Stories by: Mike Heck

Eprise has been around the CM (content management) space for some time, and the 2004 version puts this Web content management application on solid footing.

Does your organisation often turn to portals in an attempt to manage the sprawl of Web-based applications? If so, you may be all too aware that these projects can fail to deliver their anticipated ROI. That’s because IT managers overlook the need to extend core functions — content management, search, and security — to the applications that appear within a portal. As a result, companies often settle for a portal that provides a decent user experience for a few locally hosted functions. However, the portal doesn’t provide an overarching administration framework, nor does it help you lower development and maintenance expenses.

Despite all the communications technology that most organizations use, a good deal of corporate knowledge still gets passed around the traditional way: by chance. If workers happen to see each other in the hallway, they might exchange a few words -- but if not, they won't. Clearly it's not wise to entrust your enterprise's future to such an informal and unpredictable arrangement.

Building revenue and capitalising on available resources are increasingly demanding challenges for enterprises. It's not just managing the details of an individual project that really matters but also understanding how a myriad of projects interact.

Developing dynamic e-commerce sites can prove to be a daunting task, so the job is often delegated to high-cost, hard-to-find Web development specialists and can take weeks to complete.

Enterprises face huge content management challenges - not just in administering volumes of documents - but also in getting this material online and keeping it up to date. Documentum 4i eBusiness Edition 4.0 provides a first-rate solution for large-scale content management. Global 2000 and Internet companies will find this product moves content quickly from authors, through approvals, and onto live Web sites, allowing e-businesses to respond quickly to changes in the online marketplace and deliver timely, relevant information to customers and business partners.

Most government agencies have set procedures that staff members must follow - for processes ranging from getting purchases and proposals approved to tracking requests from citizens. And in government, even more than in business, workflow is often oriented around forms.

Whether your company is managing an intranet, extranet, e-commerce site, or all of the above, you know that material must be continuously refreshed for the Web to be an effective information dispersal or sales tool. Alas, Web content maintenance is the stress point for both overworked Webmasters and content providers -- often resulting in delays of days or weeks before revisions are completed.

Web conferencing and collaboration quickly is becoming as pervasive as e-mail. And as with e-mail services, you can find a variety of conferencing ASPs (application service providers), some of which even offer free meetings for small groups. Still, as enterprises look at these tools to reduce travel costs, introduce distance learning, and improve technical support, they are uncovering hidden costs. For example, you may need to spend a great deal for conference calls to augment your online slide presentations.

In any large organization, hundreds and perhaps thousands of projects run concurrently. Because Microsoft Corp.'s Project lacks high-end decision-support tools, executives in Microsoft Project shops have a hard time getting a companywide snapshot of budgets, project status reports, or resource requirements -- information necessary for keeping projects on track. More significantly, Microsoft Project doesn't provide any human resources information to project managers, failing to consider that matching a worker's skills with a task can significantly improve the project's outcome.

When enterprises need to get time-critical information to external partners, extranets are often their first lines of communication. Geared for building, manufacturing, and product development projects, Framework Technologies Corp.'s ActiveProject v2000/E is an unusual application that helps large organizations rapidly build dynamic extranets for which project information is stored in Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server databases.