Using a document delivery architecture to power your portal

Today, Apr 2002 by Hinz, David

management strategy

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN `CLOSING THE DEAL,' AND LOSING A KEY CUSTOMER IS OFTEN DECIDED BY HAVING THE RIGHT INFORMATION AT THE RIGHT TIME. ALTHOUGH ORGANIZATIONS ARE MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION BY DEPLOYING ENTERPRISE INFORMATION PORTALS TO ACHIEVE MAXIMUM RESULTS, THEY NEED ACCESS TO ALL CRITICAL INFORMATION.

As market competition increases, products become more complex and personnel are scattered throughout worldwide offices, companies will need to harness the information residing throughout their enterprise. Fortunately, the Internet and enterprise information portals (EIPs) make it possible to compile information from a host of disparate sources and present it in a way that can be easily distributed. By providing a centralized point of access to knowledge assets, portals provide employees with the information needed to respond to customer queries faster, build stronger relationships with partners and increase productivity. However, portals today can't deliver on the promise of a true single point of access because they lack the ability to provide quick and efficient access to one of an organization's most prized knowledge assets-the mission-critical information generated by front and back office applications.

TODAY'S PORTALS DON'T DELIVER THE FULL CORPORATE PICTURE

Although portals provide access to corporate reports, presentations, spreadsheets, news links and other business-related documents, many portals today are not equipped to deliver data generated by popular front and back office applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM), electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP), supply chain, call center, financial and human resource products. Companies rely on these applications to track customer orders, prepare invoice statements and bill customers accordingly. Without access to this information, employees do not have the full corporate picture and cannot make reliable decisions to meet their bottom line business initiatives.

Furthermore, while portals offer a window into a sea of information, many do not provide the search and retrieval capabilities needed for users to pinpoint the information relevant to their jobs. When users need to sift through multiple reports or wade through dozens of irrelevant pages within a report to find the information, productivity and the speed and quality of their work is compromised.

To aid in this effort, companies are augmenting their enterprise information portals with document delivery architectures that instantly deliver any document the moment it is created by any front or back office application, without the need for the original authoring application or the delays and costs resulting from repurposing the information. An architecture approach fills the gap where portals leave off and content management solutions take over. A document deliver

Although traditional content management solutions offer some of the capabilities inherent in a document delivery architecture, they often only provide access to a segment of front office documents and re-purposed back office information. For example, if an employee needed to respond to a customer question based on the information in a CRNI document, an order acknowledgement generated by a supply chain solution and a Microsoft Word document written by an account representative, the user would need to search through the plethora of documents residing in each of these systems to pinpoint the information he or she needed and then call back the customer to respond to the query. By using a document delivery approach, employees can simply run a query while on the phone with the customer to locate the exact document or specific page within a report without even knowing the name of the document or where it resides.

In addition, because the high cost of ERP system ownership prohibits implementation to every user, not all employees are provided with the access they need. A document delivery architecture, combined with an enterprise information portal, allows the entire enterprise to gain immediate access to ERP-based information from a central repository at a much lower cost.

BENEFITS OF AN EIP DOCUMENT DELIVERY ARCHITECTURE

In today's fast paced economy, the difference between `closing the deal,' retaining key customers and making strategic decisions is often decided by having the right information available at the right time. Although organizations are moving in the right direction by deploying an enterprise information portal, in order for them to achieve maximum business results, they need access to all imperative information. That means augmenting their portal with a document delivery architecture.

When enterprises power their portals with this type of solution, they see immediate business benefits through:

* Automatic integration of front and back office documents;

* Robust search & retrieval;

* Page-level security;

* Customization; and

* Document delivery.

As companies quickly move to jump on the EIP bandwagon, they need to consider which knowledge assets are most vital to their day-to-day business initiatives and if a portal solution alone can provide the access needed to gain a competitive edge. To deliver a true single point of access, companies will need to power their portals with a document delivery architecture that provides the access and tools needed to meet today's business needs and future initiatives. With the capabilities inherent in an EIP and the flexibility of an architecture solution, companies will have the ultimate portal solution and will be able to better leverage the knowledge contained within documents to enhance the value of their IT investment, while increasing market share and boosting profits.