A knowledge management perspective to evaluation of enterprise information portals

& Research Article

A Knowledge Management Perspectiveto Evaluation of Enterprise InformationPortals

Yong Jin Kim1, Abhijit Chaudhury2 and H. Raghav Rao1*

1SUNY at Buffalo, USA2Bryant College, USA

The paper develops conceptual criteria for evaluating Enterprise Information Portal (EIP)systems in the context of knowledge management activities such as knowledge integrationand application. The criteria have been drawn from an Activity theory perspective consistingof actors, community, object, tools, rules, and division of labor. It then discusses thecharacteristics of several commercial EIPs and evaluates one major commercial EIP in thecontext of the framework. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Enterprise Information Portals (EIP) are gatewaysthat streamline access to information, therebyeasing the task of transforming data into knowl-edge (Millman, 1999) and helping in efficientknowledge management. Recent literature (Fitzloffand Gardner, 1999; Roberts-Witt, 1999; Wilder,Davis and Dalton, 1999) reveals that many compa-nies are now moving to building EIPs usingvarious Web technologies. This trend is expectedto lead to a wave of integration of technologiessuch as data warehouses, data marts, data-mining,and knowledge management tools within singleapplication suites (Fitzloff and Gardner, 1999). Inaddition, the Internet as the ultimate in cross-platform availability is playing an important rolein promoting collaboration across multiple sites(Forman, 1998), particularly in the management ofknowledge.

Portals in general provide three types of feat-ures: search, transactional function, and com-munications (O’Leary, 1999). Personalization hasrecently become an essential feature in portals. Itallows particular segments of the users to specia-lize in focused topics of interest (Kuchinskas,

1999). EIPs are expected to facilitate knowledgemanagement by promoting utilization of dormantdata, and by reducing information overload.However, user resistance to acceptance of EIPshas being increasingly observed. As O’Dell (1999)mentions ‘if you build it, they will not come, theywon’t add their stuff — and then the first fewpeople who visit it looking for answers don’t findany. And that’s the end of the story.’

Technology alone cannot bring effective knowl-edge management without taking into accountextensive behavioral, cultural, and organizationalissues (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). Moreover,much knowledge remains tacit and thereforecannot be captured easily (Leonard and Sensiper,1998).

It is, therefore, important to utilize a compre-hensive framework to evaluate EIPs which willfacilitate knowledge integration and applicationin an organization. Activity theory perspective(Hasan and Gould, 2001; Kuutti, 1996) providesus with a foundation to develop the evaluationcriteria for the commercial software of EIPs. Thetheory furnishes a framework to view the activi-ties of knowledge integration and applicationfrom the perspective of individual actors withobjectives participating in a community. The useof technology can be studied from the widerperspective of individuals operating within a

*Correspondence to: H. Raghav Rao, SUNY at Buffalo, NY14260, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Knowledge and Process Management Volume 9 Number 2 pp 57–71 (2002)DOI: 10.1002 /kpm.137

Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

community. The technology and characteristics ofEIPs are described in terms of support afforded toactivities that are directed towards the fulfillmentof knowledge management goals. The conceptualframework for the EIP evaluation focuses on howthe technology is able to promote these activitiesand hence fulfill the user’s objectives.

The paper is organized as follows. In the nextsection, we describe the general background con-cepts of EIP and describe some of the state-of-the-practice portals. The third section introducesan Activity theory perspective as a foundation forunderstanding knowledge management practice.Different kinds of knowledge activities and toolsfor supporting the various roles of participants arealso defined. This is followed by an evaluation offifty commercial EIPs in terms of our framework.The final section presents conclusions.

BACKGROUND OF ENTERPRISEINFORMATION PORTALS: CONCEPTSAND PRACTICES

A growing number of businesses are adopting theWeb portal’s gateway-to-the-world model as away of transforming intranets into more powerfuldata-delivery and collaborative platforms (Wilderet al., 1999). In this section, we focus on the state-of-the-practice EIPs and describe the generalconcept of EIP.

State-of-the-practice EIPs

Enterprise Information Portals (EIP) (Fitzloff andGardner, 1999) are a data management tool thatprovides a window into enterprise knowledge bybringing visibility to previously dormant data so itcan be compared, analyzed, and shared by anyuser in the organization. The important features ofEIPs are the ubiquity and ease of use of the Webbrowser interface, and the availability of innumer-able new data sources on the public Internet aswell as across an organization. EIPs also give usersthe ability to classify those data sources into somehierarchy.

In the market, three types of EIPs — Data,Information, and Collaborative portals — can beidentified (Roberts-Witt, 1999).

$ Data portals are mainly concerned with mana-ging structured data that populate corpor-ate databases. They can help to manage aninformation glut by acting as a unified entrypoint.

$ Information portals deal with such unstruc-tured data as e-mail, text, and other documents.These types of portals incorporate indexing andcataloging capabilities and have a robust searchand retrieval functionality. Information portalsalso bring in a ‘find-expert’ function to facilitateinformation search using experts as tacit knowl-edge source.

$ Collaborative portals center on group interac-tive functionality. Vendors providing this typeof portal try to integrate an enterprise by bridg-ing intranet, extranets, private source data, andpublic information. They also allow users toutilize various collaborative functions and dataincluding e-mail organized into secure, topic-specific folders, conferencing, team discussions,calendaring, and news feeds with a single,personalized interface.

In terms of collaboration, recent development inEIPs has focused on capturing the informationrelated to workflow or job state from an idea for aproduct and its delivery; from the creation tocompletion of business plan; from the start of aconsulting project to the implementation. Theunderlying idea in this effort is that every materialcan be captured in the course of doing workregardless of the software used and saved in‘organizational memory’ formed by informationregarding decisions made and problems solved(Walsh and Ungson, 1991). According to Walshand Ungson (1991), organizational memory refersto stored information about decisional stimuli andresponses that can be brought to affect presentdecisions when retrieved. It is preserved inparticular retention facilities within organizations.The shared workspace with any level of accesscontrol and workspace, as a retention facility,allows various levels of users to cooperate eachother seamlessly.

