Business Goes to Employees...

Traveling across the United States in the first week of November, it was

amusing to see how much has changed since Osama cast his shadow on the sunny

face of this country, and indeed, how much has still remained the same. What has

clearly changed is the feeling of self-doubt that has replaced the bravado and

self-confidence that characterized the Western approach through the glorious

nineties and up to 9.11 as that infamous WTC day is now known as. It was sad to

note the trepidation with which clients and prospects now envision a visit to

India even if the bombs in Afghanistan are known to be separated by a full

country! And if that bodes ill for all the entrepreneurs setting up US facing

ventures out of India, what is even more disconcerting is the tentativeness that

pervades the Asian Community, from new H1Bs to Green Card Holders and even to

American Citizens of Indian origin–scurrying to buy flags to brandish on their

front doors and wearing Stars and Stripes Lapel pins–have you seen those big

posters on US Taxis saying ‘Proud to be American and a Sikh’?

But some things haven’t changed at all! The entire country still bonds

together and shows the tolerance for opposing views that one associates with a

well-educated intelligent society. Jokes like "But Afghanistan is not a

state of India, you know!" elicit the expected laugh even if that still

doesn’t send wary CIOs rushing to their travel agents to book seats to India.

And despite the long lines and special beepers installed at all domestic

airports and the special "checking treatment" meted out to all brown

skins in the guise of random checking, the airport security continues to be

weak. A Chinese gentleman in front of me in the line at O’Hare Airport was

found to have a six inch long nail cutter in his bags and after a brief chat was

admonished with a "Bit large, aint it?" and allowed to board the

aircraft with the nail cutter intact. And of course the case of one Mr Gurung

who managed to get through multiple security layers with two knives made all the

newspaper front pages on the first Sunday of November. There is no doubt that

Osama will soon tire of trying to teach all Americans a lesson and it will be

business as usual for America but till that happens, life will continue to throw

up new challenges and even when time has healed the wounds, the scars on the

American psyche will never quite disappear.

A new value proposition called B2E

One fallout of all the obsessive discussions on security and alternative

approaches to communications has been the surge in demand for video conferencing

which has seen the stocks of companies like Polycom soar in an otherwise falling

stock market. Another trend that is now capturing the imagination of American

corporations is the use of business to employee (B2E) portals to provide every

stakeholder a window into the vast amount of information and knowledge churning

through various applications on corporate Intranets and Extranets. The

unfortunate reality is that in most organizations, big or small, the valuable

applications have developed independent of the larger legacy or ERP movement,

and in many cases sponsored, initiated and even developed by business groups

rather than the formal EDP or systems functions. This has led to silos that are

proving difficult to aggregate and integrate as the organization now seeks to

consolidate and evaluate return on investments (ROI) from its information and

knowledge applications.

The process of aggregation has seen the evolution of standards for these

applications sometimes imposed by the CIO and her team and in many cases

mandated by CEOs or department managers who are wary of their e-business

applications going haywire. This sees the incorporation of enterprise standards

that goes all the way from signing on and authentication to content aggregation

and publishing and similar look and feel across applications. There are various

names for the portal that emerges from being enterprise information to

collaboration to knowledge portals, but three common themes that organizations

look for in the development and implementation of enterprise portals are…

• The provision of a single access window for employees and partners to
  
  major applications like ERP and SCM, which is personalized, targeted and
  
  workflow integrated based on each user’s role and at the same time
  
  presents a common corporate brand and look and feel to foster a feeling of
  
  community.

• High level of automation of workflow and desk activities
  
  to put self-service in the hands of the user and eliminate the reliance on
  
  call centers and other forms of internal and external support to the extent
  
  possible.

• Streamlining of content management and maintenance
  
  operations. This, as well as ensuring that corporate technology
  
  infrastructure and personnel usage is optimized, is essential to the
  
  achievement of ROI goals in portal projects.

In the aggregation phase, it is normally advisable to adopt a

‘soft’ ROI approach. This should be done as the benefits of community

creation, common branding and increased efficiency in the workplace are very

often difficult to quantify. ROI should be seen as an essential cost of making

business more professional in a rapidly scaling organization. The real benefits

will of course accrue when the organization is able to integrate its employee

portal initiatives with large-scale multi-channel information and knowledge

management applications across and beyond the enterprise. With the increasing

availability of rich media, content management and enterprise application

integration technologies, organizations of the future will be able to realize

benefits of extensive self-service. This will help them pull costs out of call

centers and CRM operations, optimize job performance across complex workflow and

enable mobile Internet access for telecommuting and home workers. It will also

provide decision support dashboards for senior executives to manage their

segments of enterprise functions in a more optimal manner.

B2E opportunities for Indian firms

The development of enterprise portals often needs a close

understanding of behavioral issues and technology adoption issues and may not

lend itself to a traditional software development life cycle model. There is

ample room for packaged portal products, which has been established by success

stories like Plumtree and now SAP portals and Peoplesoft self service

applications. The real opportunity for Indian software firms and of course

entrepreneurs lies in understanding specific ‘pain areas’ in functions or

processes which can be addressed through portal templates and offshore services

like knowledge enabled call centres and support centres. There are service

opportunities along the entire continuum from knowledge portal frameworks to

electronic performance support and document management systems to e-learning

content, delivery and management systems provision. And all that is needed for

this is a mind shift from traditional programming services to more value added

partnering approaches with global CIOs to address this important area as a

techno managerial opportunity that cannot be ignored in any progressive business

corporation.

It seems strange that while during the last two years

industry watchers and fund managers were asking the Indian companies to move up

the value chain and seek new opportunities to get CIO budgets, the only news

that hits the headlines these days is speculation on the extent of drop in the

Indian software exports growth figures for the current fiscal. The global

slowdown, though prolonged, is still only a temporary phase and organizations,

small and large, would do well to revisit their strategies and plan for new

services in horizontal and vertical market niches to build opportunity share in

the post-slowdown era.

Ganesh Natarajan is

deputy chairman and managing director of Zensar Technologies and the global CEO

of Zensar.