Corporate portals as tools for information sharing within organizations Cristiano Orsi Pio Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Calle Bravo Murillo, 243 – 4C Madrid – Spain +34 610636456 cristianopio@gmail.com
ABSTRACT This article analyzes the use of corporate portals as auxiliary tools to share information in organizations. To this end, between April and June 2009, a qualitative study was conducted in Brazil, among six companies that use this type of technological support. Through this analysis, it was sought comparing the use of corporate portals and their relation to information sharing between the companies chosen in an attempt to trace an updated scenery on the use of this technology.
Keywords Corporate Portals, Information Sharing, Knowledge Management.
1. INTRODUCTION The possibility of accessing information spread in different parts of the world in real time means a competitive advantage for organizations. In such wise as to, managing the information produced and using it in the best way possible becomes a business challenge (Choo, 1998). Nowadays, companies have available a variety of mechanisms provided by information technology so they can innovate at the speed demanded by the market. Among the most used technologies, corporate portals have emerged as tools to seek, capture, store, retrieve and disseminate information to both internal and external members of an organization, providing a suitable infrastructure to integrate people, processes and information, building collaboration through a shared working environment. According to IDC consulting company (2009), it is estimated that globally the information technology market has reached U$ 1.4 trillion in 2008 and they’re projecting an increase of 0,5% in 2009. Brazil alone has been responsible for circulating U$27 billion, a raise of 1,9% compared to the rest of the world and 47% compared to Latin America.
In this context, the software market has grown globally stimulated by infrastructure optimization and a nonstop search
for higher efficiency in business. Corporate portals appear as one of the main exponents on the area, and they have been answerable for over U$72,5 billion on Latin America in 2008. Prospects for this market are extremely positive and analysts expect a 20% growth for the next four years. The objective of this article is to define corporate portals functionalities according to a survey on the main characteristics listed by literature and an investigation on the present evolutionary stage of this technology based on an investigation of it’s usage as an auxiliary tool on information sharing in organizations. The article is organized as the following: item 2 broaches the origin and evolution of corporate portals. Item 3 details corporate portals functionalities based on literature. On item 4 it’s described the results of the research on the relation between portals and information sharing in organizations. The conclusion summarizes the main points and presents a reflection on the implantation and usage of portals in an organizational atmosphere.
2. ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF CORPORATE PORTALS User familiarized with Internet automatically associate the word portal to a starting point responsible for reuniting and organizing on it’s database all the content that may be searched. The idea seems vague, but in a certain way it represents well the intention behind this tool and it’s also shared by others authors on the subject approach. Murray (1999) defines a portal as an unique place where all the information on a specific theme is found. Detlor (2002), says that portals represent a single access point to content by providing necessary infrastructure to organize information. Those definitions are directly related to the concept of a web portal, that by means served as a model to the development of corporate portals. By analyzing the portals evolution it’s mandatory to mention other instruments that were functional to it’s appearance as searching devices. Search engines act as the main primary form that originated portals and they became popular and propagated throughout the 1990s, especially websites such as Yahoo!, Altavista, Excite and Lycos. As users integrated them to their Web navigation routine, search engines developing companies looked to manners to improve their service, offering more exactness to users. As from that point, those websites started to incorporate tools, providing email accounts, message boards, chat rooms and virtual communities. This new search engine concept it’s what has been named portal.
The visibility and success of public portals have been responsible to their utilization as models to create corporate portals. The international volume required to be managed by organizations makes portal technology originated from Internet extremely useful to organize a corporate environment. Corporate portals are applications visually similar to portals found on the Internet. Even though, in general, they are more complex and based on companies strategies and objectives, collaborating to create and manage a sustainable business model. In the institutional context, corporate portals should expose and provide specific information on the matter, inside a certain argument, helping users from corporate computerized systems to find inquiries they need to overcome their contestants. The concept behind those portals is that they can easily reach data stored inside a company, supplying users with a single access point. Therefore, this single access point provides personalized information and applications, vitals to decision makings on strategic levels (of business), both tacit and operational. One of the main points represented by corporate portals is it’s capacity to integrate in a unique platform various applications and information. This characteristic should conclude the challenge of unifying applications, information and services in a way that efficiency levels rise, an improvement on the quality of relations is noted and values in all sectors of the corporation are maximized. In general, it could be said that corporate portals represent a necessary change in a sense of establishing a single platform to e-business also being able to promote integration.
