The purpose of this blog is to emphasize on strategic perspective of portal project to design, develop and maintain a template solution that support business processes.
Portal Strategy defines the functional scope of the portal program customer expectations through the portal implementations Describe basic requirements concerning portal availability requirements and business critical usage of portal.
The Portal design will provide a framework for localization and customization in accordance with the requirements both from an SAP process perspective and in the provision of Content management and communication facilitation by leveraging capability of Collaboration on Knowledge Management of Enterprise portal.
The portal strategy involves:
a>Vision definition for the Portal and its usage including both the solution to be implemented by project and possibilities for future development.
b>Designing of portal template for implementation will provide for overall Standardization in accordance with rollout strategy.
c>Support for core team to leverage full advantage of portal solution
d>Training formulation and educating the stakeholders of the project on the use of portal and as per agreed upon training of core user.
e>Development and support related to portal technology which includes iview, role, content integration and application integration.
The portal project will be driven by the portal implementation team and will operate closely with core team for requirement analysis and business inputs for successful implementation.
Project Goals and Objectives
The Portal project operates within the context of the overall Program Plan. The project will be managed by implementation team but required to involve core team member of the business areas and processes in order to achieve its objectives and to ensure alignment with business requirements.
The purpose of the portal project is to design, develop, deploy and support a template solution as the main access point to heterogeneous existing system landscape. In accordance with the view of the localization and customization requirements of rolling out as per the requirement of an on demand solution the portal project will develop on a component basis to provide the easiest means of customization.The scope of the project will be defined in accordance with business requirement and feasibility. This will incorporate the flexibility on agreed upon requirements of future.The implementation team will function to gather, consolidate and manage specifications for Portal development and implementation as agreed upon requirement of business. In addition team will educate core team members on portal use and its benefits as well highlight the areas in which the portal can optimize system use and deployment.
Goals and Objectives
- Define a strategy and approach for the use of enterprise portals at in short and long term includes following:
- Create an enterprise Portal vision that defines the direction for the use of enterprise portal.
- Creates an enterprise portal implementation roadmap which addresses the implementation approach for the project.Create a shared understanding of terms and concepts surrounding portal use, as well as standards, guidelines and objectives for a portal implementation that includes:
- Creates a release Strategy to address smooth transition to Enterprise portal
- Define implementation risks and provide necessary mitigation plans.
- Provide a component based solutions that can be easily customized and implemented
- Create a localization strategy to define delivery and customization approaches
- Creation of a flexible design.
- Educate core team members of client on the use and realizable benefits of portal.
- Working with learning and training team to provide portal training
- Facilitate Workshops to educate identified groups on the potential uses of the portal to support identified initiatives
- Standardization of the use of portal for configuration and testing.
- Configure user roles to be used for ongoing testing and configuration support.
- Provide operational support for the portal use.
- Ensure that all issues are logged and resolved on ongoing basis.
- Configure the Portal according to the design specifications developed by business requirements.
- Deliver and validate a portal prototype if required as a prt of on demand solution.
- Implement an enterprise portal strategy delivering portal roles, iviews, unifications scenario, component integration, complementary application and content integration.
High Level Contents Requirement in any implementation of portal will illustrate:
AS-IS Description which must elucidate followings
- Does the customer have already a portal implementation?
- How is this portal used?
- If no portal is used, describe the current methods of working, without portal.
- Are all used applications already integrated? How has this integration been realized?
Portal user Specifications
- Which users groups are in the portal scope?
- Describe the relevant organizational roles of the prospective portal users?
- Describe the number of users and key-users in the first project phase?
Core Business Process Content Requirements
Description of the target processes
- Describe the portal relevant processes and related functions
- Which business Packages should be implemented.
Process Diagram
- Draw diagrams that describe the process scenarios.
Applications and Data Sources
- What Applications and data sources will be integrated in the portal?
- Describe their level of integration (URL, iview, API, unifier)
Business Intelligence Requirements(E.g)
- Describe the reporting requirements of the customer
- Which applications are involved in the reporting?
- Is any reporting covered by standard iViews?
- Which reports must be developed additionally?
