TEXPO

SharePoint Portal for The Edge Corporation

The value of a web-based solution for any organisation is defined based on how it enables the enterprise to share, communicate and disseminate information with a view to increase efficiency of business processes. This formed the basis of the portal-collaboration project delivered by TEXPO for The Edge Corporation that integrated the extranet, intranet and Content Management Systems to facilitate the business.

The Intranet portal project undertaken by TEXPO for The Edge was aimed at addressing the needs of both potential users, as well as stakeholders of the organisation. It was imperative therefore that plan was built around the objectives that the business wanted to achieve, especially:

• Increasing staff efficiency, productivity and satisfaction
• Improving decision making
• Improving customer service, providing accurate and consistent advice
• Supporting internal communications and collaboration
• Reducing duplication of effort and costs
• Building corporate identity
• Improving corporate governance

The business challenge:

Although collaboration was a key requirement, the infrastructure within the organisation did not extensively facilitate coordination and collaboration among business units and posed challenges in six key areas: Collaboration; Portal; Enterprise Search; Enterprise Content Management; Business Process and Forms and Business Intelligence. This needed to be addressed.

“For any organisation, it is really important for any implementation of a web-based solution to positively impact the way corporate information is shared, communicated and disseminated. The decision therefore needs to be based on serving the business goals rather than solving technology-focused problems. Enabling proper collaboration and communication channels for internal, as well as external stakeholders is very key to taking the company forward in the right direction,” said Dr Sarfaraz Alam, CEO, TEXPO.

After understanding the business, TEXPO outlined the following requirements that the project had to facilitate:

• Enable an Intranet Portal that will be able to fetch project related data from MS Project and project management applications
• Building document Libraries
• Microsoft Outlook integration
• Mobility integration
• Enabling Alerts and RSS feeds
• Document management
• Enabling policies and compliance
• Web content management
• Enable easy navigation
• Offer bilingual support

Planning the way:

After mapping the requirements, the strategy adopted looked at three possible web-based alternatives – public website, intranet and extranet - that The Edge could adopt based on short, medium and long-term business goals that involved the desire to persuade, to inform and to provide functional support for internal business processes respectively.

Based on these requirements, TEXPO developed an end-to-end portal strategy and solution to enable better communication, collaboration and information sharing within the organisation.

Typically, a portal is one that hosts and categorises much of the content within its own domain (the site itself), unlike a gateway, which pushes users out to find their desired content. Besides, a portal also hosts transactions of both information and services, so that the client can use services offered without leaving the site itself. This necessarily needs to include includes features which enable personalisation as well as dynamic content building.

Content management and portal technologies also provide a robust vehicle that facilitates access integration that enables complex business interactions by presenting them in an easy-to-use web based interface. Search capabilities also provide great value to business owners.

• Portal solutions also offer the following benefits:
• Integrate with office documents (predominantly Microsoft Office)
• Connect to enterprise directory
• Provide access to core business applications
• Can handle high-volume content
• Offer simple personalisation by role
• Offer deep customisation
• Has security that is external to the package
• Enables single sign-on for applications and content repositories exposed through the portal
• Platform compatibility with other employee access systems

Intranet Portal technology helped The Edge address shortcomings by unifying and rationalising aspects of the Web site that were fragmented, incomplete or inconsistent and offered the following benefits:

• Rationalising the user interface
• Managing user access and authorization
• Aggregating access to content
• Integrating access to applications
• Providing users with personalisation and customisation
• Connecting people
• Granting access to communities
• Connecting disparate software systems and applications in the IT environment as well as outside

“The portal was enabled to support internal activities, while at the same time it also increased effectiveness and efficiency by catering to the needs of customers as well as internal users. The business value proposition included internal community building, business process enablement and user productivity by focusing on workflow, collaboration and business process management,” said Dr Sarfaraz Alam, CEO of TEXPO.