Portals

“Share off mind, share off experience are key. A trusted relationship is necessary, even in business portals”

Internet, Intranet, Extranet, Website, Portal? What is what actually? Different names for the same thing?

The difference between these terms is the focus of the owner. The technology is basically the same.

The Internet is the public environment where anybody can go and find info, contacts, bargains, etc.

An Intranet is a network structure in the same fashion as the internet with focus on company personnel only and has exactly the same functionality as the internet. Access is regulated with login facilities. The contents is always company related

An Extranet is focused on a companies customers. Access to the extranet is granted in exchange for contact information or subscription. The contents is company and service related.

A Website is a company’s presence on the Internet. Websites have evolved from static information provision to customers into dynamic points of sale directly connecting to internal business processes. This differentiated websites and the term Portal was introduced.

A Portal is something that gives access to …, is the only entrance to… and therefore allows only privileged access. It is the only access to all relevant resources. In case of an internal Portal this means that the portal gives access to all business processes, all applications, all employees, but only to those with the right privilege. A portal can be directed outward, to the customer’s side, or inward, to the employee side. I will treat these two types of portals as one.

por·tal (pôr'tl, pōr'-) Pronunciation Key n.
A doorway, entrance, or gate, especially one that is large and imposing.
An entrance or a means of entrance: the local library, a portal of knowledge.
The portal vein.
A website considered as an entry point to other websites, often by being or providing access to a search engine.

It is well known that the doctor’s children are usually ill as the shoemaker’s children wear the most worn shoes. Companies that excel in organizing their external processes and communication have to realize that this excellence has to be met with internal processes that facilitate service workers to intervene in those external processes.

There is a strange thing to companies. They are very interested in creating a relationship resulting in transactions. But when transactions fail, they tend to look a way or at least create thresholds with the aim to slow reclamation processes. In the Netherlands companies offer new customers a 0800 number to be able contact them. This number range is free of charge for the caller – because: future customer - . Once you are a customer, there is only one means of communications left. 0900 numbers costing between €0,10 and € 0.90 per minute. Cost for usage of the mobile phone is not included. In fact companies earn money by messing up.

The basic reason for this behaviour is the cost element of after sales service. To many people involved, outsourced call centre facilities causes high cost and loss of quality and involvement.

We have seen this in recent rapidly growing markets like web-hosting, mobile telephony etc. Fast in sales, slow in service!

Other types of companies will have to deal with these problems as soon as they start extending their processes outside the company’s borders for the simple reason that the company is no longer able to decide when a business process is to start. Customers will start the process. Resulting in unpredictable use of resources. To regulate this companies throw up thresholds minimizing effort but maximizing customer frustration.

The answer to this is a different way of designing business processes. Processes have always been designed by ICT specialists who were aware of the limitations of their machinery and software. Introduction of internet type technologies have opened a new range of possibilities to design and manage business processes.

As the outside world of individuals is slowly but steadily organizing itself in social networks, interest groups, ideology communities etc. Companies have to counter this by servicing the individuals in a manner that creates respect, or run the risk to be nailed to the wall by consumers in the same fashion someone can get world famous in 24 hours. Chat rooms, bulletin boards etc. There is a strong need for a long term strategy regarding redesign of business processes.

Portal Technology is readily available and proven technology, yet companies use it to share knowledge and call it a knowledge management environment. In fact it could be the mirror image of what is happening in the outside world. Faster information in the outside world requires faster and better information in business processes.

Digitals relationships between companies and their customers require adequate management tools. Not only standard CRM and ERP type solutions, but also Customer Self Care type solutions outbound AND inbound. Showing all relevant information at any point in time to anyone authorized.

This requires two basic conditions;
1. A central identification and authorization mechanism is in place.
2. All company resources are connected.

This implies that the portal is the employee’s window to the company and its customer’s. Business processes will be redesigned on this level creating a 3 tier process structure. People are allowed to work together in different settings. From simple production tasks to complex project teamrooms where all project info and resources are combined.

Companies will in the end have to manage their new digital environment consisting of three main areas of interest.