3. CORPORATE PORTAL FUNCTIONS Identifying corporate portal functions is vital to this paper, since the main point here is not to define the technology that enables portals, but to expose its characteristics and more relevant tools based on the fact that both software developers and knowledge management technology researchers have been producing various functions check-lists. Having in mind a synthesis of existing functions on literature, the following proposals have been analyzed: Carvalho (2003), Collins (2003), Delphi Group (2000), Firestone (2003), Rollett (2003), Terra and Gordon (2002). Table 1 shows a consolidated version of functions that should be presented in a corporate portal and that will be detailed next. Table 1. Corporate portals functions check-list Integration Categorization Search device Content management Workflow Collaboration Presentation / Personalization Notification / Dissemination Security E-learning Knowledge map Administration
Integration is related to the capacity of connecting different types of applications, allowing maintenance, sharing and managing information based on a single central interface to users. A portal must be able to access internal and external sources of information and support a bidirectional exchange of information between those two sources. It’s about the portal component that serves as a base to the others. The portal promotes supportive infrastructure to connect heterogenic systems and to access diverse information through a single interface. Carvalho (2006) supports the idea that the challenge of integration is to create a network of sources that attends the daily needs of knowledge workers. The main advantage of categorization is to furnish a context to information. According to Delphi Group (2000) users do not work with isolated information items, but with knowledge domains that are created by relations between layers significations. Search engines combine keywords with data over defined rules with the objective of retrieving relevant information. As Firestone (2003) pointed, content management associates the process of integrating content analysis with dissemination, in which content management systems are responsible for capturing, processing, filtering, analyzing and distributing non-structured media objects, internals and externals to the organization, that may be stored in paper or other electronic formats. Workflow propitiates collaboration between users according to rules of a business process. The presence of workflow resources is vital to increase a strategic contribution of portals to organizational processes, whereas it connects the usage of information with decisions making a work flux. Collaboration indicates the capacity of a portal to act as a virtual meeting point that reunites people with similar objectives, building as a result discussion groups and virtual communities. As Carvalho (2006) said, corporate portals are meant to be a friendly integrated interface, which means, a front-end based on web patterns that guides the final user on navigating through different information systems. The author explains that presentation is responsible for the paradigm of single access point that defines a portal. At once, personalization is related to the portal’s capacity of customizing according to various information necessities of users. Dissemination subsystem’s function is to deliver users system products that can complete a retrieval cycle, observing two types of dissemination: deliver of documents and notification. When delivering documents, dissemination finishes when the response of a search gets back to the user, meanwhile a notification is a type of alert service that tries to anticipate user’s requests, supplying them with documents of potential interest before they even request them. One of the main challenges of a portal lays in the fact that security and usage facility have opposite purposes, but they need to be conciliated to produce a proper portal. This may be explained above all by the diversity of applications and data that are available on the portal. On this way, security refers
mainly to questions related to authentication and access control. Creating simultaneously an intuitive work and learning environment is the main point of e-learning portal tools. These tools are presented under the form of simulations, courses, glossaries and other solutions that help employees being productive and efficient. The development of a knowledge map involves locating experts within the organization and afterwards publishing some a list that shows where to find them. Knowledge maps typically point towards people but also towards documents and databases (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). After identifying all the needs through a system evaluation, administrative actions of previous infrastructure and evolution scheme of this portal will be demanded. An example of this case is presented by Terra and Gordon (2002), explaining that contrary to commercial web portals, it’s rare to find organizations that continually improve their corporate portals based on users satisfaction levels and on the use of tracking mechanisms that offer data of the most used areas of a portal.
