Business Strategy to Support Your Portal Implementation

The following checklists pose questions that you should be asking before you start to implement your portal:
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Business Needs and Application Requirements
Focus Area Bullet. Do you currently provide online services to customers, partners, or employees?
Focus Area Bullet. How do you plan on increasing internal productivity and automating processes?
Focus Area Bullet. How are you currently collaborating across departments and organizational boundaries?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you believe the Web is (or should be) a key workplace for your employees or partners?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you provide HR self-service to employees to relieve some administrative burden from HR?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you provide online training materials, manuals, or schedules to employees?
Focus Area Bullet. Is secure knowledge or global best practices sharing a key requirement?
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Information Technology Strategy
Focus Area Bullet. Is the Web an important part of your application strategy?
Focus Area Bullet. How is your company consolidating infrastructure to do more with less?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you have efficient access to information across the enterprise?
Focus Area Bullet. Are Single Sign On and security important to you?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you have a scalable platform for Web application delivery and management?
Focus Area Bullet. How are you adapting to changing technologies?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you have both JAVA and .Net Development environments?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you want/need to create Web-based business applications at a lower cost?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you need to improve the return on existing legacy systems?
Focus Area Bullet. Would it be valuable if you could adapt to changing technologies more easily and eliminate forced vendor upgrades or migration?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you need to customize information delivery for different groups in your organization?
Focus Area Bullet. Does IT have a common platform for rolling out new applications and, as a result, reducing user training needs?
 
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Portal Development
Focus Area Bullet. Does your applications solution need to integrate across languages, platforms, or enterprise boundaries?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you need the flexibility to integrate with different types of enterprise systems, such as ERP, CRM, and document databases?
Focus Area Bullet. Do your portal or application integration requirements include an ability to manage many applications for your enterprise?
Focus Area Bullet. Is support for a true SOA (with distributed Web services) a key requirement?
Focus Area Bullet. Is a rich user interface or interface customization a key requirement?
Focus Area Bullet. Is having the flexibility to change applications easily a key requirement?
Focus Area Bullet. Is enterprise search one of your key needs?

 

 

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Collaboration and Document Management
Focus Area Bullet. Do you plan or need to develop communities or workspaces where people can work together?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you need to manage tasks, activities, or workflows in your applications?
Focus Area Bullet. Do your users need to share information or work together on documents?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you want to provide users with collaboration that integrates into their applications and workspaces, rather than making them use separate tools?
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Distributed Web Publishing
Focus Area Bullet. Do any of your employees need to publish or manage Web content on an intranet, extranet, or Internet site, or a portal?
Focus Area Bullet. Do you need to make it easier for average users to publish or manage Web content?
Focus Area Bullet. If publishing and managing Web content were easier, would employees and partners be able to share or distribute information more efficiently?
Focus Area Bullet. Is secure knowledge or global best practices sharing a key requirement?