• Corporate portals
   Advice for communications people
   >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

• Look them in the eye
   Include portraits in statements

• Emotional usability
   Definition, quantification, design

• Corporate image management
   Concepts and literature overview

• Organisational overviews
   Organograms work on web sites?

• Quick ones
   Collected advice boxes

Are you going to have a corporate portal in your organisation? Are you one of the communications people involved in its implementation? First time? Fine, here´s some advice...

• What do you mean by corporate portal?
• Good planning: good portal
   • Communications or IT project?
   • Taxonomy
   • User rights
   • Quality of external developers
   • Evangelism and benefits
   • Rolling, rolling, rolling (out)...

What do you mean by corporate portal?
In short, a corporate portal allows you to

• Share documents and resources across the organisation
• Search for information across the organisation

The main benefit is that you are able to bring together content from across the organisation on a single corporate portal site.
That way everyone in the organisation can supposedly find all the information they need for their work, regardless of things like which department produced it, where in the organisation the actual data resides, etc.

Two features are very important for a portal to serve its purpose in a complex corporate environment, in which content is constantly being added, updated and (somewhat less often) deleted:

• Search facilities
• Workflow management

In order to facilitate management of large amounts of information across often large numbers of data storage points, virtually all corporate portals provide some quite comprehensive search facilities.
This also includes structured ways of creating document descriptions and keywords that makes searching possible.

Corporate portal systems usually also have advanced procedures for document management, including versioning and structured publishing processes. This is also known as workflow management, and ensures that the information you share is complete, up-to-date and, if necessary, approved.
Without such workflow management facilities, all hell could break loose if several colleagues worked on the same document at the same time. Or next year´s budget could be published without the boss having approved it. Workflow management makes sure everything goes according to the specified procedures.

Contrary to common belief, a corporate portal is rarely just a large web site.

Most corporate portals are essentially advanced document management systems. Many of them have web user interfaces that serve as convenient one-stop-shops for information, but the actual documents you handle are still often Word documents, spreadsheets, or other document classics. Consequently, you will most often work with the actual documents in Word, Excel or other programs even though you may store them, search for them, approve them, etc. through your corporate portal´s web interface.

Often the web interface is only one of many ways of accessing portal content. Some portal installations let you access the portal via e.g. browsers, Windows Explorer or programs like Word.

And of course the web interface also lets you add tremendous value to the way people in your organisation work.
You can quite easily include features like discussion groups, news digests, personalised pages, travel or meeting room bookings, library services, etc. in the portal web interface.
It all just illustrates the versatility and scope of corporate portals.

Good planning: good portal
There are some pretty good corporate portal systems around. Which one to go for is a question of taste, needs, experience, favourite suppliers, organisation size, wherewithal, etc.

But the quality of your organisation´s corporate portal implementation will also depend quite heavily on these things:

• Communications or IT project?
  Occasionally you hear about organisations where IT departments negotiate corporate portal deals before the communication departments come into the picture. This is a definite no-no.
  
  Implementing a portal involves some quite heavy investments. And since the benefits of having a corporate portal are pretty clear to everyone, the heavy decisions can, if you are not careful, quite easily end up on the desks of the IT department and their budget-heavy, and thus also decision-heavy, managers.
  
  IT-managers are known for their huge project management experience.
  And they don´t mess about. After all, a corporate portal project is all about inviting some offers, buying in some servers and licences and consultants, sticking two or three custom-made applications on top of the standard solution, and otherwise just getting one´s act together and start communicating digitally.
  “That´s $10.000 there and $100.000 there, a couple of servers, a hundred licences, and four and a half external developers full time in forty two point two five days. Hey, go grab yourself a coffee and gimme another five minutes, and I´ll draw up a plan for the ROI and the roll-out too...,” your efficient IT-manager may tell you.
  
  Yes, you can easily reduce the discussion about a corporate portal to a discussion about how many licences you need, and how many consultancy hours the IT department should allocate for Monday and Tuesday in week 47 two years from now.
  Then everything becomes wonderfully tangible, easy to negotiate, easy to enter into a spreadsheet and easy to take with you to a budget meeting.
  