The importance of collaborative portals hasincreased along with the advancement in out-sourcing and the increasing need for collaboration(Dwyer, 2001; Teresko, 2000). In particular, firmsin the high-tech industry have enlarged the scopeof the outsourcing from the outsourcing of non-core processes and pursued intimate collaborationamong business partners (Teresko, 2000). They aredeveloping new models for business by leveragingthe ease, speed, and affordability of Internetcollaboration. Engineering companies also tend torely on outsourcing one or more activities such asproduct design, components purchasing, productassembling, and/or sales. While collaborative por-tals do not change the basic characteristics of thetransactions, the portals facilitate the transaction

RESEARCH ARTICLE Knowledge and Process Management

58 Y. J. Kim et al.

processes and increase the transaction speed toreduce transaction costs (Dwyer, 2001; Teresko,2000).

The examples of the collaborative portals areCollaboration Manager, FORMTEK, LiveLink, andWorkPortal. Collaboration Manager provided byClick Commerce (www.clickcommerce.com) is atool that supports value network management.This portal helps firms to collaborate with variousbusiness partners in real-time over the Internet. Itallows individual comments, file attachments, real-time information retrieval regarding calendars,statistics, status reports, and publishing notifica-tions. FORMTEK, developed by Lockeed MartinGlobal Telecommunications (www.lmgt.com), is adocument and information management systemthat enables enterprise-wide integration of infor-mation systems and sources. It is contended toprovide direct access to the documents storedwithin the repository for collaboration with eBusi-ness applications. It also allows users to edit objectstate based on users’ privilege and check data typewhen new information arrives. LiveLink, OpenText (www.opentext.com) collaborative solution,focuses on integrated information access, and com-munity management. For unified search acrossstructured and unstructured data, it adopts theBrokered Search feature in myLivelink whichprovides users with a single interface for search-ing multiple information sources. For privilegemanagement based on user role, it relies onpredefined user profiles including job functions,physical location, and situation. It allows organiza-tions to filter and categorize information. It alsosupports multiple sets of isolated user commu-nities.

IManage’s (www.imanage.com) WorkPortal is asolution which offers a unified access to bothstructured and unstructured information fromdisparate enterprise sources. Within the umbrellaof the portal, employees, customers, suppliersand partners access to a secure central space forall enterprise information from anywhere at anytime via a Web browser. It facilitates knowledgesharing by promoting individual publishing aswell as by delivering timely personalized informa-tion to individuals and groups in their preferredformat.

The characteristics of EIPs vary from product toproduct (Table 1). In terms of functions, most pro-ducts provide search and browse functions, butfew products allow find-expert and collaborate-functions as well. Office documents and the Inter-net as well as business intelligence reports are, todate, the main sources of content. Surprisingly, noproduct developer employs email/notes as content

sources. This implies that even though manyresearchers (Markus, 1994; Ngwenyama and Lee,1997) contend that collaborative sources such ase-mail and bulletin boards are important knowl-edge sources, in practice, the importance of suchsources has not yet been accepted for portaldesign. As for intelligence features, only a fewproducts support features such as quality control,version control, and workflow. The number ofproducts supporting personalization is relativelyhigh.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ANDENTERPRISE INFORMATION PORTALS

In this section, the Activity theory perspective isused as a foundation for exploring the relation-ship between knowledge management activitiesand enterprise information portals. Knowledgemanagement is discussed in the context of anactivity and its structure. We further discuss the

Table 1 Analysis of EIP products in the market (Totalnumber of companies: 50 (see the list in the Appen-

dix)). Adapted from Roberts-Witt (1999)

Category FocusNo. offirms %

Functions Data Query 23 46Browse 31 62Search 36 72Receive Update 21 42Find Expert 11 22Collaborate 8 16

Contentsources

Database 25 50BusinessIntelligenceReport

28 56

Document 31 62Internet 30 60Personal Data 11 22Email/Notes – –News Feeds 16 32

Users KnowledgeWorkers

46 92

Teams 4 8Partners/Customers

10 20

Line of Business 11 22Executives 3 6

Intelligencefeatures

Notification 11 22Workflow 6 12Personalization 14 28AutomaticClassification

10 20

Quality Control 4 8Version Control 7 14

Knowledge and Process Management RESEARCH ARTICLE

Enterprise Information Portals 59

relationship between knowledge managementactivities and enterprise information portals.

Concept of knowledge management

Knowledge is referred to as ‘a justified personalbelief that increases an individual’s capacity totake effective action’ (Nonaka, 1994). Knowledgehas been categorized into explicit and implicitknowledge. Explicit knowledge is the formalknowledge that is a usable body of facts andconcepts relevant for a job and can be commu-nicated using systematic language (Bassellier,Reich and Benbasat, 2001). On the other hand,tacit knowledge is referred to as the ability toperform well (Leonard and Sensiper, 1998). It is‘gained over time by trial and error and throughintensity of effort’ (Nonaka, 1994) and is thereforeembedded into an individual’s behavior (Bassellieret al., 2001). In the information and globalizationage, a firm’s competitive advantage relies on theability to integrate the existent knowledge dis-persed in individuals (Grant and Baden-Fuller,1995). Hence, managing the knowledge is criticalto firms’ survival.

General definition of knowledge managementKnowledge management is referred to as asystemic and integrated approach to identifying,managing, and sharing all of an enterprise’s tacitand explicit knowledge so that employees can usethe knowledge to be more effective and productivein their organizational work (Alavi and Leidner,1999; Davenport, Jarvenpaa and Beers, 1996; Lee,2000; Sage and Rouse, 1999). Knowledge manage-ment involves value creation in pursuit of organi-zational objectives by applying explicit and/ortacit knowledge to a wide range of businessprocesses.

Unless it contributes to organizational goals, theefforts related to knowledge creation and sharing

end in vain. Hence, the key factors for effectiveknowledge management involve identifying theknowledge critical to the firms’ success and creat-ing processes to put the identified knowledge intoaction (O’Dell and Grayson, 1998). It is importantto note that knowledge domains in a firm, as avalid basis for action, should match with theproduct domains the firm produces (Grant andBaden-Fuller, 1995). A perfect congruence betweenproduct and knowledge domains allows firms tomaximize the effectiveness in the exploitation ofthe firms’ knowledge. Incongruence in knowledgeand product domains leads to impaired competi-tive advantages as well as making knowledgemanagement efforts useless.

