Managing all that information and providing access to it over a public network creates challenges for financial company managers and information technology specialists, he said. How a company indexes, stores, retrieves and presents widely different forms of data involves methods, standards, tools, organization and processes that are part of an information architecture. A systems architecture that grew incrementally in response to short-term requirements may not meet today s need, Shenoy said. Architecture designers need to consider whether a document is always presented the same way and in its native format as it is used in the organization. Shenoy said an increasingly popular response to the demand for self-service is the corporate portal, which integrates information from the enterprise s applications, repositories, processes and content streams.
Portals provide a single point of entry to relevant information.
Developing the architecture that can deliver that kind of impact begins with management buy-in, Shenoy said, and it needs to include a payback component up front. That component visualizes where the company needs to be in three to five years and what systems need to be in place to get the company there. Workflows need to be re-engineered to reflect how operations would need to change if the customer started using the Internet as the primary gateway to the company. In a feedback loop, user groups must be consulted, applications prototyped, and interim results measured. When results are acceptable, a migration plan is developed that specifies what organizations, systems and policies need to be in place, and rollout is scheduled.