The only
thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The things that matter most
Aside from
delivering your project on time and to budget (covered elsewhere in this guide) the most important measure of success for your portal can de described by use of a simple formula:
Delta = No. of users x benefit per user
To put this another way, you can
have all the benefits you like for each inidividual portal user, but if you fail to get decent user adoption rates, you will still fail!
Or (to look at it the other way
around), the entire company could be using your portal but, if there is nothing of real value there for them to use, then you will fail!
Being talked about
There are, essentially. two main methods for
analysing the user adoption of your portal. The first is analysis of your web server logs and the second analysis of your portal database.
Web Log Analysis
This method of adoption tracking
is very popular for internet sites, where the user is typically anonymous and may only identify themself approx. 20% of the time.
A useful analogy is that of a CCTV camera
in a department store, through which the store owner can measure (combined with data from door scanners) the number of people visiting her store and the routes that people are
taking around the store.
Typical measures include the hours of site availability/uptime, number of site user visits, page impressions, object hits, kb downloaded, average
length of visit and site entry & exit points
Portal Database Analysis
However, to only analyse
anonymous data gives very little real information value. As your portal 'knows who people are' (as most or all of your users are registered) it makes sense to use a more advanced,
info-cube type to analyse user behaviour.
A useful analogy is that of the store marketing list and cash till receipt, which tells the store owner exactly what her customers
are interested in - and what they are actually buying.
Typical measures include who is looking at a particular page or object, by grade, department or business unit.
Benefit per User
As highlighted elsewhere in this guide, it is hard
ahead of implementation to benchmark how benefits are likely to flow from the portal, but perhaps easier to do so once the portal is in use.
Many of the savings from a portal will arise from people simply
doing what they always have done in a more efficient way.
In the business case chapter, I proposed the gathering of an extensive estimate from users of (a) how long common
tasks take and (b) what time savings they might achieve through use of the portal.
By repeating these time surveys, post implementation, it will be possible to measure the per-user
savings achieved.
Benefits Tracking
In the Benefits Realisation chapter, I covered off the steps you should follow to track benefits achieved. An
important part of this process is getting sponsors and line managers to sign-off, to evidence their agreement that objectives were met.
Performance Accountability
A key weapon in your war to succeed is the use of key
performance indicators (KPIs) against which sponsors and line managers are assessed for the payment of performance bonuses.
If you have managed to get such KPIs included in the
performance contracts of key people in your business, then this will create a demand (in itself) for measures of how successful the portal has been.
Work closely with these key people, to (a) ensure their targets are measurable, achievable and co-aligned, (b) provide them with regular progress measures against their targets and (c)
support the rewards process where and when the targets are successfully met.
Webtrends | PT Tracker (from PPC)
Contrast the best known anonymous web log analysis tool (Webtrends from NetIQ) with PT Tracker, an info-cube based tool (for Plumtree Corporate Portal). Explore further the differences between them.