Knowledge management from Activity theoryperspectiveAs mentioned earlier, valuable knowledge resideswithin individual employees and is critical to anorganization’s ability to solve problems and createnew knowledge. The knowledge in the businesscontext is, however, primarily obtained throughsocial interaction that leads to as a network ofrelationships for information (Cross and Baird,2000). Effective knowledge management, therefore,depends not only on information technology butalso on social interaction based on ‘communities ofpractice’. Here both individual and social levelsare interlinked at the same time. In a sense,knowledge management can be viewed as anactivity in which each actor as a constituent of acommunity performs one’s task by using tools ortechnologies (Hasan and Gould, 2001; Kuutti,1996). As shown in Figure 1, an activity iscomposed of three basic components (actor, taskor object, and community) and three mediatingcomponents (tools, rules, and division of labor).Activities are distinguished from each other basedon their objects.

The major elements of an activity are as follows:

Figure 1 The Activity perspective


60 Y. J. Kim et al.

$ An actor represents an individual who is amember of a community and is working on aspecific task or object.

$ A community consists of various actors who arerequired to accomplish their tasks, which is alsoa community project or an object. Communityalso includes the cultural context in which theactivity is situated (Bellamy, 1996).

$ The object or task represents the ‘what’ that aperson is engaged in.

$ A tool can be anything used in the pursuit of theobjects. Tools are directly related to the trans-formation process of the object into the actualoutcome whether it is good or bad.

$ Rules specify desired behaviors and decisionsperformed by community members and con-cern norms, conventions, and social relationswithin a community.

$ Division of labor refers to the various ways ofdividing up tasks and labor within a commu-nity to obtain organizational objects (Slater,1985).

$ The outcome may be a success or a failure, orpleasurable or otherwise.

In the context of knowledge management, indi-vidual actors can be of various types and theyparticipate in a knowledge management com-munity as a knowledge creator, owner, builder,transfer agent, evaluator, or user. A community isdefined as a group across which specializedknowledge is shared (Brown and Duguid, 1998).Through practice, a community as a collectiveknowledge base develops a shared understandingof the knowledge they have. The processes ofdeveloping the knowledge may differ from onecommunity to another. The actors can be engagedin subactivities such as knowledge acquisition,organization, and application (Alavi and Leidner,1999; Davenport et al., 1996; Sage and Rouse, 1999).Each actor as a member of the community mayengage in one or more subactivities according toone’s expertise or organizational requirement.Based on the actor type and the subactivities, onecan choose proper tools to achieve the assignedtask in the most efficient way. Communities canimprove knowledge acquisition and application bysetting up appropriate rules. The rules affect theinteraction of actors with each other, both insideand outside organization, and shape the actors’right and responsibility with respect to the tasksthat they are working on (Gupta and Govindarajan,2000). These subactivities are of course directedtoward the desired organizational goal. In such away, the approach to knowledge managementfrom the Activity theory perspective may allow

firms to maximize the value of intellectual capitalby specifying actor types, tasks, division of labor,tools, and rules of conduct during knowledgemanagement activity.

The role of EIP in knowledge management

As discussed in the earlier section, knowledgemanagement encompasses much more than tech-nologies for facilitating knowledge sharing,because people and the culture of the workplaceare the critical success factors for knowledgemanagement initiative (Rubenstein-Montano et al.,2001). These cultural elements are reflected in rolesthat actors play, the division of labor in the society,the rules that govern the relationship among actorsin the community and the objects or goals that theactors pursue. In other words, knowledge will notnecessarily spread firm-wide because of techno-logy alone in the absence of a strategy to betteracquire and integrate knowledge in an organiza-tion (Alavi and Leidner, 1999). Hence, as shown inFigure 1, information technology can play anessential role in knowledge management onlywhen it is applied in a broader organizationalcontext.

Companies, in particular firms which competeon the basis of services and expertise (Alavi andLeidner, 1999), are implementing information sys-tems to facilitate the acquisition, integration andorganization, and sharing of organizational knowl-edge (Alavi and Leidner, 1999; Sensiper, 1997).These systems are designed to provide users witha single point for access to and navigation throughthe entire knowledge resources of the organiza-tions. The systems are also supposed to enable theorganizational knowledge to be structured inknowledge maps and allow personalization andcollaboration (Roberts-Witt, 1999). There are anumber of technologies involving the systemsdevelopment such as document management,business intelligence, search engines and intelli-gent agent, data warehousing, and data mining. Inthis comprehensive effort on knowledge manage-ment, enterprise information portals play animportant role.

Enterprise Information Portals is argued to havethree major features: (a) allow data access througha single, easy-to-use menu, (b) let employees con-duct transactions, such as procurement of officesupplies, and (c) provide users with means forpersonalization and collaboration (Fitzloff andBowen, 1999). Enterprise portal building tools areexpected to create integrated views of a company’sinformation sources, such as relational and legacyflat-file databases, on-line analytical processing



systems, data warehouses and data marts, andenterprise resource planning applications (Wilderet al., 1999). Portals may also incorporate triggersthat alert users when new information comes in orthey may kick off events in enterprise applications.In the case of business-to-business portals that linksuppliers with buyers in vertical industries, it isexpected that business users can buy everythingthrough Web portals designed to help them findgoods and compare suppliers’ prices in specificvertical markets (Sliwa and Machlis, 1999). EIPsare ultimately envisioned to allow users to controlinformation from various sources (Roberts-Witt,1999) with familiar browsers and a networkcommunication infrastructure (Millman, 1999).

