Electronic Organization: Intranets
The opening page(s) on a business intranet these days is likely to be a corporate portal, specially designed to serve the informational demands of the enterprise. The portal focuses and filters content. It is organized to serve the informational needs of the company (rather than, say, being arranged alphabetically). The portal generally relies on a number of underlying technologies (databases, for example, or online analytical software, or search engines). The most important element is that value is in the ease of information access and information delivery. The portal provides 24/7 (24 hours/day, 7 days/week) access to an aggregation of resources necessary to doing business. It is a major hub for the company's ordinary workflow mechanisms.(1)
The business-side Web portal differs from the organization's public Web site in that it seeks to directly support the information and data needs of the company's workers.
Called BEPs (Business Enterprise Portals), or Enterprise Information Portals, these opening doors to company intranets function to tie technology and business strategy together. It is the natural evolution as the Web browser becomes the desktop. Designed to give easy access to the applications, documents, and data within the company that are most used, the portals can also integrate email, task lists, collaboration tools, schedules, calendars, and access to Web searching. Greengard estimates that 80% of businesses will have BEPs by early 2001.(2)
There is commercial Web development on this front as well. Report2Web <http://www.report2web.com/> produces software that automates Web distribution of reports produced by various applications, thus facilitating the integration of information resources via Web portals. Oracle,(3) offers "portlets" which can be configured to "deliver to employees a single, integrated view into all the applications and information needed..."
(1) Beth Bacheldor, "Portals Make Business Sense," Information Week, issue 757, 18 October 1999, p. 81+
(2) Samuel Greengard, "Making Sense of the Info Storm," Industry Week, vol. 248, no. 17, 20 September 1999, p. 74+ The 80% figure is from a Delphi Group study done in 1999.
(3) Bringing Order to Chaos: Oracle E-Business Portals 8 May 2000 <http://www.oracle.com/tools/portal/index.html> BEIs organize and integrate access to business tools and processes via the Web, something Oracle emphasizes in this opening sentence on its portals Web page: "Recognizing the diminishing influence of Windows on the corporate desktop..."
Investigating
Information Age Realities in the World of Work
