Customer Reviews

Enterprise Knowledge Portals

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

If you are in IT (other than upper management) and want to learn about portals, do not buy this book. However, if you are a business person/manager looking to understand what those portal things might be good for then this is the book for you. Primarily this is a book about what portals are, why they are a good thing, and rigid portal project management principals. The writing is extemely dy and repetitious (reminded me of reading The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, yawn).

From the technical side of portals, well this book does not go there...at all. Look elsewhere for actual information about portal technologies, programming, etc.

I gave it three stars because I believe that business managers thinking about a portal for their organization can benefit from this book.

Collins has come a long way since the initial release of her "Corporate Portals" book in 2001. While the first book was helpful in introducing the concept of enterprise portals to the reader, this is an excellent work which brings step by step methodologies to organizations that wish to take advantage of their ability to leverage information assets and mold them into a working knowledge system. Not for the faint-hearted... Extensive use of spreadsheets and matrix table presentations throughout the book, but Collins nails this and provides an incredibly valuable methodology with real world scenarios as examples. This one is not sitting on the shelf; it's being used over & over again as a base foundation for creating our organization's "go-to" strategy in constructing our own knowledge management system. Definitely a keeper.

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.

Concisely written and thoroughly illustrated, Enterprise Knowledge Portals is required reading
for anyone interested in understanding and enhancing business information flow and interactions.
Heidi Collins has provided a powerful education tool and an invaluable reference.

Pragmatic and articulate! Collins embodies a rich understanding of organizational visioning, business architecture and intellectual capital management within her portal framework. Today's gap between knowledge management theory and practical implementation is huge. Collins bridges that gap with Enterprise Knowledge Portals, providing synergy between people, process, technology and content.

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