In terms of Activity theory perspective, an EIP, atool which facilitates knowledge activities toachieve desired goals, should incorporate divisionof labor and rules in its functionality besides itsinherent functions as a knowledge managementtool. Among the features of EIPs, providing asingle point data access and integrated views comewithin the purview of its inherent functions as aknowledge management tool (Wilder et al., 1999).On the other hand, personalization allows organi-zations to assign tasks to individual users based onthe division of labor and grants individuals a lot offlexibility to organize their own knowledge. Like-wise, in the personalization setting, actors may bealerted by an EIP to the arrival of new informationvaluable to their task accomplishment. Actors mayalso systematically access required knowledge byadopting the use of ‘channels’ (Millman, 1999).Similar to the channel concept used by AmericaOnline and Netscape’s Netcenter, these channelscan display pre-selected categories of informationtargeted to specific corporate divisions such assales, marketing, research and development, andpersonnel. The personalized use of EIPs providesknowledge managers with information regardingthe behavior of actors, which in turn helpsmanagers to set up the rules related to rewardsand culture.

Collaboration functions provided by EIPs(Fitzloff and Bowen, 1999) are also critical tofacilitate integrated task management within acommunity. An example of Web-based collabora-tion that has been developed recently is ActiveTouch’s (www.activetouch.com) WebEx MeetingCenter service for conducting real-time meetingsusing a Web browser and a telephone. Attendeesat a WebEx meeting are automatically notified viae-mail of a tracking number for the Web address atwhich the meeting will occur. If the meetingrequires phone conferencing, the server will auto-matically call users. Once the meeting is under

way, attendees can share and update documentsand presentations; co-navigate Web sites; and evendownload, configure, and troubleshoot software.Together with personalization, collaboration allowsa community to maximize the effectiveness andefficiency in knowledge management by assigningtasks based on division of labor and helps controlthe activities as a whole. As in personalization,knowledge managers can collect a variety ofinformation regarding the work performance ofboth individuals and the community, which assistmanagers in designing the knowledge work pro-cess and reward principles. Likewise, understoodfrom the Activity theory perspective, EIPs canfacilitate knowledge management situated in theorganizational culture.

While this section addresses the relationship ofEIPs with knowledge management based on threemajor features, the next section will discuss therole of EIPs in knowledge management focusingon specific knowledge management activities.

Evaluation criteria for EIP

In knowledge management, the ability to integrateand apply the organizational knowledge is criticalto a firm’s capability to create and sustain com-petitive advantage (Brown and Duguid, 1998;Grant, 1996a). This is mainly because knowledge,which is not integrated and shared, has a verylimited organizational value in the pursuit of theorganizational objectives. Hence, knowledge inte-gration and application are the major challenges ofknowledge management (Alavi and Leidner, 1999;Shaw et al., 2001). In this section, we focus on twosubactivities of knowledge management: integra-tion and application. Subsequently we use theActivity theory perspective to develop an evalua-tion framework for EIPs in the context of knowl-edge integration and application activities.

Knowledge integration activity and EIPKnowledge integration is inherently orientedtoward making existing organizational knowl-edge useful (Gold, Malhotra and Segars, 2001). Inthis activity, organizations play a role as a knowl-edge integrating institution, integrating the knowl-edge of many different individuals and formal orinformal groups (Grant, 1996b; Kogut and Zander,1992; Nonaka, 1994). The integration of knowl-edge regarding a specific subject residing indifferent parts or systems in an organizationhelps organizations maximize their efficiency byreducing redundancy and enhancing consistentrepresentation (Davenport and Klahr, 1998; Grant,1996b; Grant and Baden-Fuller, 1995). According


62 Y. J. Kim et al.

to Grant (1996b) and Grant and Baden-Fuller(1995), the success of knowledge integration canbe influenced by efficiency, scope, and flexibility ofintegration. The efficiency of integration variesalong with the frequency and variability of knowl-edge management activity. The scope of knowl-edge integration is defined by the variety ofknowledge to be integrated. The flexibility ofknowledge integration refers to the extent towhich an organization allows wider scope andnorms it has currently.

Grant (1996b) also identified two primarymechanisms for knowledge integration: directionand routine. Direction refers to the mechanism forknowledge integration in which each specialistestablishes rules, guidelines and directives forother organizational members. Direction concernsestablishing the basis for codifying mostly tacitknowledge into explicit knowledge. Organiza-tional routines involve setting up patterns ofinteraction among different specialists and achiev-ing the integration of knowledge using the pat-terns. All the specialist groups develop signals andresponses which allow the integration of knowl-edge without the need for extensive communica-tion with each other.

In the context of the Activity theory perspective,an EIP as a knowledge management tool providesthe functionality that facilitates direction andorganizational routines. Direction and organiza-tional routines can be interpreted as (1) rules and(2) division of labor in the Activity theory per-spective. In other words, an EIP needs to incor-porate the knowledge of rules and division oflabor to support actors to integrate their ownspecialized knowledge. Rules include (a) metarules regarding the procedures facilitating theknowledge integration, (b) rules concerning aparticular kind of knowledge which can bereused (Davenport and Prusak, 1998) and (c)rules regarding rewards based on the contribution

of actors to knowledge integration (see Table 2).Rules incorporated in to EIPs, therefore, canmaximize the integration of knowledge and theperformance of the systems by allowing usersboth machine-invoked and worker-initiating inter-actions to get the filtered information that isfocused on the user’s interest and tasks.

Division of labor, a source of dynamism andefficiency (Brown and Duguid, 1998), has twodimensions in the context of knowledge manage-ment. From the organizational standpoint, thetasks undertaken by actors in a communitydevelop local and highly specialized knowledge.In this case, division of labor focuses on perform-ing tasks and can be viewed as a repository ofhighly specialized knowledge, which can beshared by users in a multi-functional environment(Brown and Duguid, 1998) because the laborproduces knowledge. In the context of activityperspective, division of labor represents a set ofactions or functions, which facilitate knowledgeintegration and application (see Tables 2 and 3).As in information systems development, divisionof labor in knowledge management consists ofbuilders, designers, users, and owners in terms ofactors. The difference between both dimensionslies in the gap between doing and knowing whichmatters for organizational performance (Pfefferand Sutton, 1999). EIPs have to cover the twodimension of division of labor simultaneouslybecause the gap between knowing and doingshould be minimized to maximize the effective-ness of knowledge management (Pfeffer andSutton, 1999).