1. External portal with processes and interactivity
2. Internal portal with processes and information
3. Networked data structures

Only the third area is a typical technology issue. The first two are a combination of communication, commerce, organization and ICT. It is evident that new ways of managing these areas create a new challenge to companies. There will be a strong change in governance. Both decision making and project management need a different approach. Multi discipline projects ask for different ways to manage knowledge and skills. The old concept of project or process owner seizes to exist

All major companies in the world have a portal installed, still far from complete or effective but still.

Forrester stated three relevant issues to portals

1. “The portal becomes as essential as e-mail and telephony.”
2. “The allure of new features, combined with lessons learned (…) is an irresistible opportunity to give portals a second or third shot.”
3. “Ambitious firms extend portals to partners and customers.”

The first statement has all ready been proven true. Sales of portal technology is at the moment the fastest growing sector in software sales.

The second will prove itself shortly. When introducing new concepts like for instance VoIP (.. or rather Internet Telephony), no intensive implementation projects are needed. Simply add the function to the portal and it is available to all users.

Portals come in all sizes and shapes and they are not easy to compare. An easy way to categorize them is the ambition level in the portal.

Ambition levels

In recent studies of business cases we found three levels of ambition;
1. Function based, providing (personalized) information.
2. Activity based, providing (personalized) knowledge and communication facilities.
3. Task based, providing (personalized) guidance and prioritization.
Ultimately aligning activities with business objectives and goals.

A portal consists of a number of generic business functions – aside from identity management and authorization – that enable users to work with the resources or processes.

o Communication tools like mail, instant messaging, video conference, meeting maker, etc.
o Collaboration tools like, document sharing, discussion platform, knowledge finder etc.
o Content management systems using push and pull mechanisms supplying news and information.

o Clippings, RSS, Press Releases etc.
o Workflow management processing tasks, documents, etc.
o Personal space
o Business Intelligence
o Web-services
o Knowledge Management Facilities

Employees or customers will create their own way off working with these new environments. Many companies allow departments and individuals to create their own space and presence within the portal. New ways of exchanging information new way of planning a career, new ways of managing activities will arise from these portals.

There are all ready excellent examples in the area of open-source” collaboration. On the Geneva Car Show showed a new model of an environmental friendly vehicle was presented, entirely designed in an open portal environment by technicians and scientists all over the world.

In a large infrastructural project I have worked in myself teamrooms with project planning facilities, instant messaging and document sharing, resulting in perfect collaboration.

Portals have a lot of benefits coming with them. We already identified the ease of introduction of new technologies. Portals glue everything together thus creating a standardization of infrastructure, communications etc. The technology also enables benefits of a non financial character;
1. Save time, More time for value added activities like strategy development and innovation
2. Create flexibility. Easily implement new technologies. Portal platform can be used by internal AND external stakeholders at the same time.

3. Share Knowledge and

4. Increase productivity by implementing simple workflows, and give users their own digital space to have them come back regularly and work with the portal through natural motivation.
5. Improve decision making by creating best practices, business cases and benchmarks etc.

The financial benefits will differ per situation. Standard financial benefits how ever lie with standardization activities. The infrastructure (both hard and software) and supporting processes can be standardized easily. Simple cost saving can come from P&O processes like declarations, trips administration, easier communication facilities. Faster access to information, and so on.

The burden off legacy systems

All companies, large and small have a legacy of old systems. These systems are often of a design incapable of dealing with real-time processes the customer wants in interactive environments.

Getting your legacy systems web based is normally far to costly

Circumvention of legacy systems with a portal type layer is the only strategy that incorporates two ingredient for future success.

1. Modern interfaces for customers and customer service workers.
2. No des investment and loss of knowledge by forced replacement of legacy systems.

It is necessary to draw up a business case showing at least actual cost and predicted cost cuttings. Use this to evaluate final results and you will notice that portals make companies better.

Cases

Recently I initiated a program to realise an internal portal for an international media company. We researched best practices and came up with many interesting cases. They all showed the same pattern. Only from reorganising support processes an internal portal can be financed. ROI period lies regularly under 1 year. The real benefits in the area of knowledge management and flexible re-styling of business processes are difficult to calculate because many benefits are of a quality nature, so these cases may com in handy.


Summary

Means : Portal technology is the fastest growing ICT market world wide and this is only the beginning. Without portal technology companies are just not agile enough to keep u the pace of rapid changes in technology

Message : The single point of entry must be clear about what it stands for. It will be – in fact – your shop window, behind which your entire product catalogue will be available.

