Enterprise Portals for Information Organization

Introduction

The market of portals has increasingly raised over this century grabbing the attention of new clients by new enterprise portals concepts. It is necessary to underline the idea that portals are means of enterprises to establish contact with the clients; they integrate processes and people through the boundaries of the organization. Enterprise portals can be easily created by any organization to consolidate access to the company’s business applications; they provide sufficient benefits for information organization improving information management process and managing the information lifecycle.

Enterprise Portals Benefits

Enterprise portals benefits in information organization are focused on the opportunities they promote within the organization working for staff:

1. documents updating and easy access to information browsing;
2. learn the level of competitiveness;
3. conduct effective sales reviews for business strategic improvement;
4. business processes implementation;
5. access to archive documents and opportunity to update the data easily.

It is necessary to underline the fact that organizations have a comprehensive portal framework allowing meeting the expectations of the audience through the creation of portal sites, allowing to provide customization and support for the company’s custom application development.

It is necessary to stress that organizations have to accumulate a lot of data concerning resources and internal operations. Information gathering is performed using accepted conventions, predominantly with the help of computer technologies supporting internal data acquisition. According to Choo, 2002, every organization is characterized by the variety of its dynamic system; and it is necessary to absorb this variety for information stabilization. There are the following ways of information organization improvement:

• Make use of information resources knowledge being part of librarians’ experience and training;
• Monitor important issues;
• Direct information technologies at attenuating variety;

Enterprise portals contribute to effective information acquisition planning; this process covers the formation of a distributed network for information collection. There is an opportunity to build a database containing up-to-date data describing the project assignments, conference attendance, employees’ skills, customer accounts, and site visits. (Choo, 2002). It should be stressed that managing the information organization through a perfect database covering external and internal experts is considered to be a valuable information asset.

To understand the basic benefits of enterprise portals, one should dive into the analysis of its fundamental features: portals content organization; data and functions connection using integrated navigation; personalization; opportunities to the single sign-on connection between systems and users; and beneficial access control of organizations’ services and management. (Boye, 2005).

According to Bob Kruger, ‘The purpose of portals is to leverage existing applications into a better view, one that is familiar to people. (Best Practices in Enterprise Portals, 2001). Taking into account research developed by the Delphi Group, software sales through business portals have been growing and reached almost $407 million since 2000.

The analysis of the Miami-Dade Public Schools case study has raised the problem of insufficient users’ access to applications and disparate information systems, aimed at children’s education. As a result, the school district developed a new enterprise portal providing people with perfect access to technology resources. The enterprise portal building led to the following benefits:

• Cost reduction;
• Perfect access to educating data;
• Good collaboration;
• Better decision-making and productivity.

The school district managed to introduce a new delivery schedule serving as a tool for required data delivery. The portal has demonstrated considerable results of its visits among children and teachers, allowing everyone to enjoy portal benefits. (Miami-Dade County Public Schools. 2007)

Enterprise portals ensure the information lifecycle within organizations through fulfilling the most essential functions in the data organization area: evaluation of sophisticated rules; functionality and design of portals as means of people’s integration; configuration and administration; and high performance of scalability. It is necessary to underline the fact that packaged applications proliferation leads to difficulties in data integration. Acquisitions increase provided organizations with disconnected IT infrastructures; enterprise portals goal is aimed at getting the appropriate information to its users at identified time. Thus, XPS is considered to be an appropriate solution to organizations’ difficulties, having access to information, delivering it using the personalized interface, and allowing the users to interact with data. (Best Practices in Enterprise Portals, 2001)

The organization and storage of the information appear to be an important element in the information management system. Information technology provides a strong impact on data storage; nevertheless, some transaction processing systems cannot support adequate data storage. According to Choo, 2002, data warehousing is considered to be a perfect solution to the problem; data warehouses have information from other enterprise sources being organized by data models and subjects. This method allows making use of tools aimed at programs statistical analysis, spreadsheets, and executive information systems. Analytical processing software is directed at creating data multidimensional views and data structuring. Enterprise portals benefit in the formation of archival policy and integrated records management, allowing corporate memory preserving and leveraging.

And the final stage fulfilled through enterprise portals is concentrated on data distribution, sharing, and disseminating information from various sources. The method of boundary sparing or information gatekeeping is aimed at developing personal contacts with the community attracting colleagues turning them for advice. Here is the model example of information used on the basis of decision phases supported by organizations portals:

The table illustrated above provides the analysis of the connection between organization missions and information management. Information management supported by the formation and development of organization portals is based on the following processes:

• Information technologies practices, providing support to IT resources and business processes;
• Practices of information management, supporting information life cycle;
• Values and behaviors of information, stimulating the information sharing improvement through its team-based performance. (Choo, 2002)

The analysis of enterprise portals’ role in information management demonstrated the fact that they are aimed at providing a unified interface to have direct access to the required data; allow customizing functionality and look tailoring the applications and links within the organization. (Maltz, 2005). Such benefits, like security, scalability, data integration, categorization, personalization, and collaboration, impact the high growth of their promotion within the company’s management system.

Conclusion

It is necessary to stress the idea that enterprise portals provide wide opportunities and advantages in information management improvement, playing an essential role in data formation, storage, updating, delivering, and distribution. Customization allows facilitating access to information and channels following their roles and needs. Portals develop sufficient benefits for information organization improving information management process and managing information lifecycle; they allow working faster and smarter with the data, presenting quick and flexible solutions to faced difficulties and problems, meeting the requirements of business and technology. (Richman, 2007)

References

Best Practices in Enterprise Portals. (2001). KM World Specialty Publishing.

Boye, J. (2005). Portal Software: Passing Fad or Real Value? CMS Watch.

Choo, C. W. (2002). Information management for the intelligent organization: The art of scanning the environment. ASIS Monograph Series. Medford, NJ: Information Today.

Introduction to Portals. (2007). Microsoft Office Share Point Server.

Maltz, L. (2005). Portals: A Personal Door to the Information Enterprise. The Excite Network, Inc.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools. (2007). Case Study.

Richman, E. (2007). Transforming Your Business with SharePoint Products and Technologies. Microsoft.