  But then it will also be the hardware, the technology and the IT department´s project plans – sometimes even the prestige of the IT department – that forms the basis for your organisation´s digital communication.
  And that digital communication is a big thing, and it´s growing even bigger all the time. Otherwise you wouldn´t contemplate a corporate portal, would you?
  
  This means that the implications for your organisation´s communication are huge.
  
  A corporate portal project is multidisciplinary, like almost any other project these days.
  But its primary objective is all about communication. All the main benefits are found on the communications level.
  Your IT-people definitely provide some important means. But never let it become an IT-driven, let alone IT-owned, project.
  
  
  
  
• Taxonomy
  Okay, now you´ve found a solution. The IT managers have had their say, but you´ve managed to control the process from a communications point of view.
  
  Now you plan in some more detail, and you will find that a carefully planned taxonomy (folder structure, basically) can help bring the best out of your portal implementation. Because on many portals, just like on countless other applications, information is stored in virtual folders.
  
  Structuring a corporate portal will show you the enormous heterogeneousity of information needs and wants in an organisation, but that shouldn´t stop you from working closely with the portal´s information stakeholders about finding the right structure.
  
  

  Think about the pros and cons of any shared drive structures you may have had before the portal. Don´t necessarily repeat an old department-based structure. The move towards project-based work may easily justify something completely different in many organisations. Try to keep things simple, and folder hierarchies as flat as possible.

  
  Workshopping is fine. Your own portal project is probably multi-departmental. Perhaps you can use that as a starting point for workshop discussions.
  
  In doubt? Need someone to discuss this with?
  Have you got an in-house library or information centre or knowledge resource centre or whatever they are called?
  If in doubt, ask there. These library and information people are highly skilled taxonomy guys, and they´ll be able to guide you.
  
  
  
  
• User rights
  User rights (like read, read/write or admin) are quite often linked to taxonomy as they are often allocated on a per-folder basis.
  This means, for example, that a user can have reader rights for one folder and author rights for another folder.
  
  Again, try to keep the allocation of user rights as simple and structured as at all possible.
  
  Some of the questions you may ask yourself when you deal with user rights can be of an almost philosophical nature:
  
  Do you essentially trust your colleagues to the extent that you set out with full read and write rights for everyone, and then narrow it down for individual users?
  Or do you essentially distrust them so that you set out with no rights for anyone (but yourself and a few guys in IT), and then add rights for individual users on individual folders?
  
  Yep, things can be mind-boggling, especially when you realise that sub-folders often inherit allocated rights from other folders. Plan before you act.
  If in doubt, it´s always worth talking to one of your IT system administrators. They´ve been there, and they´ll be able to guide you.
  
  To you who have read this article from the beginning: Let there be no doubt, I love and respect IT guys, and anyone who deals with communication in a modern organisation is well advised to make friends with them.
  You just shouldn´t let their machinery completely take over a corporate portal project...
  
  
  
  
• Quality of external developers
  An out-of-the-box standard portal system probably won´t match all your organisation´s needs, so some level of customisation of the standard portal system is often necessary.
  
  This means that, unless you work for a large IT development organisation with portal developers to spare, you often need to call in some specialised external developers to work on your portal project.
  There you go again: Efficient IT managers are not necessarily wrong. External IT people do belong in the project plans, but the fact that you´re able to quantify their hours just isn´t enough. Why? Read on...
  
  Equally often the customisation of your portal implementation is likely to be done by a local development agency, not by the portal system manufacturer.
  Why? Because working with the big portal system manufacturers´ own developers quite simply costs a packet...
  
  Good developers can create magic. Mediocre ones can create flaws and dodgy workarounds that can haunt your portal implementation, and the way your organisation works with it, for years.
  So when you are going to team up with external developers from a small to medium-sized local external agency that is to do customisation and any special development for your portal implementation, do go for the good ones:
  
  Practice your research and networking skills and find out what others think of their work.
  
  Demand to see several examples of complex portal work the agency have done, and if they´ve made something that matches your organisation´s line of work (aviation, for example, have different requirements and regulations than, say, agriculture).
  
  Get – just to state the obvious – some clearly defined points of contact, deliverables, success criteria, deadlines and support agreements.
  
