element^n - picking the perfect partner

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Picking the Perfect Partner

How to select the web technology &

implementation partner that is right for you

By Jennifer Carey

Abstract: The decision you make today about your web portal & Content

Management System (CMS) technology as well your partner for

implementation and support will stay with you for the life of your portal

and can ultimately impact the success or failure of your site.

About the Author: Jennifer

Carey is the Director of

Professional Services at

element^n, SAL, and creator

of PortalElements™, an

analysis methodology that

combines project

management, software

development and user

centered design best

practices to create corporate

web portals that satisfy the

needs of both the customer

and the business along with

its key stakeholders.

When evaluating a web portal and CMS, consider the following:

- Quality & Reliability

- Security

- Ease of use for publishers

- Product support and evolution

- Multilingual support

- Scalability

- Flexibility

When evaluating a potential implementation partner, the three key

elements are:

- Collaborative and long term approach to the relationship

- Adequate short and long term support

- Portal & CMS specific experience

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Introduction

Do you have a great idea for a Web Portal but little

experience in the domain?

If this is the first time you’ve implemented a web portal project,

you have a daunting task ahead of you. The decisions you make

today about technology and implementation partners will stay with

you for the life of your portal and could ultimately impact the

success or failure of your site, so it’s imperative that you do your

homework first.

“The decisions you

make today will

stay with you for

the life of your

portal.”

There are thousands of Portal and Content Management System

(CMS) technologies on the market and even more implementation

partners, so you need to be sure that you know what it is that you

are looking for before making such a significant decision. The very

first thing you need to do is identify your own business

requirements. Don’t worry about what is and isn’t technically

possible at this point. Your business requirements should drive

your choice of technology, so be sure you are clear about what

they are from the start. For example, you should know ahead of

time how content will be updated and how often, what your growth

expectations are over the next 3-5 years in terms of visits and

functionality, whether your site design will be on the cutting edge

of design and function or if it will follow existing trends, and what

your priorities are in terms of quality, time to market and cost.

While by no means exhaustive, this paper will provide you with

some basic guidelines for thinking about what you need in Web

Portal and CMS technology, and what to look for in an

implementation partner.

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What to Consider when Evaluating Web Portal & CMS Technology

Most CMS’s have a focus area. That is, something they are

particularly well adapted to. Similarly, there are areas that they are

less adapted to. Beware the vendor that claims to be all things to

all people.

“Beware the

vendor that claims

to be all things to

all people.” Assuming that you are a mid-sized client looking for a hosted

solution where you will maintain control of content publishing, here

are some basic areas to consider about the technology you choose.

Quality & Reliability. The last thing you want is for your

commercial site to go down or to have problems that impact your

customers. Therefore it is critical that the product has been well

tested and that there is a plan in place to deal with technical

failures. (For example, imagine a scenario where you attach an

unsupported document type to the product and it causes the entire

site to fail. A well tested product wouldn’t even allow this scenario

to occur.) Make sure that the company places a high value on

Quality Assurance (many companies pay lip service to the concept

but surprisingly few actually have a dedicated QA team in place).

Make sure the product has been on the market for a while and find

out which other customers have been using the solution. If

possible, find out how many times their sites have failed as a result

of the software. “The last thing you

want is for your

commercial site to

go down.”

Security. If your site will support customer accounts and profiles,

it is of the utmost importance that profile and billing information is

not compromised. Look for a portal that has a tightly integrated

user and group management system and which allows securing

content effectively on a per-group and even per user-user basis.

The portal interface should make it easy to restrict access to a

single page or a whole area of the site to specific users or groups.

Also make sure that the portal product has tight integration with

SSL (HTTPS) to make viewing sensitive or personal data secure for

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end users. This is also critical for site administrators and publishers

who will want to administer the site remotes and securely. SSL /

security support should not be an afterthought of the platform but

well integrated to ensure that access to any page must always be

secure and that there

Ease of use for publishers. A portal that is not easy to use is a

liability and carries hidden costs. A common misconception is that

a publisher needs to be technical. If that is the case, you’ve got the

wrong technology. For basic content driven sites, a much more cost

effective business model is to either have your writers compose

directly in the CMS, or have someone with basic word processing

skills add the content. This would then be routed to a final approver

such as an editor before being scheduled for publishing on the live

site. Make sure the CMS has integrated workflow to support this

model or you may find yourself paying a lot more over the long

term for content updates. The other unfortunate impact of having a

difficult User Interface is that updates tend to get delayed more

frequently, which ultimately ends up making your site look stale or

less reliable to customers. If you can, it’s a good idea to have a

look at the publishing interface before you buy.

“A portal that isn’t

easy to use is a

liability and carries

hidden costs.”

Similarly, make sure that the publishing templates can be

customized to tightly control what publishers can enter. For

example, if you have a blue and white site, you may not want to

allow publishers to add pink text to the site. In such a case, it

would be better to provide text fields that control how content is

rendered on the site than allowing the publisher to control it

through an HTML editor. Find out how much time it would take to

modify a publishing template when evaluating a solution.

“A commercial site

will need to change

with the times.”

