Portal Strategy Best Practices

Through hundreds of engagements, we have been able to distill a number of best practices needed to ensure a balanced portal strategy. Here are a few that readily apply to the bulk of our engagements.

• Include Strategy in the Overall Plan. Given the critical role of strategy in the extended portal lifecycle, it’s important to integrate a strategy phase into your portal project plan with appropriate assignments of time, resources, activities and deliverables, so that expectations are set early for a disciplined path to completion.
• Get Everyone to the Table. Ensure that the key perspectives described above, from senior management, business management, technology and employees – are all properly represented to ensure that the strategy represents a true balance that is not overly weighted towards any single factor.
• Drive Technology With Your Strategy. It’s common to find that the technology platform in use becomes the primary driver for the portal’s features and presentation. That's not the way it should work. It’s important to include your technology partners and critically evaluate your technology platform as early as possible to identify any gaps between your strategy and the solution being provided.
• Broadly Socialize Your Strategy. The most successful strategies are those that are understood and accepted by a broad base of stakeholders and senior management. Socialize your strategy by presenting to the broadest audience you can, even those who are not directly involved but may become stakeholders later. In the process you will be able to fine-tune and validate your strategy and gain the support required to stay focused throughout your portal’s lifecycle.
• Understand the Employee’s Perspective. Some clients have asked us to help when their employees have refused to use or are unable to productively use portal-based services. It’s an enormous drain on an organization to have a large-scale project fail because the user perspective was missing at the outset. Just as executives can inform their decisions and gain insights into the daily dynamics of the workplace by speaking with employees, focusing on the dynamics and needs of the people who will be using the portal on a daily basis is a one of the most critical best practices in enterprise portal projects.
• Establish Governance Early. We have seen too many instances where a portal loses vitality because it lacks the necessary commitment to governance. In its best form portal governance is made up of individuals who take full ownership of strategy as well as the operational requirements of an enterprise portal. It's critical that the governance team can access the breadth of vision needed to keep the portal aligned to inevitable changes to an organization's priorities. Therefore, portal governance must include regular strategy validations to ensure that the portal is keeping step with ongoing business strategy adjustments.

Keep these points front and center as you survey your requirements for your new or improved enterprise portal, and you’ll be on the road to creating a truly sustainable, effective business channel.