Media : Portals need to be tuned to portable devices and tuned to the context. Geographical context is key. “Sat-nav” suppliers have a great future.

Cascading media

“New publishing concepts stress the different roles of and synergies between various media and produce content, context and relationship- tools in one go!”

What would it be fantastic if your radio commercial results in booming revenues and that your customers refer to your products in every conversation they have. Fortunately it doesn’t work that way or a lot of people would lose their jobs.

Since the introduction of new media (internet, mobile phones and games) marketeers and communication specialists are trying to get the best out of each medium.

During my appointment as director of technology and business development for a large IT company we addressed the issue of synergy between media. Joint efforts with publishers and TV-producers led to interesting developments in a world that was basically dominated by technology. Even what we called “look and feel” tasted like technology. These cooperation led to the view that interactive media should “smell” good, to give the user a feeling of comfort.

Later on I developed the philosophy of “cascading media”. The idea came in the early days of they Internet when traffic was the success factor for every initiative. A conversion of a TV audience to an Internet initiative can generate such amounts of traffic that success was guaranteed.

Media Transfer

Imagine a prime time entertainment show that uses the endgame to transfer viewers to an interactive environment where the viewers can participate in the game show for the next 24 hours, returning to the next episode of the game show. The game show reports back the results of the last 24 hours and shows which of the interactive contestants have qualified for the next TV show.

Transfer of eyeballs is a concept that is hard to achieve. People are basically lazy when sitting in front of their TV set. Just ask yourself what effort it would take to get you out of your chair and behind your computer to start up the Internet. Nothing I guess. To influence behaviour with such impact requires high rewards

If it is possible to find a way to guarantee such a transfer is worth a lot of media value.

Integrated media approach is becoming a regular standard in both media and marketing. For instance the radio show that uses SMS, telephone and Internet facilities to poll opinions during transmission. The opinions are used to spice up the discussion in real time.

Marketing campaigns that include Internet subscription, SMS services, Music events and privileged e-mail communication.

The TV world is also using SMS and telephone as a viewer feedback. In this case with the aim of making as much money as possible. Call TV type programs are of a simple structure. “If you know the answer, call us and win the possibility to win a prize”. This transferring mechanism is the simplest in existence.

Nevertheless, This TV world is a lazy one. It sticks to plain TV, radio broadcast and straight forward campaigns. They support their programming with digital variations like streaming missed programs, Pod-cast etc. Only occasionally different media are incorporated into the programs / campaigns concepts.

Two random non existent examples will illustrate what I am implying;

1. Imagine a TV show called Game-Set-Match. (GSM – Global System for Mobile communications)). Of course the main driver here is the mobile phone. Answers are given in real time. Besides the studio audience anyone can play along. The GSM players outside the studio qualify for the next show. The intermediate results can be found in the Internet Control room, accessible only to those who played the game.

The span of attention of the format is prolonged long after the TV show has ended. In format advertising increases the formats media value and a massive phone income is generated.

2. I developed a combined Internet TV format called WebQuest™. I was in the early days of the Internet. Powered by a TV game show it would be the start of a digital treasure hunt. The hunt would lead the audience along certain pre planned websites of the program’s sponsors, enhancing the formats media value. Players and audience will come to the control centre to evaluate the intermediate standings, get tips and hints. Contestants can chat with each other and help or even delude the opponents. The frequency could be daily for stronger relationship and more frequent eyeballs. The results of the hunt are presented in the next TV show. The hunt can continue for weeks and the final treasure can be of considerable value.

Both formats were introduced with both public and commercial TV. It seemed a bridge to far at the time, but here we are, seven years later and still no true cross media format is programmed. Transferring the TV audience towards digital media is not an issue in TV thinking.

Transferring however, is a commercial mechanism with a lot of history. In the “paper”-days newspapers and magazines often used paper coupons to allow readers to react to a certain subject (or product). You could send in your personal data and receive a product or a sales call. We have been transferring people from;
o Advertisements to shops
o From commercial to internet
o From TV format to SMS
o From billboard to Shopping Mall
o Etc.

Transferring is the most intensive behavioural influence a marketeer can achieve. If you are able to transfer 10% of a viewer’s audience in a game show to the same game on the Internet, what would the additional media value be worth? The converted audience is an interested “intense” audience, worth more than accidental viewers. If you could lure them into leaving personal data you’d have a privileged audience you can target in the future.

