Case Study At Du Pont Co. ’s (www. dupont. com) $4 billion performance coating grope, the critical issue was content management. “We have a very large number of documents for marketing: brochures, press releases, warranty information on products and general support content for our distributors and car repair body shops”, explains Catherine March and, the groups ebusiness strategy manager. “Our salesmen were driving around with 23 kg of obsolete literature in their trunk. ” Du Pont opted to deliver the information through a web-based intranet/ extranet portal, using technology from Bow-street, a portal s/w and web development tools company.
Du Pont wanted the ability to customize information about its half a dozen coating brands. It also wanted each of its 2500 distributors and repair shops worldwide to see the information displayed in almost 4000 different site views; which the technology would allow it to do. Since the content capability was initiated, Du Pont’s site has grown rapidly. The body shops can now get training, bench marketing tools, and can paint color formulas via the portal. There are also job-posting and resume services. And for the distributors, Du Pont is researching adding order-tracking and order accuracy capabilities soon.
Questions: a. What are the business benefits of the web portal? Make a critical assessment. b. What is the importance of ‘content management’ for enterprise web portals? c. Can a small business develop and maintain such a portal? Q 1: What are the business benefits of the web portal? Make a critical assessment. Answer: Portal unifies information, applications and services from heterogeneous systems to promote efficient collaboration, intelligent decision making and appropriate responses to critical business events.
The solution is based on open standards and scales to meet your future needs The body shops can now get training, bench marketing tools, and can paint color formulas via the portal. There are also job-posting and resume services. And for the distributors there are some of the facilities which are written below: 1: Provides relevant information and functionality, unifying critical enterprise information sources. 2: Manage all facets of unstructured information, from collaborative authoring and publishing to advanced search and navigation of existing repositories. : Provide immediate value by delivering content in the context of business roles. 4: Streamline problem solving by unifying information, applications and services. 5: An open solution capable of integrating virtually any third-party application, information source, or Web content regardless of device or format. 6: Access all authorized systems with just one logon, eliminating the need for multiple logon procedures and passwords. 7: Robust security, including full support for digital certificates and SSL based on HTTPS Reference Link: (http://www. commoditiesone. com/Default. aspx? tabid=35)
Q 2: What is the importance of ‘content management’ for enterprise web portal? Content management for enterprise web portal is a powerful and sophisticated Web content management system that is designed to accelerate development and delivery of critical business information. It enables end-to-end collaboration for content creation, approvals, management, retention, and publishing across Internet, intranet, extranet and portal assets. Despite its power, most of the content management system of the web portal are remarkably easy to use. It simply requires standard office skills to harness and optimize the flow of information rapidly.
The ability to effectively manage content – and more importantly information and specific knowledge – directly affects organization’s ability to succeed in the marketplace. Business information is, in most cases, the most valuable asset that offers to customers, employees, or business partners. Accordingly, that makes information, together with the ability to manage it, integral to the success of every business. Business values is based on the information that it share. This concept is true both for the production as well as for knowledge and service industries.
Looking at where this information exists, organization finds that it is often divided and decentralized throughout organizations. Information is stored frequently as content. For example, critical information can include product descriptions, instructions, policies, key customer issues, competitive strategies, and so forth. The effectiveness of the information organization offer and in many cases the value it provides – depends directly upon the ability to distribute that information in a timely and efficient manner thus through effective content management of its web portal.
Reference Link: (http://webservices. dhts. duke. edu/our-services/web-portals) Q 3: Can a small business develop and maintain such a portal? Small business can develop and maintain its own web portal. Developing web portal and maintenance of such portal is becoming more flexible, user friendly and cost effective now a days. Different domains such as yahoo are offering low cost content so that within a small manpower. Sometimes some enterprises offer a limited service charge to develop and maintain web portal.
With the help of these enterprises they small business can develop and maintain such a portal. But the limitation of that web portal is that as small business has limited variation of services, the information will be limited, variation will be small. A small business Web site is a single chance you have to grab visitors’ attention, tell them that you have the products they want and turn it into a sale or at least an online contact. Reference Link: (http://downloadsquad. switched. com/2007/04/20/10-rules-for-your-smallbusiness-home-page/)