While EIPs cannot take care of both dimensionsautomatically, communities assign knowledgedivision of labor to each actor who developsspecialized knowledge regarding his or her task.Communities also develop their own distinctcriteria for knowledge evaluation through theprocess of evidence and warrants (Pfeffer and

Table 2 Knowledge integration in terms of the Activity perspective

Actor types Division of labor Rules Tools

Owner $ Budgeting money $ Fund distribution criteria $ Budgeting support tools$ Reward/ punishment $ Reward criteria & procedure $ Information for reward$ Boundary setting $ Task assignment criteria $ Contents of knowledge

User $ Knowledge evaluation $ Evaluation criteria & procedure $ Evaluation system$ Recommendation $ Recommendation procedure $ Recommendation system

Designer $ Requirement analysis $ Req. analysis procedure $ Req. analysis system$ Knowledge agenda setup $ Agenda setup procedure $ Agenda setup system$ Relationship modeling $ Modeling criteria $ Knowledge map

Builder $ Knowledge formalization $ Formalization procedure $ Formalization system$ Knowledge conversion $ Conversion procedure $ Conversion support tool



Sutton, 1999). Warrants are particularly importantin situations where actors confront informationoverload and they facilitate knowledge applicationactivity. Actors within a community perform atask with using tools, following rules, and playingroles defined in division of labor. In the context ofknowledge management, as in systems develop-ment, the type of actors can be categorized intobuilders, designers, users, and owners (seeTable 2). Builders, expressing or conversing tacitknowledge into explicit knowledge through rules,include all actors from clerical workers to execu-tives. In a sense, builders can be referred to asknowledge creators. Designers play a role inestablishing knowledge agenda in which therequired knowledge is listed. Users are the actorswho exploit existing knowledge and evaluate itsrelevant to the tasks they take charge in. The roleof users is important to knowledge integration.Owners are knowledge integration activity spons-ors and chief advocates. They are responsible forbudgeting money and time to support knowledgeintegration activity. They grant the best actorsrewards or punish the actors who do not meet thecriteria.

To summarize, Table 2 shows actors in a com-munity, division of labor, rules and tools, and theirrelationships. Note that a specific individual playsseveral roles in this framework. Hence, an EIP as atool for knowledge integration is supposed toincorporate the tools addressed in Table 2. Thetools discussed in Table 2 facilitate the roles ofeach actor and integrate the whole set of knowl-edge elicited from or by each actor.

Knowledge application activity and EIPKnowledge application activity refers to the actualuse of the organizational knowledge. Even though

knowledge application is argued to be one of themajor challenges of knowledge management (Alaviand Leidner, 1999; Shaw et al., 2001), less researchinterest has been given to the outcomes of theeffective application of knowledge than knowl-edge creation and integration (Gold et al., 2001).Most studies seem to implicitly assume knowledgeapplication effective. Like knowledge integrationactivity, however, the effective application ofknowledge has assisted companies in improvingtheir efficiency and reducing costs (Davenport andKlahr, 1998). Hence, discussing the knowledgeapplication activity is important to make the bene-fits from knowledge management feasible. Notethat to make knowledge application effective,mechanisms for effective storage, retrieval, andsharing have to be provided (Almeida, 1996).Effective mechanisms for storage, retrieval, andsharing enable the organization to quickly accessknowledge, explicit or implicit.

As mentioned earlier, competitive advantage ofa firm relies on the role of the firm in creating andapplying knowledge (Grant, 1996b). Among thespecialized pieces of knowledge, the knowledgethat is competitively unique and makes a con-tribution to customer value or cost can be referredto as core knowledge (Hamel and Prahalad, 1994).The core knowledge can be applied to variousprocesses and products to compete in the market.The focus of knowledge application is on theissues including what to apply the core knowledgeto, how to deploy it, and who performs whichactions.

In the context of the Activity theory perspective,as in knowledge integration activity, an EIP needsto incorporate the knowledge of rules and divisionof labor to support actors to apply the specializedknowledge to their tasks. Knowledge application

Table 3 Knowledge application in terms of the Activity perspective

Actor Division of labor Rules Tools

Sponsor $ Budgeting money $ Fund distribution criteria $ Budgeting support tools$ Reward/punishment $ Reward criteria & procedure $ Information for reward$ Boundary setting $ Task assignment criteria $ Contents of knowledge

User $ Knowledge search,retrieval, and use

$ Application procedure $ Search/retrieval system

$ Collaboration $ Collaboration procedure $ Collaboration system$ Feedback $ Feedback procedure $ Feedback system

Translator $ Requirement analysis $ Req. analysis procedure $ Req. analysis system$ Knowledge agenda setup $ Agenda setup procedure $ Agenda setup system$ Knowledge translation $ Translation procedure $ Translation system

Combiner $ Knowledge relationshipmodeling

$ Knowledge relationshipmodeling procedure

$ Relationship modelingsoftware

$ Alternative simulation $ Alternative simulationprocedure

$ Knowledge simulationsoftware


64 Y. J. Kim et al.

occurs in both direct and indirect forms. Knowl-edge workers can apply the ready-made knowl-edge to their tasks. In this case, the applicationactivity is simple. If it is not the case, however,the rules, division labor, and tools become com-plex because knowledge application requires crea-tive and flexible approaches. In indirect knowl-edge application activity, as shown in Table 3,four types of actors can be identified includingtranslator (Pfeffer and Sutton, 1999), combiner(Becerra-Fernandez and Sabherwal, 2001), user,and sponsor.

Knowledge translators are actors who can inter-pret the specialized knowledge accumulated in acommunity into another community’s perspective(Pfeffer and Sutton, 1999). The translator is suffici-ently knowledgeable about the task of both com-munities to translate. Given the sufficient knowl-edge, the translator pinpoints types of knowledgerequired and interpret the knowledge for differenttasks. The combiner seeks to develop new con-cepts in terms of knowledge by aggregating andcombining various pieces of existing knowledge(Becerra-Fernandez and Sabherwal, 2001). Com-biners develop knowledge relationship modelsto investigate the possibility of applying existingknowledge to new strategy. Combiners thensimulate all the alternatives they acquire to deter-mine the most suitable idea. The knowledgemodeling tools and simulation tools are referredto as combination support tool. Through thecombination activity, the combiner converts expli-cit knowledge into more complex sets of explicitknowledge (Nonaka, 1994). The combiner alsocontributes to making knowledge, group or orga-nizational, into action (Nonaka and Takeuchi,1995).

