Portal prowess

A portal that is said to provide competitive advantage is being rolled out initially to 10,000 customers of Six Sigma Academy. The global consultancy has deployed the extranet knowledge management portal, built on the InfoImage enterprise portal platform, to bring business transformation services to its Fortune 500-level clients. Systems integrator Redleg Technologies (redlegtech.com) is responsible for the selection of the portal, as well as its deployment, ongoing management and hosting.

KM, project management and training services are brought together in the single Web-based portal called Essenteq (Essential Technology for Breakthrough Thinking). More than 20,000 users are expected to have access to it within a year. Essenteq focuses on the KM needs of the entire enterprise, rather than focusing just on the project management needs of consultants, and also incorporates human resource and financial systems information, according to a recent press release from InfoImage.

Says Dr. Terry Ziemer, senior VP of technology at Six Sigma Academy, "The platform created a solution that is adaptable, features an intuitive, easy-to-use interface and is accessible to appropriate personnel seeking a wide array of information."

Dan Laux, president of Six Sigma Academy, adds, "Using the enterprise portal platform, we can offer our customers the tools and tactics of the Six Sigma strategy more conveniently and for a much lower cost than a traditional desktop application."

According to Rory Buske, senior partner at Redleg Technologies, "The portal platform was the only solution to meet our needs of global scalability, rapid deployment and ease of development. The well planned architecture, complete APIs and use of XML allow us to host the portal globally without significant retraining or modifications to our support systems, and for a lower total cost of ownership.