Promoting Your Enterprise Information System

The Top 15 Lessons Learned

  • Plan for growth: Web use proliferates quickly - be ready for it.
  • EIS can quickly get out of control if management blessing and standards setting are missing.
  • Develop a presentation that demonstrates how users can become more productive with Web applications.
  • Put non-critical information, such as administrative and human-resource documents, on the EIS before providing more sensitive data.
  • Start with simple funcitons such as documents and a company phone directory to get users invested in the ease and usefulness of the system.
  • Be sure your network infrastructure is solid before rolling out critical data. It should be as reliable and as transparent to users as the telephone dial tone.
  • Senior managers invariably ask if the EIS is secure, so this is a consideration.
  • Listen by establishing advisory boards or forums consisting of executives from the business, administrative, and legal departments to set technical and publishing standards.
  • Personalization: Home pages designed for the way engineering, financial, and marketing workers do their jobs are more efficient than one generic home page for everyone.
  • Expect to customize code to link data between legacy systems and Web technology.
  • Expect to retrain programmers and developers or hire new ones for EIS tasks as new skills are required.
  • Get a good training system going as logging on and accessing applications is different for off-site users who need to come in through the firewall.
  • Make sure management realizes that implementing an EIS won't cost a fortune. Look at return on investment as well.
  • Simplicity counts: remember internal sites don't require the elegant graphics of external web pages.
  • Be patient: EIS don't happen overnight, and they're never completed.
  • Have fun with the EIS, so your users will realize how easy and productive it is to point and click their way to so much information.

Content Topics
The Top 15 Lessons
Return on Investment
Identify Projects
Management & User Support
bullet Project Methodology
bullet Internet Infrastructure
bullet Web Content
bullet Take Advantage of Web
bullet Demonstrate Value

Return On Investment

The most important strategic advantage of the corporate EIS is in the ability to gather and combine information from different company sources enabling better decision making. It is no longer necessary for all employees to use the same brand of software and hardware to share information. The EIS eliminates the barriers to communication and allows groups within companies, and groups across companies to communicate efficiently and share knowledge. The preliminary results from IDC's return on investment study of intranets found the typical ROI well over 1000% -- far higher that usually found with any technology investment. Adding to the benefit, with payback periods ranging from six to twelve weeks, the cost of an intranet is quickly recovered -- making the associated risk low. In addition to the obvious savings of paper or supporting ISO 9000 initiatives, the greatest savings is productivity.

Identify Projects that Demonstrate Business Value

At this time a number of EIS projects have been identified as being of business value to the organization. It is expected that as the EIS system is being implemented in stages that additional projects will be identified as the full potential of this technology is realized.

Management and User Support

In addition to the already prevalent management support, it is essential to work with key users to assist in defining and implementing corporate EIS projects, and in promoting enthusiasm to other users. Promote corporate EIS by demonstrating to key personnel how easy EIS technology is. Hold meetings and hold one-on-one meetings with users about new features.

Project Methodology

Corporate EIS should be completed project by project such that definable results can be demonstrated at each stage of implementation. In the process of development, the IT department will be utilizing the corporate EIS in production to work out the kinks and to show early success.

Corporate EIS Infrastructure

  • Domain name services running on network for a single, centrally source for network addresses
  • Have sufficient network bandwidth
  • Backup procedures includes tape backups and a nightly distribution to remote sites.
  • Expansion
  • The skill set for implementation includes: Project management; Web systems administration; Web Development; Web publishing and design; Quality assurance and testing; Web research and development.
  • Address security concerns early and often.
  • Provide a feedback mechanism on the EIS and create a reputation for rapid response. A goal is to answer mail with a problem answered within 20 minutes after the user sends the feedback.
  • Hold focus groups to discuss web usability. Watch, listen to, and learn from the people using Corporate EIS. Design to minimize training. Keep statistics. See what is and is not frequently used.

Web Content

ITs role is to provide infrastructure. The users ultimately own the date and therefore should be responsible for publishing and maintaining it. This helps to get others' support because corporate EIS's success is not just ITs, but theirs as well.

Taking Advantage of EIS's Strong Points

One thing that can be done with Web technology than with any other technology is link information. i.e. use the EIS to kick off an application such as ...., start a telnet session to a legacy system.

Demonstrate Business Value

The key to success is in our ability to rapidly demonstrate business value at a low startup cost.

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Last Modified: 30-Jan-01