www.intranetfocus.com intranets and corporate portals an overview martin white managing director,...

www.intranetfocus.com

Intranets and corporate portalsan overview

Martin White

Managing Director, Intranet Focus [email protected]

Internet Librarian International 2001


Agenda

• Intranet and extranet adoption in Europe

• The lessons so far

• Intranets in the public sector

• Intranets and corporate culture

• The evolution of the corporate portal business

• The immediate future


Intranet penetration, Europe

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Very Large Large Medium Small Very small

International Data Corporation Global IT survey 2000


Intranet adoption

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

FR DE IT SE UK US CA JP

1999

2000

UK DTI International Benchmarking Study 2000


Intranet/extranet comparison

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

FR DE IT SE UK US CD JP

2000I

2000E

UK DTI International Benchmarking Study 2000


However!

• Despite the rate of adoption of intranets the level of success of these intranets in having a significant impact on business and organisational efficiency and effectiveness is highly variable

• This is especially the case in the public sector

• In the UK both the National Audit Office and a Select Committee of the House of Commons have commented on the apparent lack of effectiveness of central government intranets


The intranet cost iceberg

Hardware/software

Time


Intranet issues

• The staff resources required to implement an intranet are always under-estimated

• Once an intranet fails to deliver benefits it is very difficult to re-launch the intranet as staff lose their trust in the desk-top

• An intranet never stops being developed

• Adding electronic versions of printed documents to an intranet without re-designing the business process and the document results in a reduction in efficiency


Why intranets often fail - 1

• Without a clear focus for the objectives of the intranet the content fails to support these objectives, and so staff use other resources in their routine work

• Inadequate staff resources (in terms of both numbers and skills) are allocated, with the result that content updating is variable in timeliness and relevance

• The content architecture is based on the organisational structure, and severely inhibits locating relevant information from across the organisation

• Key documents are not on the intranet at launch


Why intranets often fail - 2

• The requirements for staff training and for IT support are underestimated

• The initial software platform does not provide the functionality that emerges from the requirements of users as the intranet starts to evolve from a ‘publishing’ stage

• Job descriptions and evaluations do not take into account the contribution expected of staff to the development of content for the intranet

• There is no formal internet/intranet/extranet strategy that optimises the use of information and of staff


NAO report – some findings

• “Making intranets central to the life of organisations requires considerable commitment by top management, significant investment on a larger scale than for external Web sites, and firm but creative management of the information and facilities made available”

• “In comparison with private sector companies and overseas government agencies UK departments remain very cautious in making the investment necessary to build cost-effective and well-used intranets”

National Audit Office reportGovernment on the web, Dec. 1999


Intranet effectiveness

Communication between staff

Improving business processes

Very effective 11% 4%

Effective 27% 22%

Somewhat effective

43% 44%

Ineffective 14% 20%

Unsure/don’t know

5% 9%

Source – www.governmentontheweb.org

http://www.governmentonthe/



Frequency of use

Used by most staff daily 30%

Used by most staff once a week

34%

Used by most staff once a month

9%

Not widely used 17%

Unsure/don’t know 11%

Source – www.governmentontheweb.org




Select Committee conclusion

• “We are concerned that progress in establishing intranets to improve communications within and between departments, and so realise the significant potential for efficiency savings, has been limited”

• “We note the Cabinet Office’s concern that more needs to be done to change the culture of departments so that electronic communications becomes much more the normal way for departments to do business”


The next critical success factor

• There has been a tendency to pay lip-service to the impact of intranets on corporate culture

• The reality is that there is not a single ‘corporate culture’

• Corporate cultures are complex, multi-dimensional, and change in subtle ways

• Recognising the realities of corporate cultures is an essential step in creating a successful intranet that has significant positive impact on the organisation


Intranets and corporate culture

• A successful intranet needs to reflect

- Business and national cultures

- Operational and IT cultures

- Personnel and communications cultures

- Information and knowledge cultures

• The greater the match between the intranet desktop view of these cultures and reality the more effective will the intranet and the organisation become.


Intranets and culture

• There is no way that an intranet can, by itself, change any aspect of a corporate culture

• In the right environment, as part of a culture-awareness and culture-development strategy, an intranet can

- Codify the best of an existing culture

- Identify issues with the existing culture

- Be used to support a change in culture

- Stabilise that change in culture


Dante’s Divina Commedia

Nel mezzo cammin di nostra vitaMi ritrovia per una selva oscuraChe la diritta via ear smarrita

In the middle of the journey of our lifeI found myself in the middle of a dark woodWhere the straight path was lost


Corporate portals

• A corporate portal enables a user to customise their view of structured and integrated external and internal information and applications through a browser interface

• There are now at least 60 vendors of corporate portal software applications, coming from a number of different application sectors

• Most businesses want to select just one corporate portal vendor, who will then “own the desktop”

• Information vendors are now starting to capitalise on the market opportunity


Portal market development

• To a significant extent the corporate portal/EIP market was catalysed by a Merrill Lynch analyst report published in November 1998

• This is often quoted as forecasting that the market by 2002 would be work $14 billion

• In fact this is a mis-reading of the report, and the forecast for content portals was only $4 billion

• Even so, the market has not grown as quickly as was forecast by many commentators in 1999/2000


World portal software market

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

2000 2001 2002 2003

$B

Yankee Group


Portal vendor segmentation

• Most of the 60+ vendors are quite small companies, and are privately owned

• Few are larger than $100m revenues, such as Hummingbird and Autonomy

• The major IT/software companies have a keen interest in portal applications, including IBM, Microsoft, Computer Associates, and Oracle

• The offerings of the smaller vendors are largely a product of their past, such as business intelligence, document management and search engines


Business prospects

• There are too many vendors for the size of the market

• Product differentiation is very difficult, and sales cycles can be in excess of six months

• Developing an RFP is equally difficult

• Unlike most intranet deployments, portals cost real money, in excess of $100,000

• The end result is that many smaller companies may not last through 2001


Intranet software vendors

• There are a number of new entrants in the intranet market, offering integrated packages “out of the box”

• There is also a growing interest in Application Service Provider (ASP) intranet applications

• Among current suppliers are

- Active Intranet

- Intranets.com

- IntraCS

- Spectral

- PlanetIntra


Portals and intranets

• A corporate portal is not a substitute for an intranet

• A portal application can provide a high-level access platform for one or more intranets, and also facilitate the integration of intranet content, legacy databases, applications and external content

• If the intranet is not currently an effective communication channel, then adding a portal interface, or even replacing the intranet with a portal, is going to make the situation worse, not better


In conclusion

• Although intranets are now widely deployed there is still much to be done in understanding how to make them effective

• This is especially the case in public sector situations where there is no “profit”-based justification, and there can also be major information channel management issues

• Few companies have a coherent, budgeted and adequately resourced web strategy that covers the web site, intranet, extranet and portal deployment


In conclusion

• Considerable attention to detail is required for a successful corporate portal deployment

• Portal vendor evaluation will need to focus as much on the financial resources of the company as on the functionality of the product

• Corporate portal applications are still at an early stage of development

• In the final analysis the issues are about people, and not the technology


Contact information

E-mail [email protected]

Web site http://www.intranetfocus.com

www.intranetfocus.com intranets and corporate portals an overview martin white managing director,...

Documents

intranet focus

intranet penetration

agenda intranet

efficiency slide

launch slide

intranets central

public sector intranets

immediate future slide