  And last but not least: Find an IT agency that does not treat your portal implementation solely as an IT-project.
  
  Because it ain´t: Of course they will do a lot of programming and coding, but your portal is essentially about your organisation´s communication, so all the programming and all the coding is only worth anything if it truly supports your organisation´s communication needs.
  
  So go for an agency that is willing to spend time on testing the usability of their applications with you and some of your colleagues to whom the portal is meant to make a difference.
  Go through some realistic scenarios while you think aloud and take notes.
  
  I once tested usability on a travel booking application for a corporate portal.
  Initially everyone thought it looked OK, but after having tested it for less than five minutes, the application´s lack of a consistent date format had already cost us a potential 6.000 dollars in cancelled test-tickets... Imagine if this had taken place in real life. So believe me, usability testing does pay off.
  
  If the agency is not willing to test usability, or capable of it, they probably think in 0s and 1s only, and you should chuck them. Because thinking digitally, in 0s and 1s only, is not a sound approach to digital communication.
  
  Usability testing does take time and money, but it will save you even more time and even more money, and it will help ensure that your portal will actually make the intended difference.
  
  
  
  
• Evangelism and benefits
  Introducing a corporate portal will inherently change the way people in the organisation work. After all, it is often meant to.
  
  Quite naturally there can be a reluctance to adapt to new ways of doing things, even if they are ultimately a lot more effective.
  
  

  Change is fine, especially if it doesn´t affect the way you have always worked. Be honest: If you weren´t one of those change-
  driving, knowledge-managing communications guys, wouldn´t you just dread saying goodbye to the beloved, old, rigid, deep, maze-like shared drive structure? The one with all the redundant folders you´ve created over the years and know inside out... So make sure that everyone is kept informed about the portal´s benefits in a way that is relevant to them.

  
  Rest assured that every single person affected by the portal will ask “What´s in it for me?” – and quite rightly so.
  
  So always be ready to show (not tell) individuals how the portal can add value and help them find the information they need for their work, regardless of where the data resides.
  
  If, for example, you are doing corporate portal induction with people who deal with your organisation´s travel, don´t use project justification terms like “fewer bottlenecks” or “increased efficiency and effectiveness” or “dynamic approval paths.”
  
  

  Instead show them how they find, publish and approve specific itineraries instantly across departments. Show then something that will make a difference to them. Show them benefits.

  Household name Find a name for your portal. Giving it a strong brand identity really helps when you want to make people adopt the portal.

  
  It shouldn´t be hard: such benefits are the whole point of having a corporate portal.
  
  
  
  
• Rolling, rolling, rolling (out)...
  Okay, now you are nearly there. Time for the big thing.
  
  The big thing in any corporate portal project is the roll-out.
  Rolling out is the crescendo, the point when all the excitement that has been building up is released, albeit sometimes a fairly protracted crescendo, especially if the organisation is geographically dispersed and roll-out happens gradually.
  
  Anyway, the roll-out is when the investments and all the hard work materialise into something tangible for the organisation. Events and celebrations may take place.
  
  But if you don´t maintain your communications focus during the project, you risk that rolling out will gradually become the primary objective of the exercise.
  
  The fact that a need to focus on the concrete, tangible issues and manifestations may arise during a fairly long project is by no means unnatural. And roll-out is the biggest of milestones in a corporate portal project plan. The day we start running!
  
  It is also quite natural that many of the people involved in the project tend to focus quite a lot less on the abstract and intangible issues, such as using the portal, and the associated benefits.
  
  These issues are not so easily turned into milestones, even though they were in all likelihood what made you decide to start the corporate portal project in the first place.
  And remember: using the portal will be the #1 concrete and tangible issue from day 1 after roll-out.
  
  So when you talk to people during the project, you should consider it a danger sign if they suddenly look closely at their multi-page MS Project print-out and go:
  “What was that you said? ... Using the portal? ..., let me se, ..., using, ... Nope, that is not listed as any milestone... Eh, does that go before or after roll-out?”
  

Honestly, it ain´t that bad. Corporate portals are cool, and you can create some really huge benefits for your organisation. Good luck!