Customer Reviews

Enterprise Knowledge Portals: Next Generation Portal Solutions for Dynamic Information Access, Better Decision Making, and Maximum Results

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Enterprise Knowledge Portals is a good reference book that is relevant to both a business and IT audience. Heidi Collins rightly reminds her audience that the enterprise portal should be designed around and be implementing the organization's knowledge management strategy. The enterprise portal is key to manage and communicate knowledge within an organization and to eventually share part of it with strategic external constituencies. Collins briefly describes the existing four portal categories: enterprise information portals, e-business and e-commerce portals, mobile commerce portals and Internet portals. Over time, a portal could metamorphose itself into a hybrid creature that offers the functionality of different portal categories to meet the needs of multiple constituencies.

Enterprise portal is gaining increasing acceptance because there is great value in having a single repository for all the information knowledge workers need to do their job. Knowledge workers should not waste their precious time locating information or answering questions again and again that could be addressed on the enterprise portal. In the process, innovation could get a definitive boost by facilitating both internal and external collaboration. Enterprise portal strategy should not be separated from alliance strategy for that reason.

A portal reporting team made up of cross-functional members from diverse business functions should be identified to get widespread buy-in. The portal reporting team could meet resistance or deal with skepticism from entrenched interests that are happy with the status quo. An executive sponsor is key to deal with these eventual obstacles effectively. A budget roadmap should also be defined to keep track of costs associated with the project and facilitate ROI calculation.

Portal components should be defined and organized around work processes and then prioritized. Data and/or applications needed to support portal components should be determined and documented. Data should be scrubbed, mapped and validated to guarantee credibility. Security and confidentiality should not be overlooked in the process.

When the portal is ready to be launched, one individual or a dedicated team should be identified as the single contact responsible for managing the portal and keeping its content fresh and relevant to the target audience. Before making the portal widely accessible, a portal pilot is advisable. Usage should be tracked. Furthermore, the pilot audience should be surveyed on a regular basis to foster acceptance, document key learnings and tweak the portal wherever necessary.

The portal management should keep in mind that the portal is a collective effort that requires buy-in from multiple constituencies to avoid stall content. Roles and responsibilities should be clearly delineated to insure accountability on that point. Ultimately, a portal is dynamic because its objectives are associated with corporate strategy and vision.

As portal project manager and administrator in addition to my marketing roles and responsibilities in a large company, I have only one regret about Enterprise Knowledge Portals. Some portal pages reproduced are generic screen snapshots that have little bearing on what a portal reporting and/or managing team is expected to tackle in the life of such a project.

Finally there is a book on what it takes to rollout an Enterprise Knowledge Portal (EKP). A lot has been written and said by Analysts, Vendors and other experts on the EKP subject but when it comes to actually how to implement EKPs, there isn't much out there other than vendor's marketing hype and analyst's 'reports regurgitation'. Now Heidi, through her practical EKP implementation experience, has written this masterpiece to demystifies the EKP implementation roadmap with easy to understand templates that guide you through entire rollout process. What I find interesting is that Heidi provides numerous benchmarks to set realistic expectation at each phase of EKP implementation. I strongly recommend this book to IT planners, architects, managers as well as the project team who are serious to implement successful EKP in their organizations.
Naeem Hashmi,
Author: Business Information Warehouse for SAP
Co-author: Getting the Most from Business Intelligence & SAP Business Warehouse

Technical Editor: SAP BW Certification: A Business Information Warehouse Study Guide

Finally there is a book on what it takes to rollout an Enterprise Knowledge Portal (EKP). A lot has been written and said by Analysts, Vendors and other experts on the EKP subject but when it comes to actually how to implement EKPs, there isn't much out there other than vendor's marketing hype and analyst's 'reports regurgitation'. Now Heidi, through her practical EKP implementation experience, has written this masterpiece to demystifies the EKP implementation roadmap with easy to understand templates that guide you through entire rollout process. What I find interesting is that Heidi provides numerous benchmarks to set realistic expectation at each phase of EKP implementation. I strongly recommend this book to IT planners, architects, managers as well as the project team who are serious to implement successful EKP in their organizations.