4. ANALYSIS OF CORPORATE PORTALS USAGE AND INFORMATION SHARING To realize an empirical study, six medium and large scale organizations located in Brazil – specifically in Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo– were selected between April and June 2009. But since this research is focused on information sharing through corporate portals, a specific business area was not in focus, which positively provided a generic and up-to-date diagnosis of portals in the corporate sector. The six organizations researched were chosen based on their availability for the study and ease of access, which were directly affected by the 2008 world economic crisis. At first, in a contact done by e-mail the organizations were consulted about the existence of a corporate portal (without any further details about functions) and their interest in participating on the project. The acknowledgement of a corporate portal as an information system inside the organization was the only basic prerequisite for this research. The companies analyzed were, therefore, the ones that answered affirmatively on using corporate portals. The investigation presented here was divided in seven categories that aim mainly at the comprehension of the relationship between technology and information sharing in organizations.
4.1 Departments responsible It was observed that in all portals analyzed the platform is in duty to both Communication and Informatics departments, an integrated task. On this perspective, Communication is responsible for content production and strategic portal management, meanwhile Informatics takes care of technical matters.
4.2 Adopted terminology and platform used As a diverse terminology may be noted when discussing portals, it was sought to investigate which terms are used on the six organizations analyzed and also to define in each
platform a terminology according to its functions and characteristics in accordance with what was exposed by authors cited above. Table 2. Adopted name and used platform Organization Adopted name Platform used A Corporate Portal Corporate Portal B Intranet Intranet C Corporate Portal Corporate Portal D Corporate Portal Corporate Portal E Information Portal Web Portal F Institutional Portal Web Portal It was verified that there really is a great variety of terms to describe portals. Whilst half of the companies adopted the term Corporate Portal, some also use Information Portal, Institutional Portal and also Intranet. Meanwhile, it’s impossible to tell if the terminology adopted is correct without tracing a map of the main characteristics of each platform, whereas the functions are the ones who are going to indicate the correct terminology. It was also perceived that despite all companies analyzed before the case study declaring to have corporate portals, this was not at all true. In fact, only three organizations (A, C and D) presented what could be considered as a Corporate Portal. On the others, two had Public Portals(E and F) and one of them has an Intranet (B). This matter will be confirmed over the characteristics map of each platform presented below.
4.3 Main functions Table 3. Main functions Organization Functions A Access to structured sources; Access to nonstructured sources; Collaboration; Knowledge Map; Search Engine; Workflow. B Access to non-structured sources; Collaboration; Search Engine. C Access to structured sources; Access to nonstructured sources; Collaboration; Search Engine; Workflow. D Access to structured sources; Access to nonstructured sources; laboratıon; E-learning; Search Engine; Knowledge Map; Workflow. E Access to non-structured sources; Search Engine; Workflow. F Access to non-structured sources; E-learning; Collaboration; Search Engine.
It could be observed that only two platforms (A and D) support the main characteristics of Corporate Portals. It could be said that those companies are in an evolutionary stage much more ahead of others, presenting beyond the basic functions such as access to structured and non-structured
sources, search engine, workflow, modern collaboration tools and in the case of company D, e-learning.
networks to stimulate even more collaboration between employees (A and D).
4.4. Customization
On the other hand, portal E does not provide any collaboration tool. This was explained as a consequence of the lack of digital information politics by the company. Even though said portal includes content that forwards users to YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, this does not constitute a collaborative channel, since its access and participation are limited by the organization.
It could be considered that personalization is one of the main characteristics of portals, and it has been used since the platform creation, still as a part of the web portals model during the 1990s. However, even being a consolidated function it’s still not present in most organizations. Customization capacity only appears in two of the previous mentioned portals that can represent, in fact, the Corporate Portal model (B and D).
4.5. Access and publication autonomy It was identified that while the organizations provide access to the platform to all its employees, the publication is limited to few people. This appears in different ways in each organization, but in general it’s possible to affirm that in none company the user has total autonomy to publish content. In the most part of the companies, the Communication department, responsible for producing content, also acts as an editor of all information that come from other departments. Therefore, in case any user or department wants to include information on the portal, they must forward the content, so the ones direct in charge of the portal analyze and decide on its publication. When questioned if this characteristic does not limit information sharing, there was unanimity by the companies that there’s concrete evidence (proved over tests according to them) that total autonomy implies in quality impoverishment that circulates in the organization. From there arises the need of editors to evaluate what is published in the platform.