Will advertisers be interested in a cross media approach to reach their customers and can you sell a cross media advertisement package in one deal? I think so. Proof is already there in the market. Advertisers are shifting from loyalty programs towards integrated involvement programs.

The examples I gave so far come from the entertainment industry. But all kinds of communication will follow the same pattern. Be it commercial communication for products or services, education or even government.

The use of consecutive media in a commercial concept I call a “media cascade”. One medium refers to another intensifying the customer relationship with every step.

Media Cascades

The philosophy is based on the creation of relationships. I recognised 4 basic steps earlier that apply tot all sorts of communication (personal, commercial, non-profit, etc)

Step 1 Attention. Make sure your recognised. Shout! A simple yet attractive message is required.

Step 2 Information exchange. Tell about your product or service and check if more is needed.

Step 3 Transact. Build trust and exchange information / services or products that establishes the relationship

Step 4 Now you can start building. Connect your Relationship into your business processes and use the added value of this relationship in building new relations.

Since all steps have a different character different types of media will be used in each step. Where Step 1. is a typical broadcast step (TV, Radio, and Print) Step 3 for instance is an interactive step where to customer supplies information to you. “Warmer”, more personal media should be used because the communication is drawn to a personal and trusted level. Mobile phones and internet communities are typical in this step.

You have to realise that you have to convert people from one step to the next and so from one medium to another. Your reach (eye balls) in step one falls out into two Referral (media transfer of customers) and Waste (users that do not react). Maybe you can catch them still by adding different angles in Step 1, the most crucial step.

This integration of media results in a different approach towards marketing and business processes and as a result toward ICT since processes must be designed to accept external information (Step 3). For instance subscriber self-care portals.

Research in the USA showed already in 1998 that personal media like the internet could not boost without other media as a referral platform. Different types of media referring to the internet resulting in concrete sales were;
– TV 55%
– Radio 15%
– Print 7%
– Internet 23%

The cascades you can build around different types of communications can consist of different media. Let me give you a few examples.

In the market for government information congresses are used regularly to relate to fields like industry, healthcare etc. It is obvious that in order to generate enough attention Billboards, Broadband Advertising, etc are used. Secondly potential attendants are facilitated with a subscription facility (internet, paper forms). Once the primary exchange of information has taken place the congress becomes the relationship platform. Not only between organisation and attendants but – even more important – between attendants.

There is a distinct relationship between the message you want to send and the distance between the used media type and its user. You could divide media in 4 different categories using this rule. The closer the medium the more trusted information can be exchanged and the more interactive the relationship will be. You should also appreciate the different situation the viewer finds himself in.

Just a brief overview of screens and distances as I described in media characteristics. From these categories a media cascade could be build. I will leave the paper equivalents out this time.

Media categories

45 feet Billboards, Cinema screen, etc. The viewer finds himself in a random crowd. No interaction.
9 feet TV Screens. Viewer finds himself in a family type of situation. Remote controlled
3 feet PC/Internet. Viewer sits in his personal environment, possible with trusted friends.
0 feet Mobile Phone, PSP, iPod / iPhone etc. User/viewer is alone. Usually no one else is allowed in this environment.

Since these media types play a different role in users lives and behaviour these messages sent are different but must be tuned to the goals your organisation has set for it self.

Rightly tuned synergy between media could lead to;
. More business
. Tighter consumer relationships adding value to your portfolio
. Better tuned business processes
. Better information mining opportunities
. Better margins

Monomedia

This all does not mean that I see no existence for stand alone media. I can see magazines, TV programs, newspapers, book and so on with no additional cross reference what so ever. The thing is that the used formula must be so powerful that it automatically generates word of mouth referral.

Summary

Means : Customer interaction, the prime ingredient of a trusted relationship, requires flexible and reliable service processes. ICT supporting these processes will change rapidly over the next years. Business alignment is not enough. Business prediction is necessary. Old monolithic systems will be shielded off – encapsulated – with portal technology based on web 2.0 type solutions, creating direct input form the outside world.

Message : The message distributed over a range of media should have a strong conceptual idea behind it. It should be applicable in all 4-steps in a media cascade.

Media : Cross media marketing will increasingly dominate the marketing world.