Users in knowledge application activity are theactors who exploit existing knowledge in everydayoperation. The users help knowledge integrationactivity by providing feedback regarding therelevance of knowledge. They use the knowledgebasically to solve their problems encountered atwork. EIPs have to provide sufficient tools tofacilitate the problem solving activities. There arethree types of technologies in terms of applicationsin an EIP: search-and-retrieval engines, directinteraction technologies, and collaborative engines.Direct interaction technologies invoked by bothuser and system itself provide users with functionssuch as wizards, cue cards, troubleshooter,checker, and active channel technology to learnthe knowledge about tasks while performing. Inaddition, rule or constraint based reasoning, real-time knowledge systems, and long-term analysissystems can constitute an EIP. Hypertext systems

are a basic technology for EIPs. The systems allowusers to retrieve and display textual as well asnon-text information (Glassco, 1993) and alsosupport collaborative activities in a community.Sponsors are, as in knowledge integration activity,responsible for budgeting money and time tosupport knowledge application activity. Theygrant the best actors rewards or punish the actorswho do not meet the criteria by setting up rules onperformance appraisal and rewards.

Based on the categorization of actors and theirroles, rules and division of labor for knowledgeapplication activity can be identified, as shown inTable 3. The focus of knowledge applicationactivity in the context of knowledge users isbasically on assisting in performing routine jobs,while that for the translators and combiners is oncreating new competitive advantage. The roles ofthe latter actors supported by EIPs overlap withthose of the actors in knowledge integration. Thetwo activities are closely related, influence eachother, and eventually help communities accumu-late the core knowledge in a virtuous cycle.

As discussed in the previous section, EIPs addto the basic tools many useful features like unifiedpoint of entry, integrated content sources, perso-nalization, and automatic classification. Thesefeatures facilitate knowledge accumulation whileperforming which should be the raison d’etre ofknowledge management systems. Personalizationenables knowledge users to design a customizedportal page with their preferred news, topics, andtasks within the organizational context. Moreover,actors can reach the ubiquitous information thatexists on the Internet as well as in an enterprisesimultaneously. In particular, users are able to getthe knowledge or information that is customizedin accordance with his or her preference within theorganizational context.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE EIP EVALUATION

As discussed in the previous section, EIP pro-ducts should assist actors of knowledge manage-ment in performing their roles by providing themwith proper tools. The tools incorporated in an EIPhave been addressed in Tables 2 and 3. Thissection focuses on the evaluation of commercialEIPs in terms of knowledge integration andapplication.

Evaluation of the state-of-the-practice EIPs

Earlier, the paper analyzes EIP products in themarket (see Roberts-Witt, 1999, also refer to the



Appendix to see company names for this analysis)in terms of functions, content users, user types andintelligence features. It is argued from the analysisthat most products provide search and browsefunctions, but few allow find-expert and collabora-tion functions in the process of knowledge integra-tion and application. In terms of content sources,office documents and the Internet are argued to bethe main sources followed by business intelligencereports, but collaborative sources such as emailand bulletin boards are almost always ignored.

In this section, the paper reevaluates the EIPproducts in the market using the same data butdifferent criteria elicited from the Activity theoryperspective. Note that the tools identified inTables 2 and 3 are used as the evaluation criteriabecause EIPs are referred to as tools whichmediate the relationship between an actor and anobject. The results of the evaluation are shown inTable 4. This table includes other features whichare excluded in Table 1 to explain specific func-tions provided by EIPs in the context of knowl-edge management. This analysis assumes that (a)

EIPs allow users to access various external andinternal content sources such as database, docu-ment, Internet, and e-mail/notes through a unifiedpoint of entry, and (b) if necessary, EIPs per-mit various users including knowledge workers,partners, customers, and line of business to bea member of a community and to access thesystem.

Shown in Table 4, EIPs provide users with veryfew tools to support their multiple roles as usersand owners except the tools for search andretrieval. There do not seem to be any tools forbudgeting support, knowledge contents, evalua-tion, recommendation, feedback, and agendasetup. The activities are primarily related to therole of owner and/or sponsor and users. Most oftools required to perform knowledge integrationand application are partially covered by EIPs.The roles include gathering information for re-ward, requirement analysis, knowledge mapping,collaboration, formalization, conversion support,translation, and combination support.

This result reveals that EIP products in the

Table 4 Evaluation of EIP products in the market

Tools Support from EIPs No. of firms

Budgeting support tools $ N/A (not available)Information for reward $ Performance metrics and quality control 6

$ Usage and activity reportContents of knowledge $ N/AEvaluation system $ N/ARecommendation system $ N/AFeedback system $ N/AReq. analysis system $ Learn user’s information needs 1Agenda setup system $ N/AKnowledge map $ Extract metadata from content 1Search/retrieval system $ Data Query (23), Browse (31), Search (36),

Receive update (21), Find Expert (11),Notification (11), Personalizaton (14)

21*

$ Push sales info out to field representatives,Leverage legacy reports and systems, Tie-inexternal Internet services, Image searching

5

Collaboration system $ Simple file sharing 1$ Live training, live collaboration 1$ Workgroup collaboration 8$ Share calendars, URLs and bulletin boards 1

Formalization system $ Transfer data to other desktop tools 1$ Forms 1$ Version control 7

Conversion support tool $ Tacit knowledge capture 1$ Job profiling 2

Translation system $ Automatic meta tagging 1$ Automatic classification 10

Combination support system(Modeling and Simulation)

$ Scenario testing 1$ Business Intelligence functionality (Personalization) 28$ Drag and drop cross reporting 3

*The mean of the number of companies which employ the search and retrieval functions.