4.6 Collaboration devices This table below presents the main collaboration devices found on the portals analyzed: Table 4. Colaboration devices Organization Colaboration devices A Email; Instant Messenger; Wiki, Message Boards; Blogs; Social Networks. B Email; Calendar. C Email; Chat, Discussion Groups; Calendar. D Email, Chat, Blogs, Discussion Groups, Calendar, Message Boards, Social Networks. E None F Message Boards; Calendar.
4.7 Web 2.0 Collaboration presents itself as one of the main objectives in almost all the portal studies. However, it is presented in different levels in each platform. While some portals only have basics collaboration devices as email and calendar (B and F) others have more advanced tools, working towards the concept of web 2.0, through the use of blogs, wikis, chat (A, C and D). We can also add that there are two portals with initiatives to implement social
5. CONCLUSIONS In front of the variety of platforms present in the market, this research has made clear the notion that more important then having the most modern portal technology is planning beforehand the implementation and evolution of a Corporate Portal. It became evident that first is mandatory to create a solid base and then to start thinking about incorporating new tools. Such idea consists on the implementation and development of an evolutionary project approach, established in three different pillars: aggregation (basic infra-structure with intranet concepts, services focused on human resources management, communication and collaboration), integration (process, control panels, customer services) and innovation (web 2.0). The results indicate that none successful portal project initiates complete and complex. It's part of a gradual process that begins by a planning that evolves into a modular evolutionary program. As consequence, portal projects must be viewed as a spiral method, interminable. This is an optimistic perspective, in a way that even simple platforms have the capacity to develop, adding devices and improving towards more advanced corporate portals models. Nevertheless, this evolution is only possible through a well defined and organized process within the company. The success of initiatives that have been through early evolutionary stages is credited to the creation of groups or committees that discussed intensely all the changes their portal needs. It’s a work that demands planning because inevitably raises complexity and if this evolution is not well planed, the whole portal infrastructure will be in risk, whereas information technology projects should not ignore concepts such as information policies and administration. It is clear that a well succeeded implementation project has to start from the needs of the organization itself, being unable to be molded according to solutions offered by software companies. The concept of portal goes with the replacement of physical by human capital. This means that today there are many different aspects to be considered other than merely how much companies are worth in the stock market, especially all the knowledge that circulates inside them. On this perspective, people become more and more relevant so that companies now have to deal with the challenge of decentralization of information in a scenery where people are distributed spatially in various locations throughout the world and need to share information to develop their activities. This reveals the notion that a wider focus of portals is in fact innovation, since it deals with a technology where the main objective is to raise productivity. And to reach that goal, it is
usually connected to tools that assist in creating, sharing and recovering information producing ways to improve competitive advantage over other companies.
[9] Murray, Gerry. 1999. The Portal is the Desktop. Group Computing Magazine. DOI = http://www.e-promag. com/eparchive/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewarticle&Conte ntID=166
A better analogy to comprehend this model is to draw a comparison between a portal project and a shopping mall. In this case, a portal acts as an entrance center for the user, but before that it must be defined who owns the mall (areas and people responsible for its administration). Afterwards, it should be decided which stores are going to be the main ones (more important systems such as financial, accounting and human resources). In the meantime, to define this structure, it’s necessary to dialogue with the user to understand his/hers necessities. Such thought elucidates that the tool should be adjusted to the user and not the user to the tool.
[10] Rollett, Herwig. 2003. Knowledge Management: Processes and Technologies. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston.
It was observed that the best results related to the usage of corporate portals are found in organizations where portal projects are more solid and planned. While most of the companies pointed out benefits produced by the use of intranets and portals, it was also clear that when corporate portals evolve throughout time, passing by different stages and incorporating new tools, they reach the best results. Once again this shows the necessity of tracing strategic plans before implementing technological portal projects. And those plannings should transform into discussions once the portal is ready and running, ensuring its evolution and satisfying results. The use of information technology to expand the capacity of information sharing inside organizations tends to be extremely positive. Among the six companies researched it became clear that portals have been extremely relevant on this process, even though company’s capacity to organize themselves and manage their information is determinant to achieve success when dealing with technology and information sharing.
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