Developing an integration architecture for process portals

Abstract

Many companies still use portals to mange link lists or to present HTML pages to an anonymous group of users. This paper argues that a portal's benefits strongly depend on its personalisation along the individual user processes. Besides customer profiles and histories relevant design issues are also the operational collaboration processes and the link of the embedded services to the internal and/or external providers in the upstream supply chain. These process portals not only require an in-depth process analysis, but also the efficient integration of heterogeneous applications on the information systems level. The goal is to provide an integrated, role-based and process-oriented access to all relevant applications. For this purpose integration architectures add one layer to existing application architectures and need to be linked to existing process and application architectures. In view of an estimated growing diffusion of process portals, this article argues that the available approaches to integration architecture in the literature and in practice do not adequately address inter-organisational requirements, and develops an extended architecture model. The components required to implement this architecture are illustrated using an example of a major automobile manufacturer.

Keywords:

• portals
• integration architecture
• inter-organisational integration
• business networking

Notes

1 The partner companies were DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Telekom, emagine, ETA, Hewlett-Packard (Switzerland), Hoffmann-La Roche, Robert Bosch Group, Triaton and SAP.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Puschmann

About the author

Thomas Puschmann is a senior consultant at The Information Management Group (IMG), Switzerland. He received his master's degree in management sciences from the University of Konstanz, Germany and his Ph.D. from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. In his current position, he is responsible for business networking with portals.

Rainer Alt

Rainer Alt is an assistant professor at the Institute of Information Management, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He received a master's degree in business administration from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and a Ph.D. from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland where he also finished a postdoctoral thesis (habilitation). Before assuming his current position, he was with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in Germany.