It is important, however, to highlight
usage that the decision to implement a
- Reduced costs with corporate portal will be increasingly
other systems that seen as the “cost of doing business”.
become redundant This is the same concept as cost of
- Reduced use of PABX, email, etc. Without a robust
emails with heavy corporate portal solution organizations
attachments will face serious impediments to
(reduced network collaborate internally and externally in
and storage costs) an effective manner. In the emerging
and “broadcast” age of Collaborative Commerce and
emails Knowledge and Intellectual Capital
- Reduced Management, this could be an
telecommunications important competitive disadvantage.
costs (phone bills
and private
networks) 7. Strategic Opportunities
A corporate portal that is implemented
6. ROI Estimates within a broader strategic e-
architecture will most likely reduce the
An ROI estimate in a detailed often hidden costs of complexity: it will
spreadsheet should be developed to provide permanent reductions in IT
take into account all potential and budgets due to integration,
measurable benefits. These maintenance, developers’ training and
calculations should take into account development costs. It can also be
different software solutions and a strongly argued that it will provide the
number of assumptions related to the critical foundation for the rapid
variables highlighted in item 4. Thus, development of future e-business
the ROI estimates will be tied to a few applications in a scalable and secure
scenarios and migration paths that will environment.
be strategically proposed. It will
include estimates for: There are also a number of strategic
opportunities that are, sometimes,
©TerraForum Consultores 6

7. harder to quantify, but equally or even
more important than short-term gains ***
and cost reductions. A few examples
of strategic opportunities that might be José Cláudio C. Terra é presidente da
highlighted and/or investigated in more TerraForum Consultores. Atua como consultor
detail (if time and budget allow) are e palestrante no Canadá, nos Estados Unidos,
the following: em Portugal, na França e no Brasil. Também é
professor de vários programas de
Reduced costs due to pósgraduação e MBA e autor de vários livros
centralization of certain sobre o tema. Seu email é
operations to lower-cost jcterra@terraforum.com.br
locations;
Increased Sales due to
reduced time to market
(leveraging intelligence and
know-how – speed of roll-out of
new applications);
Implementation of a broad
knowledge management
initiative and growth in number
and reuse of documents and
knowledge objects;
Better brand management
(internally and externally) ;
Provide a solid and secure
infrastructure to extend and
improve critical relationships
with suppliers, partners and
clients. Thus, creating the
conditions for the development
new business models centered
on much deeper levels of
collaboration with external
entities.
Readiness level for integration
of independent businesses –
critical for success of mergers
and acquisitions.
Corporate Portals can
make it much easier to $ %
integrate disparate
Challenges and Opportunities in the Internet for Media Companies
systems both on the
presentation layer Portais Corporativos: novo instrumento de gestão da informação
(more easily) and on
Entendendo os Diferentes Níveis de Sofisticação de um Portal Corporativo
the back-end (true data
integration).
©TerraForum Consultores 7

8. $ ' %(
& &$
A TerraForum Consultores é uma empresa de
consultoria e treinamento em Gestão do
Conhecimento (GC) e Tecnologia da
Informação. Os clientes da empresa são, em
sua maioria, grandes e médias organizações
dos setores público, privado e terceiro setor. A
empresa atua em todo o Brasil e também no
exterior, tendo escritórios em São Paulo,
Brasília e Ottawa no Canadá. É dirigida pelo
Dr. José Cláudio Terra, pioneiro e maior
referência em Gestão do Conhecimento no
país. Além disso, conta com uma equipe
especializada e internacional de consultores.
) * $ - ( & % .% '
+ , & % $/ )
Gestão do Conhecimento e E-learning na
Prática
Portais Corporativos, a Revolução na Gestão
do Conhecimento
Gestão do Conhecimento - O Grande Desafio
Empresarial
Gestão do Conhecimento em pequenas e
médias empresas
Realizing the Promise of Corporate Portals:
Leveraging Knowledge for Business Success
Gestão de Empresas na Era do Conhecimento
©TerraForum Consultores 8