More Information to Consolidate and Disseminate

Enterprises are dealing with increasing volumes of data; data that used in the right way that can be utilised to run business operations more efficiently, cost effectively and hopefully improve profitability. Integrating data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) is a complex but worthwhile goal, however there are many challenges to overcome in order to achieve this objective:

• Do not push data to the user, users will become swamped in data and it will be difficult for them to disseminate business critical data from business superfluous information, information that is useful to them but not critical.
• Delivering complex data to users will not meet their requirements, it needs to be simple to understand
• A completely centralised database will create bandwidth problems and frustration for users accessing information. Intensively used databases should be stored locally and updated regularly
• Data should not be a static entity; value must be added when it moves from one place to another. Data must have a purpose, otherwise leave it where it is.
• Users may require information from outside the company such as supplier, customer, partner data as well as news and research from external organisations
• Building complex queries to delve into many platforms is a thankless task, leave this alone and use the platforms as is.

In order for enterprises to best integrate data warehousing to business intelligence, they must first assess the flow or potential flow of information in the company. If value is added to data then it should continue to flow, if not then it should remain where it is and it can be accessed from there. The movement of data should only occur when value is added to it, however there are a few exceptions to this rule and these concern security, accuracy and allocation. Should the distribution of data compromise security, or it is too expensive to secure, then it should remain where it is, if data is not accurate or is not up-to-date (finalised) then it should not flow and if data is not to be shared then it should only be accessible to those that are supposed to have access to it. All data that can be produced within the enterprise must be assessed to its security, distribution, accuracy and its value, once this has occurred it can be inferred how this data can flow around the network. When this is complete the enterprise can look to assess information that flows into its network and how this adds value. This will ultimately determine the first stages of integrating data warehousing and BI.

What do we need from this integration?

• To scale to future requirements
• To be secure; procedures need to be put in place
• Users to be responsible for the data access; pull rather than push
• Easy data manipulation and easy to find. Training will be required to ensure users gain the greatest benefits from using the integrated data warehousing business intelligence solution
• Consistency

• On-demand and real-time. Data needs to be maintained together with the network

 

Implementing Enterprise Portals

The introduction of enterprise portals is becoming a key component of unified application process, information management and knowledge management. The application of enterprise portals does not only apply to the enterprise but extends to enterprise partners, trading partners, suppliers and customers. Enterprise portals provide users with a one-stop-shop window to enterprise information, applications, processes and external information. This information gateway provides search capabilities, content aggregation and personalisation. The increasing amount of information available to the user will ensure personalisation becoming the most important application. Enterprise portals can be focused internally or externally, depending on how important external information is upon internal business activities.

The advantage of personalised portals is the fact that information is consistent and meets end-user requirements every time and can be changed on-demand. The functionality of enterprise portals are based on certain architecture requirements, namely:

• Search engines - internal and external searches to access the Internet
• Relational databases
• Application integration
• Personalisation mechanism
• Application servers
• Taxonomy engines

Enterprise portals will develop into the employee home pages, serving the application and information needs of each individual. Used externally an enterprise portal can become the entry point for customers, partners and suppliers. The architecture underpinning this will have to be reliable and always provide availability. A certain about of balancing will need to enter the network and the use of Web-servers and load balancing will become key in delivering enterprise portals. Huge peaks and troughs in information supply and demand will occur, just as in the delivery of electricity. Demand will be highest at the beginning of the day and fluctuate from there. The architecture will need to cope with these fluctuations whilst maintaining availability.

Other key infrastructure and architecture challenges with introducing enterprise portals include:

• Security - does the enterprise have end-to-end security applications as well as procedures to support them? Any investment in enterprise portals will need parallel assessment of security.
• Device support - increasing number of network devices used by enterprises, fixed, wireless and mobile must all be supported. The enterprise portal must be scalable to not only meet increasing use but also to ensure that individual portals can be tailored to individual devices.
• Remote access - for enterprise portals to be totally flexible users must be able to access the portal from anywhere at anytime
• Productivity - what is the bottom line impact of portal deployment? What is the return on investment?

Increased focus on faster ROIs has led to new assessment of portal benefits. The deployment of portals can improve customer and employee retention, which are difficult to measure and assess against an ROI. In addition, it is difficult to quantify the impact of portals on creating user communities, within organisations, so that specific requirements of their business processes are met. In addition portals can be used to learn more about the organisation and become a store of employee skills and experience, this could be used to determine the suitability of people to meet certain upcoming projects and availability, this is also difficult to quantify in terms of ROI but not impossible.

Measuring the ROI benefits of portals is a difficult task, but identifying areas where costs are likely to be reduced by portal deployment is a good start. Once portals are set up they should be continually assessed and measured against expected performance. Identifying glitches or areas, which require improvement, will improve performance and meet demands of new business processes. Portals will be able to adapt to changing business environments, so as organisations change so should your portals. Portals look like the best options for organisations to rapidly change to new business environments and processes, particularly in an uncertain world.

Ref: TP0047A02V01