66 Y. J. Kim et al.

market focus on knowledge search and retrieval,which are important to increasing the access rateto existing knowledge. It is shown, however, thatEIPs fail to accommodate the needs for compre-hensive planning and evaluation of knowledgeintegration and application and the verification ofknowledge, which can reduce knowledge activitycosts. In the following section, the paper discussesa commercial EIP (The Plumtree Corporate Portal)which is considered the leading company in theindustry.

The Plumtree corporate portal

Plumtree (Plumtree-Software, 2000) has developeda corporate portal to organize access to documentsin an enterprise-wide Web directory and integratethe useful information and services from othersystems. The Plumtree Corporate Portal is used byover 250 customers including Ford, Procter &Gamble, State Street, Pharmacia and BP and has 5million licensed users. The first generation of thePlumtree Corporate Portal offered business asearchable, hierarchical directory of documents,Web pages and messages similar to the Internetportals. The second generation of the portal addedthe personalization and new interactive applica-tion service. This generation portal also allowedusers to plug components into the platform tointegrate application services. The third generationof the Plumtree Corporate Portal incorporated theconcept of the community and the modulization ofportal components. It also strengthened the secur-ity of transactions on the system.

The major features of the Plumtree CorporatePortal are personalization, collaboration, search,content management, security, embedded appli-cation, network, and administrative tools. The feat-ures of the portal can be categorized as shown inTable 5 in the context of the evaluation criteria forknowledge integration and application activities.

For knowledge map, the portal provides thefunctions such as metadata management, PlumtreeDocument Directory, new knowledge indexingthrough crawlers and crawler mirroring, andPlumtree Portal Accessors. Standardized metadatafrom disparate systems allows effective documentclassification and search. Plumtree DocumentDirectory is a document directory consisting of ahierarchy of folders that organizes content storedon separate platforms according to topic, making iteasier for users to find information. Crawlers scana wide range of repositories including file systems,Web sites, Lotus Notes databases, MicrosoftExchange servers, and DOCS Open document

management databases for new documents toindex in the portal.

Crawlers also automatically duplicate the struct-ure and security of file systems and exchangepublic folders in the Plumtree document directory,which makes existing repositories searchable andWeb-accessible. The portal also provides PlumtreePortal Accessors to index text and metadata fromdocuments of the following types including LotusNotes, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office,HTML, Adobe PDF, and Visio.

For search and retrieval tools, the Plumtreeportal is equipped with a variety of tools andfeatures as the other commercial portals are. Ingeneral, the personalization function can beemployed for a wide range of knowledge manage-ment tools such as search and retrieval, conver-sion, and combination because it allows users tochoose a variety of interactive tools and servicesand customize them with their preferences. In thispaper, we assume the personalization function as asearch and retrieval tool as the search and retrievalcan be mostly personalized. With the portal, userscan have six personalized pages which present theinformation and services selected by the user tomeet each user’s specific organizational needs. Theportal assists users in searching knowledge byusing an integrated search engine which allowsvarious types of search including Boolean, proxi-mity, fuzzy, linguistic stemming, and advancedmetadata through fully integrated Verity searchengine. Here, users are limited to retrieve resultsfrom repositories that they have permission toaccess. The portal also allows administrators toreplicate the search results to multiple PlumtreeWeb servers, ensuring scalable and rapid search-ing.

For collaboration support, the portal supportscommunity creation, threaded discussion, docu-ment collaboration through document-sharinggadget, and task management through task listgadget. The portal provides users with tools forcreating communities that offer project teams,departments, business units or companies a spaceto share content, document, and collaborationtools. The portal also allows community membersto discuss ideas with their peers through thethreaded conversation and provides a forum forinitiating conversation topics, posting questionsand submitting responses. The portal permitscommunity leaders to assign tasks and membersto report task status, keeping team members up-to-date on the tasks.

For formalization tools, workflow-enabled con-tent approval and role-based distributed admin-istration and content management are furnished



by the portal. The portal using Web-based userinterface supports workflow processes in whichthe appropriate business experts to review andapprove documents and publications systemati-cally. The portal allows administrators to assigndifferent levels of administrative privileges tousers throughout the Plumtree portal, whichenables business experts to manage the portal tomaintain valid knowledge.

For conversion support, the Plumtree portaldeploys content filtering and end user content sub-mission functions. Filters automating the processof adding new information use business rules todetermine to which directory or area newlyarrived information belongs in the portal. theportal allows users with proper permission to

upload files to the portal at any time and fromany Web browser. Using this function, every usercan convert one’s tacit knowledge to documentsand transfer the knowledge to the members of acommunity or an organization.

Translation tools are limited in the currentform of the Plumtree portal to automatic classifica-tion which basically belongs to knowledge maptools. However, through classification, commu-nities can reinterpret specialized knowledge in acommunity from their own perspective. Combina-tion activity seems to be supported only bybusiness intelligence in the Plumtree portal. Infor-mation for reward is delivered by auditing using acomprehensive tracking system and partially sup-ported by Workflow-enabled content approval. A

Table 5 Evaluation of Plumtree portal

Actors Tools Support from Plumtree EIP

Owner & sponsor Budgeting support tools $ N/A (not available)Information for reward $ (Workflow-enabled content approval)

$ Auditing (a comprehensive tracking system)User Contents of knowledge $ N/A

Evaluation system $ N/ARecommendation system $ N/AFeedback system $ N/ASearch/retrieval system $ Personalization: A variety of customizable

interactive tools and services (Plumtree PortalGadgets), six personalized MyPages

$ Fully integrated Verity search engine (Boolean,Proximity, Fuzzy, linguistic stemming,advanced metadata)

$ Access control for knowledge retrievalandnetworked search

$ Search result replicationCollaboration system $ Community creation tool

$ Threaded discussion$ Document collaboration through

document-sharing gadget$ Task management through task list gadget

Designer Req. analysis system $ N/AAgenda setup system $ N/AKnowledge map $ Metadata management system

$ Plumtree Document Directory$ Indexing new knowledge through crawlers

and crawler mirroring$ Plumtree portal accessors

Builder Formalization system $ Workflow-enabled content approval$ Role-based distributed administration and

content managementConversion support tool $ Content filtering

$ End user content submissionTranslator Translation system $ Automatic classification (Metadata

management system)Combiner Combination support system

(Modeling and Simulation)$ Business Intelligence

$ (Personalization)$ Publication


68 Y. J. Kim et al.

comprehensive tracking system keeps user logins,modifications of administrative objects and accesscontrol changes and allows central authorities totrack and direct knowledge management activities.

