osforge.com

Our research shows that many portal projects are currently being hijacked by internal corporate politics. Because enterprise portals mediate access to a wide variety of data sources and applications, the perception (and a large part of the reality) is that whoever controls the portal holds the power in an organization. Hence, we see a gold rush of different departments implementing "corporate" portals in an attempt to stake their claim. Senior managers should resist this tendency to inject corporate politics into infrastructure decisions. (Jeffrey Mann)

OFAC CAN YOU SEE? INDERDICTING SUSPECT TRANSACTIONS
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) continually updates its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list of individuals and organizations hostile to US interests (e.g., criminal suspects, fugitives, drug traffickers, terrorists). By the president's recent executive order, all businesses are mandated to screen, block, and report suspect customers and transactions, but only a handful of vendors have wrapped SDN matching functionality to integrate with transaction systems and customer databases. Interdiction vendors include Bridger Systems, Innovative Systems, Prime Associates, and Thomson Financial. Solutions vary in their ability to perform intelligent matching, perform reporting/notification, access common data sources, provide APIs for application integration, and execute in batch, online, or service bureau modes. (Doug Laney)

UNSTRUCTURED INFRASTRUCTURE: IS A SINGLE REPOSITORY POSSIBLE?
Reducing the number of vendors providing unstructured information systems provides benefits by minimizing maintenance fees and upgrade costs, reducing administration and support staff requirements and increasing efficiencies in finding information. However, organizations will find it is not feasible to centralize into a single repository. Consequently, organizations should aggressively pursue enterprise standards for unstructured content with a goal of fewer than five vendors (e.g., e-mail, documents, Web-ready content, rich/streaming media, archive) with offerings that provide for central administration of their associated content. These standards should be reviewed at least annually, with a focus on reducing the number of vendors as overlap continues over the next 2-3 years. (Andrew Warzecha)

THE NEXT ERP FRONTIER: COLLECTING CASH
Effective cash optimization and process efficiency can be enabled through the deployment of best-of-breed collections management systems (e.g., GetPaid, London Bridge, Ontario Systems, AMS) that will extend accounts receivable functionality to improve client interactions and reduce DSO (days sales outstanding). Current ERP solutions lack deep collections functionality that can enable effective analysis of receivables, measurement of collections activity, and improvement of customer contact through consistent and accurate enterprise account information. (John Van Decker)

WALK SOFTLY AND CARRY A LITTLE DEVICE!
With SavaJe's recent release of its XE operating system (a complete Java OS for small-footprint devices), the realities of enterprise-to-enterprise (E2E) e-business are just over the horizon. As nascent E2E transcends linear, transactional e-commerce to globalized, multi-party trade between commerce chains, small wireless devices like barcode readers (manufacturing shop floors or distribution hubs) can now become part of the e-business ecosystem in a more "respectable" way. While microcode-level embedding is needed, this provides a solution to the long-standing problem of embedding a JVM or Web server on a dumb piece of shop-floor equipment and leveraging the data for externalization. Indeed, end users seeking real supply chain visibility can now verify the goods really are on the dock. (Joanne Friedman)

The insights above were selected from Commerce Chain METAbits recently published at metagroup.com. For today's METAbits, go to www.metagroup.com/metabits