Portal potency

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SAMUEL: Websites are very important because of the age group of our tech-savvy customers who want to interact online.

Portals can be a window into the company's world and one of the strongest assets an enterprise can muster, though it takes more than a little insight to avoid becoming trapped in the maelstrom.

It is common knowledge that every company needs a website, but how best to sail through the treacherous depths of a new project and avoid the vortex of wasted investment is a much rarer slip of information.

Websites often serve as portals into an enterprise's world - with varying degrees of success - and allow customers and stakeholders to be greeted by a slick interface that acts as an electronic receptionist spurring strangers on to find the appropriate information about the business.

This can be seen as part of a marketing strategy, as it allows customers to window-shop through products and services, though this also needs to be viewed from a technological standpoint as a significant amount of grunt is needed to bring an enterprise's content online.

For Sebastian Samuel, group IT manager at the A W Rostamani Group, websites are high on the agenda, particularly because the enterprise operates a conglomerate of automotive, real estate, interior design and IT companies.

"Websites are really important because we are into the automotive dealer management business and now if you look at the customers, most of them are below 50 years old. You look at the age group for it - these are tech-savvy people. Instead of sitting in a showroom and chatting with the customers, a lot of people directly interact on the website and we can see a lot of increase in the trade details," says Samuel.

Samuel explains that in this era, IT strategy is paramount, particularly given the prevalence of web 2.0 technologies which has become a major project unto itself for the group.

"I feel that the next era is for web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies, like social networking, and you can even see customer relationship management applications integrated with web 2.0 so this is really important for us. I feel that even the direct marketing will reduce because of the direction of new technology," he says.

The torrent of technology required to enable a website with audio, video and user-interaction systems like comments, feedback and forums are quite complex. Often leading to the rollout of web content management and digital asset management.

Mick MacComascaigh, research director at Gartner, explains that most of the calls the analyst firm receives from CIOs about web content management are asking how they can get more value from the technology.

"A classic example is that about 20% of the calls I receive are from CIOs or IT leaders who have a homegrown system for their web content management. They built it themselves because six to seven years ago it cost more than a million to set up your web content management," he says.

MacComascaigh points out that these costs can stem from the pure license fees associated with web content management, whereas others were from the price of the implementation.

"One of the primary interests the [CIOs] have is the trend that Gartner is seeing where the homegrown systems just can't keep up - in terms of value - with what is out there in the market," continues MacComascaigh.

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