The roles of knowledge owners, sponsors, andusers do not seem to be incorporated in the Plum-tree portal although among them, search andretrieval have been given much attention in theindustry. The tools which are not supported by theportal are budgeting support tools, contents ofknowledge, knowledge evaluation system, knowl-edge recommendation system, feedback system,requirement analysis system, and agenda setupsystem. These tools, not in support, are related toplanning and evaluation of knowledge which inturn are critical to effective knowledge management.

As discussed above, although several capabi-lities including search and retrieval function arewell developed and implemented in the portal,many desired tools remain incomplete.

CONCLUSIONS

In preceding sections, the paper has developed aconceptual framework for valuating EIP based onActivity theory perspective. The perspective isemployed to identify various actors, rules, divisionof labor and tools which facilitate two knowledgemanagement activities: knowledge integration andapplication. The paper then analyzes the state ofthe practice in enterprise portal using the Activitytheory-based evaluation framework. Finally, thepaper provides one example of a commercial EIPin terms of discussion. The analysis reveals thatsome of the required capabilities including searchand retrieval function are well elaborated andimplemented in a various way but many desiredfunctions from knowledge management activityperspective remain underdeveloped.

In this concluding section, we discuss someproblems in developing an EIP from a knowledgemanagement perspective. Major challenges includecreating a common vocabulary across an industry,building complex workflow systems and establish-ing a system that allows buyers, sellers and theportal host company to communicate, that is, thebasic building blocks that allow an industry tooperate as a community (Sliwa, 1999). It appearsthat due to these difficulties, EIPs in the marketare not likely to support, in the immediate fut-ure, collaborative work functions and use ofcollaborative database such as email and Notes.But collaborative capabilities are essential forknowledge management activities. For instance,situations for application of expertise are rarely

identical and every new situation leads to adevelopment of existing expertise and informationbase both on the part of the novice and the expert(Gloria, 1995; Gregor and Benbasat, 1999). When anovice communicates with experts, it is often thecase that traditional expertise is retrieved from anexpert and a new knowledge is also createdthough the process of communication. This iswhy collaborative tools are critical to the successof knowledge management.

The barriers to successful EIP developmentinclude organizational and cultural problems.Departments often assert their ownership ofspecific data, which can slow down the process ofsharing and integrating information (O’Leary,1999). That is one of the reasons why most EIPproducts focus on the users within the organiza-tion, not on the users from the line of business orpartners, even though supporting teams andpartners/customers is theoretically taken granted.To facilitate the efficient communications amongvarious participants, EIPs should be rich enough toallow users with multiple and ill-defined missionson knowledge works to feel served and comfor-table. The systems then provides alternative viewsof application interface and layers to accommodateuser diversity including alternative knowledgeactivities (Gloria, 1995). Moreover, to reflect nat-ural work situations, structured work processes,and progression through tasks, EIPs need toaccommodate structured and deep-seated explicitrules in a community and division of labor toperform tasks.

The evaluation framework proposed in thepaper is developed from user’s point of view andaccordingly focuses on users’ knowledge activity.To help managers apply the framework to duringselection of an EIP, future work will attempt toinclude developer’s point of view and to incorpo-rate more on technological aspect of EIP.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Professor Anthony Wensley andthe referees for valuable comments that have greatlyincreased the lucidity of the paper.

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APPENDIX

Appendix: the List of Enterprise Portals

Company Product Website

2Bridge 2Share www.2bridge.comActuate Actuate Reporting System www.actuate.comAlphaConnect.com AC Enterprise www.alphaconnect.comAutonomy Portal-In-A-Box www.autonomy.comBaan Enterprise Manager www.baan.comBackWeb Technologies Sales Accelerator www.backweb.comBusiness Objects Web Intelligence www.businessobjects.comByteQuest Technologies ByteQuery www.bytequest.comCentra Software Centra 99 www.centra.comChrystal Astoria, Canterbury www.chrystal.comCognos CognoSuite www.cognos.comDataware Knowledge Management Suite www.dataware.comDocumentum 4i www.documentum.comEnigma INSIGHT/Xtend www.enigmainc.comEpicentric Portal Server www.epicentric.comExcalibur RetrievalWare www.excalib.comGlyphica PortalWare www.glyphica.comgrapeVINE grapeVINE www.grapevine.comHarmony 360u www.harmony.comHummingbird BI/Web www.hummingbird.comHyperknowledge Hyperknowledge www.hyperknowledge.comInference K-commerce: Web www.inference.comInfoRay Info X-Ray www.inforay.comInformation Advantage MyEureka www.infoadvan.comInformix Software Visionary www.informix.comIntraspect Knowledge Server www.intraspect.comKnowledgeTrack The Knowledge Center www.knowledgetrack.comMineShare Information Portal www.mineshare.comOpenText MyLiveLink www.opentext.comOrbital Software KnowledgeWare www.orbitalsw.comPC Docs/Fulcrum DOCSFulcrum www.pcdocs.comPerspecta Perspecta www.perspecta.comPlumtree Corporate Portal www.plumtree.comPortera ServicePort www.portera.comPunch Networks Punch WebGroups www.punchnetworks.comSageMaker SageWave www.sagemaker.comSemio Taxonomy www.semio.comSoftfront TRACKWeb www.softfront.comSPSS Inc SmartViewer Web Server www.spss.comSqribe ReportMart EIP www.sqribe.comSterling VISION: Webaccess www.serling.comTopTier Enterprise Integration Portal www.toptier.comTower Technology Internet Information Portal www.towertechnology.comVerano Iluminar www.verano.comVerge Insight www.vergesoft.comVerity Knowledge Organizer www.verity.comViador E-Porta; Suite www.viador.comVIT deliveryMANAGER www.vit.comXerox DocuShare www.xerox.com



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A knowledge management perspective to evaluation of enterprise information portals