Yeah, was a bit cryptic that ;)
Well I won't go inot it all here, but I'll try to summarise the main points:
- 1) Technology is largely irrelevant i.e. they don't care whats its made from, just what it can do.
- 2) That the most likely 'sponsors' for intranets-in-a-box are not likely to be the tech/internal folks, but much more likely to be salespeople, marketing and account management.
- 3) Integration with existing technology figures really high. i.e. going in with a 'this is a great toolkit... but it works on its own' is a sure fire non-starter.
- 4) Don't build a super-functional clever-wizzo system. Academice may be prepared to experiment and try new approaches, businesses much less so. Somehting that does simple things really well is much more preferable.
- 5) The kinds of people who will make extensive use (sales, marketing, management) are also the kinds of people who aren't usually prepared to adopt complex, rigid, involved or prescriptive systems. The more flexibly the platform can be used the better. I seem to remember aD found this same thing with Seimens.. i,e, you can build clever knowledge-databases, informaiton analysis and so on... but salesmen end up doing it all with informal bulletin boards ;)
- 6) Make it work on their PCs with little effort. i.e.
- 7) Make it solve existing business problems, not provide clever functionality that enhances existing operations. i.e. don;t give them something they never had before, replace something they never liked.
As you can see this kind of thinking suggests a different kind of platform.
One comment that was made was 'if it worked with Lotus Notes, thats more important than if it was all that good'......
It also seemed to me that integration was far more salent than operation...
