Comments on: Workplace Web – 3 models

By: Jane McConnell

Jane McConnell — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:04:51 +0000

Another reason for a dedicated portal is when it is highly “métier” oriented – dedicated to a specific business area of the organization and its very specific processes. I had this case with a global energy company and one of their divisions who was revamping their entire information system.
The portal team and their management agreed that there could be no compromises on how the processes were “transported” to the portal so HQ agreed this portal could exist “on its own”.
Interestingly, corp comm was not happy but had no choice. They got to “live” in a little box on the home page.
This strategy made total sense to me: business critical first, corporate content second.
Have you come across anything like this?

By: Francois Meyer

Francois Meyer — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:45:30 +0000

Hello Jane,

Very inidghtful post indeed.
I would be interested to have your opinion on what qualifies as ‘dedicated portals’.

I currently work as a consultant on revamping a corporate portal and we are moving towards a unified workplace as depicted above.

As we are working on the governance of the new portal, we are reflecting as to when a dedicated portals should be actually implemented (as opposed to integrating the requested contents&functionalities into the shell of the enterprise portal directly).

We have some good ideas (e.g. when branding is important, when there is a well defined theme and focus from the users is needed, when the site is temporary, etc.) but if you have any input on that it would be really appreciated.

Thanks

By: Jane McConnell

Jane McConnell — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:33:04 +0000

Steve – I don’t think the technical platforms drive organizations to different models.
In my experience it is primarily driven by how organizations work:
- Is their business culture one based on sharing?
- Is it hierarchical, e.g. are individual initiatives encouraged or do you need sr mgt support before doing anything?
- Are processes being standardized across the organization?
It also comes down to politics and how the people at the very top act and interact:
- Do they compete with each other?
- How do they make decisions?
- Do they themselves represent silos in the organization?
- Is there a sense of teamwork, with support functions serving the business functions?
These factors will all influence the extent to which the organization is able to build a coherent, well-organized workplace web.

By: Steve Fleckenstein

Steve Fleckenstein — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:10:11 +0000

Thanks for sharing this breakdown. I wonder if certain technical platforms drive organizations to different models– e.g., choose SharePoint and you gravitate toward model X? Or is it a matter of intranet “maturity” in terms of governance &/or funding?