Proven Portals: Best Practices for Planning, Designing, and Developing Enterprise Portals

This book is chock-full of valuable knowledge and practical advice on implementing portals. Dan Sullivan once again gives us comprehensive information and useful techniques for delivering what's become a business staple. A must-read for practitioners and managers alike!
--Jill Dyché
Partner, Baseline Consulting Group

Increasingly, corporations are turning to portals to foster more integrated, Web-based user experiences for employees, customers, and vendors. By providing collaborative, personalized environments and adaptive workspaces, portals allow businesses to better acquire, serve, and retain customers; more effectively manage production and sales; and empower their staff with instant access to critical information. Focusing on critical elements of portal implementations, Proven Portals combines design principles with a series of in-depth case studies exploring how innovative enterprises, from NASA and Johnson Controls to CARE Canada and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, have successfully deployed portal technologies to reap significant rewards.

In this book the author shares proven strategies for:

• Organizing information in an intuitive, coherent manner
• Creating a modular, adaptable framework for application integration
• Developing a robust, scalable architecture
• Improving search and navigation
• Implementing collaboration an content management

Filled with best practices developed by leading organizations and portal designers, this book provides practical advice for:

• Leveraging portals to better serve customers
• Delivering business intelligence across the organization
• Deploying effective knowledge management systems
• Ensuring adoption by end users
• Measuring a portal's return on investment

Portals are revolutionizing the way businesses handle e-commerce, customer relationships, and business intelligence. Proven Portals gives IT managers the foundation they need to plan, design, and develop enterprise portals for maximum customer satisfaction, improved analytics on demand, and more rigorous knowledge management.

Table of Contents

Case Studies.

List of Figures.

Preface. @@CHAPTER = Acknowledgments.

I. PRINCIPLES OF PORTAL DESIGN.

1. Creating Frameworks for Organizing Information.

The Need for Structure in Portal Interface Design.

Organizing Content around Taxonomies.

Visualization Tools for Portal Organization.

Emerging Trends and Technologies.

Conclusion.

References.

2. Using a Three-tier architecture.

Tier 1: The Presentation Layer.

Tier 2: The Application Server Layer.

Tier 3: The Enterprise Information Services Layer.

Conclusion.

Reference.

3. Using a Framework for Application Integration.

The Java 2 Enterprise Edition Framework.

The Microsoft .NET Architecture.

Application Integration Services.

Protecting the Integrity of the Portal.

Conclusion.

References.

4. Ensuring Portal Adoption.

Best Practices for Ensuring Portal Adoption.

Root Causes of Poor Adoption.

Conclusion.

References.

5. Measuring Portal Return on Investment: A Crash Course.

The Need for Financial Impact Analysis.

Tools for Analyzing Capital Expenditures.

Calculating a Portal ROI and Related Measures.

Best Practices: ROI and Other Financial Impact Measures.

Conclusion.

References.

II. THE VARIETY OF PORTALS.

6. Characteristics of Effective E-Commerce Portals.

Customer Trust.

Ease of Use.

Multichannel Integration.

Customer Retention.

Support for Self-Service.

Conclusion.

References.

7. Delivering Business Intelligence and Analytics on Demand.

Understanding Operations: Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing.

Characteristics of Data Warehouses.

The Data Warehouse Environment.

Facilitating Operations: Analytic Services.

Conclusion.

References.

8. Effective Knowledge Management Techniques.

Types of Information.

Search Functions: The First Step.

Metadata: Know What It's All About.

Expert Directories: Connecting People to People.

Conclusion.

References.

III. BUILDING YOUR OWN PROVEN PORTAL.

9. Five common Themes in Proven Portals.

Focus on Business Processes.

Emphasis on Easy of Use.

Deep Integration of Applications.

Scalability of Services.

Well-Developed Security Models.

Conclusion.

References.

10. Implementing Your Proven Portal.

Understanding the Business Drivers.

Designing the Portal.

Assessing the Return on Investment.

Incrementally Implementing and Adapting the Portal.

Conclusion.

References.

Bibliography.

Index.