For an Example a deliverable from strategic perspective can be a Role Definition Template as illustrated below
A role in the enterprise portal classifies the users according to the activities of the entire company. The role model in the enterprise portal is therefore a model for structuring and classifying the portal users from the point of view of the company. The concept is orientated to both the company structure and the core processes within the company. In this way individual users can be assigned depending on their position and task in the company.
Portal users can be assigned uniquely depending on the role parameters:
• As members of a user group
• As members of an organizational unit of the company
• By their function or position in the company
• By their participation in a core process in the company Users are assigned all relevant roles, so that they have at least one role ("user group” is the most general role). Depending onthe company structure, one or more organizational units or core process roles will be relevant for each portal user.
The Core processes, which maps to business area identified during role definition phase can be used to form the basis of Workset formulation. The complexity involved in defining the core processes and related sub processes can be drawn to form nested worksets addressing the business processes. This way worksets can be used to link to the roles. 
Portal Role Classification/Typography
• Portal roles coming from business process modeling
- Portal roles coming from area aspects (Countries, Region, location). Area roles are typically ordered hierarchically.
- Portal roles coming from organizational aspects.(e.g. business units).
- Portal roles, which define the relationships between the company and accessing user.
- Guest portal roles (no relationship between the organization and the power user)
Classification Format
Classification Dimension | Navigation Parameter | Characteristics and Hierarchy |
Area | Country, location | Global, Country, Region, Location |
Organizational | Unit | Business Unit, Corporate Departments |
Operational | Job Function | Administrative, Operative Functional |
Business Process | Manufacturing, Sales | CRM, SCM, PLM |
Company Relationship | Affiliation | Employees, Anonymous Users |
The Classification offers multiple dimensions with a defined and some with an undefined number of characteristics .the selections of Characteristics will be evaluated within the portal role management processes by the project Team.
Unlimited numbers of defined Characteristics for the following dimensions can be added for the following as per the requirement
- Operational.
- Business Processes
- Area
- Organization
- Company Relationship
The approach for role build is to define new characteristics if the need for a new portal role is identified and could not be managed with existing characteristics.
Portal Roles can consist unique characteristics of dimensions as well as a combination of multiple dimensions.
Portal Role Finding Processes
The identification of new portal roles within the portal framework can be achieved with several methods
Requirements from new portal projects:
- By Roll out to additional user groups
- By Identifying and implementing of new business processes.
Requirement coming from application Integration:
- By identifying multiple views on applications for different users groups, profiles, and bundle of right, templates.
Examination of privileges
- Rank
Determine the uniqueness of portal roles
- Has To be ensured by unique assignment characteristics to one portal role.
- Identify new trusted sources for portal role to user assignment.
Creation & Assignment Process
- Only portal roles, which are required by a related user, will be created within the portal framework.
- To reduce the number of portal roles and therefore the administration efforts and change process will be implemented.
- Portal administration team will create the portal roles centrally.
- Project Administrator will request the creation of new portal roles and will provide the information, which users will have to be assigned to the portal role
- Project Administrator will determine trusted sources for portal role to user assignment
- Ownership of portal role has to be clarified.
- Delegated administration for portal role or worksets has to be defined depending upon target group.
Portal Role Description Template
All identified Portal Roles have to be qualified using the Portal Role Description Template to ensure processes for the portal role Management and portal Administration as described below:
Required Field | Description |
Portal Role Name | Portal Role name according to definition and order of portal dimension |
EP Portal Role | Please specify the EP portal Role object identifies according to naming conventions: Ownership.Businesspackage.subtask.product.type.description The description actually contains the portal role identification according to the portal role classification The Company relationship Employee will not be added to the identifier if is obvious Business Package, Subtask, product should be left blank |
Portal Role Classification (Matrix, hiérarchies) | Please specify the characteristics hierarchy according to the role classification |
Interpretation |
|
Responsibility/Ownership | Please specify the organizational unit which has the ownership of this role. |
Restriction | Is this a temporary /permanent role? Specify if special user groups are not allowed to access this role |
Identity Process Involved | Please specify which identity process will ensure legitimated assignment to the role and track role life cycle |
Hope this blog may help in defining portal strategy for enterprises .
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