The recent Gartner Portal, Content and Collaboration (PCC) conference in London was an interesting study in contrast.  Their prior PCC conference in Baltimore last spring had a feeling of despair bordering on fear.  Social media is looming and IT is quickly losing control.  As I previously posted, analyst Tom Austin admonished the group last spring saying “IT ceded control of web sites to marketing because of the heavy graphic nature of web sites, if you let go of social media too it will be a disaster.”  He did it again in London but the audience seemed a little less distressed. (more…)

Gathering requirements for a Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) package, like any Web Content Management package, comes in two phases. This blog post will be split into two parts and will discuss these two phases. The first part will talk about the inception phase which involves capturing broad strategic level requirements to help organizations select the right package within a given time frame. The second part will discuss the implementation phase which involves elaborating further on those requirements and additional ones to help the design and development teams implement the package. The strategy, time, granularity and the types of requirements artifacts captured in both of these phases are quite different but equally essential in ensuring end success of the project. Let us discuss some of the key steps involved in these phases from a requirement gathering perspective. (more…)

Forrester’s research suggests that users are “3 times more likely to buy a product when they are addressed in their own language”. This is a powerful incentive for configuring your Web Content Management System (CMS) to support the delivery of content in the native language of your employees and customers for products and services. There are three broad types of globalised websites (more…)

Last year, Andrew McAfee coined the term Enterprise 2.0 in his book of that title.  He defines Enterprise 2.0 as:

“Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals.”

Here is a view of those platforms in practice (more…)

It’s evident these days that organizations have started looking at mobile as a key strategic channel for reaching their customers enabling them to improve market share, increase revenue and provide a better customer experience. Before jumping on the mobile bandwagon, however, organizations need to take stock of the various challenges confronted in mobile publishing and plan to address them. For example, many organizations have found the cost of content creation to be unusually high due to different and unique processes for publishing on the web versus mobile platforms. Similarly, the different versions of content also result in higher content management costs. It therefore becomes essential that organizations look to improve their RoI in mobile publishing through a well- defined publishing strategy. (more…)

Lately there seems to be many organizations engaged in some type of data management or data warehousing initiative. These data warehousing initiatives include the major components such as the data warehouse, operational data store, data marts, ETL and business intelligence frameworks. However, while there is a common understanding as to what an operational data store is, there seems to be varying ideas as to its purpose; specifically, when would a solution that includes an operational data store be appropriate? (more…)

One would certainly categorize predictably ill-fated ventures as irrational.  Why would a rational individual undertake an initiative that is almost guaranteed to fail?  Is application rationalization one of those initiatives?  Perhaps it is and that is the reason John McCarthy used the word “courage” to describe the emotional trait necessary to pursue its goals.

Recently, I spoke with Mike Vizard of IT Business Edge.  We discussed many compelling reasons why an organization would pursue application rationalization.  Cost reduction, increased business agility and business transformation were at the top of the list.  But, even with those stakes most organizations are reluctant to give it a try.  There are many reasons why, some legitimate, others not. (more…)