Naeem Hashmi,
CTO, Information Frameworks
Author: Business Information Warehouse for SAP
Co-author: Getting the Most from Business Intelligence & SAP Business Warehouse
Technical Editor: SAP BW Certification: A Business Information Warehouse Study Guide

Finally there is a book on what it takes to rollout an Enterprise Knowledge Portal (EKP). A lot has been written and said by Analysts, Vendors and other experts on the EKP subject but when it comes to actually how to implement EKPs, there isn't much out there other than vendor's marketing hype and analyst's 'reports regurgitation'. Now Heidi, through her practical EKP implementation experience, has written this masterpiece to demystifies the EKP implementation roadmap with easy to understand templates that guide you through entire rollout process. What I find interesting is that Heidi provides numerous benchmarks to set realistic expectation at each phase of EKP implementation. I strongly recommend this book to IT planners, architects, managers as well as the project team who are serious to implement successful EKP in their organizations.

Naeem Hashmi,
CTO, Information Frameworks
Author: Business Information Warehouse for SAP
Co-author: Getting the Most from Business Intelligence & SAP Business Warehouse
Technical Editor: SAP BW Certification: A Business Information Warehouse Study Guide

I am an IT Manager responsible for knowledge management initiatives. I have found "Enterprise Knowledge Portals" to be an invaluable and one-of-a-kind reference. The book is a comprehensive reference for developing a portal initiative and the prerequisite elements of a knowledge management program. Two infrastructure layers of particular interest to me are content-based retrieval and related taxonomy-categorization systems, and this book makes these subjects understandable to technician and business user alike. I was also pleased to find Collins' emphasis of a subject that is often ignored in KM initiatives: Usability. Her chapter on support and competency centers provides guidance about usability, the magic ingredient helping assure success in KM projects and one that is often overlooked on technical requirements short lists. I found Collins' description of all these subjects succinct, readable and comprehensive. The book is a must-read for both IT staff and businesspeople assigned to portal and KM projects.

In this book Heidi presents the challenges of developing and implementing knowledge portals in organizations in a very articulate yet simple way. The book walks you through the phases and the challenges associated with implementing both knowledge management practices and systems. You will get insights to what others have experienced and what you could expect. "If you just build it, they might not come" you have to get the culture and the people involved in the process.

Enterprise Knowledge Portals is filled with important, "real-world" information and tools for any organization planning or deploying a knowledge management portal. Heidi Collins documents case studies and a methodology with valuable questionnaires and planning models that will enhance any deployment. If you already have a portal initiative, the book can help your organization move from a departmental portal to an enterprise portal solution....

Any IT professional tasked with planning a corporate portal to make the most of an organization's intellectual property should read this book. Mrs. Collins offers a solid, well thought out strategy for planning, building, and implementing a portal that will ensure successful sharing of a company's most valuable asset - it's employees' knowledge.

Ginni Machamer
Sr. Programmer Analyst
Knowledge Application Systems
The Aerospace Corporation

If you are looking for a framework and case study to guide your portal implementation project, this is an excellent book. It contains many question sets, forms, and lists that could be easily adapted to fit many portal project scenarios.

That being said, the author gives scant attention to several elements that are crucial to portals providing ongoing long term business value including: the development and maintenance of content categorization schemas (taxonomies), and the corresponding classification of content; content publishing and management; and collaboration support.

In summary, the book is very strong on "how" to plan the implementation of a portal, but is less complete in other areas.

Heidi Collins takes a thorough review of designing and building portals. This includes process and change management necessary to get people to buy-into what your doing.

An importantant how to book for any corporate effort. Chapters have illustrations, checklists, and an "ingredient" approach to make sure your doing the right thing.