1. element^n
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 perfectpartner@elementn.com.
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 info@elementn.com to find out if our products and
services are the right fit for your organization.