Product support and evolution. A commercial site will need to

change with the times. The web industry is evolving very rapidly

and with it, the requirements of the underlying technology. Look for

a solution that is actively being developed and updated. Find out

how long the product been on the market, who is using it and if the

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product has a history of continuous improvement. Make sure you

won’t have to wait 1 year for the vendor to release bug fixes and

make sure the CMS vendor and your implementation partner have

worked together in the past and that your implementation partner

has a track record of providing product support directly to the end

customer.

Alternatively, make sure the vendor can provide direct on-site

support for your implementation. If you are evaluating a portal or

CMS solution that is being offered by a potential implementation

partner, make sure the solution is a first class product currently

hosting customers more demanding than or similar to you. Check

also that the company offering the technology is a product

development company with a professional services team and not

the other way around. Otherwise you risk paying for a second class

solution that was developed simply to attract customers who need

a website to be developed or hosted.

“Make sure the

solution is a first

class product

currently hosting

customers more

demanding than

you.”

Multilingual support. If you are serving an international market,

you will need multilingual support. Depending on the technology,

this could be very simple or very complex. Find out ahead of time

how complex publishing multilingual content really will be and/or

what the extra costs will be to add that functionality.

Scalability. Most successful businesses expect to grow with time.

As your customer base grows so will your needs. Ensure that the

system can scale up with your requirements. For example, you may

decide to add video streaming to your site where customers can

upload and annotate videos. Or you may want to create several

related mini sites that target different customer types. The solution

you choose should be designed to support this process so that it

can be done quickly and cost effectively.

“Ensure that the

system can scale

up with your

requirements.”

If you expect to have growing functional needs, find out how easy

it will be to add new functionality to your site. In addition, look for

a product that has flexible caching support to reduce the hardware

investment that will be necessary to support your expected number

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of end users. This is particularly important for portal which will

have a lot of anonymous user traffic. A portal engine with a

flexible integrated caching engine can reduce the hardware

requirements by 2-3 times or more depending on the freshness of

data on your site thus limiting your initial hardware investment and

making that investment last longer even as your site traffic grows.

Flexibility. In general, we recommend a solution built on

open, extensible technology such as Java. If you are planning

to integrate with other systems or companies, easy integration is of

particular importance. If your company is an all-Microsoft shop,

then you may be better off using a Microsoft solution as Microsoft

products typically integrate smoothly only with other Microsoft

products. Otherwise, expect your integration options to be

expensive and less than optimal.

Be aware in any case of vendor lock-in – you do not want your

future growth options to be limited by a hasty initial choice of

technology.

What to Look for in an Implementation Partner

Your implementation partner is as important as the technology your

portal will run on. Especially if you expect this partner to support

you after the initial launch, this relationship should be evaluated

like you would with any longer term partnership. Spending a little

more time evaluating the right partner(s) will mean a large

difference for your project outcome.

“Your

implementation

partner is as

important as the

technology your

portal will run on”

There are three main areas you should be looking at:

- Experience

- Relationship

- Support

All three areas are equally important. Two out of three is not

enough since the weakness in one area will compromise the

vendor’s ability to deliver in the other two.

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Experience. Look for a partner who has specialized knowledge and

experience with Web Portals and Content Management. An

experienced provider will be able to plan and estimate the project

properly, avoid common pitfalls, and help you to think about things

you may not have otherwise considered. While a less

experienced partner may appear more cost effective to

begin with, you will most probably end up paying more over

the long term while they gain experience at your expense.

Relationship. From the outset, your relationship should more like

that of business partners than customer-vendor. While a vendor is

looking to maximize profits even if it is at the expense of their

customer, an implementation partner is looking to build a long term

relationship. That means looking out for the best interest of their

client even if that may sometimes result in a lower profit margin.

Your partner should be a trusted advisor who will collaborate with

you to achieve your long term goals. CMS and Portal projects

always take time and have hidden surprises. You need to be sure

that you and your partner can work effectively together to resolve

them. Proximity is another factor. The more communication you

can have face to face, the more quickly and efficiently you will be

able to work together.

“Your partner

should be a

trusted advisor

who will

collaborate with

you to achieve

your long term

goals.”

Support. Even the best intentioned service providers may not have

a team in place to support you in a timely matter or to the extent

that you may need. Look for a company that comes to the table

knowing how they plan to support you over the longer term and

make sure that resources are in place to do the work when it is

needed. If possible, ask for references from other customers to

make sure that your decisions are based as much on fact as

feeling.

Once you are comfortable with these three areas, the odds are

good that you have found a good fit in a partner.

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If you found this white paper helpful, please let us know by sending

an email to [email protected].

About element^n

element^n SAL was established in 2001 to provide E-Business

products and services to enterprise customers in the Middle East.

Since then its client base has expanded to 3 continents including

the US, North Africa and The Middle East.

The founders of element^n and its key executives have been

working in the field of Information Technology, Internet and E-

Business more than a decade. With accumulated business and

technical knowledge in various markets and industries in North and

South America, Europe and the Middle-East, they bring first-hand

experience in implementing enterprise solutions and addressing the

challenges associated with defining, implementing and maintaining

E-Business systems.

Contact us at [email protected] to find out if our products and

services are the right fit for your organization.

mailto:[email protected]

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element^n - picking the perfect partner

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