Key technical considerations for Self-Service (part 1)

In my previous blog I had already defined Self-Service and discussed its advantages. This blog focuses more on the technical challenges with Self-Service and offers practical guidance and action steps.

Self-Service poses a number of complex difficulties that must be examined across systems, architecture and applications. Companies need to think about issues holistically and in detail:

1. Mind overall thoughts
1. Deliver a composite/ aggregated view and unified user experience
2. Identify necessary capabilities and examine their dependencies
3. Understand complexities and risks of overall efforts
2. Define Development Framework to deliver a rich consistent experience across the Website
1. Provides developers with core libraries used for accessing data, building visualizations and session management
3. Develop roadmap
1. Self-service Websites – with their investments and efforts – tend to live for many years beyond development frameworks
2. Companies need a clear vision and plan to support and evolve the site through new features
3. Outdated frameworks create complex and costly hindrance to efforts
4. Create and manage content right
1. Content is the key driver and core unifying technology.
2. Most self-service scenarios have demanding requirements for editorial control of Web content that is being added or modified on the site.
3. Large volume of documents are to be linked off of the site, which typically requires Enterprise Content Management (ECM) capabilities for creating, maintaining and publishing those documents
5. Manage your data wisely
1. decide where customer data resides (CRM application, mainframe,…) and how the data will be integrated
6. Guarantee access to multiple back-end applications
1. Support Self-service application with necessary data from multiple application sources
2. Application functions need to be made scalable from a small number of key individuals (internal support group, HR, accounts receivable, etc.) to support a large user base that access directly the back-end applications
3. Security of the applications must be beefed up
4. Assure that existing APIs are accessible and layers/ adapters are integrated
5. Utilize SOA technologies for orchestration, scaling and data integration of backend applications
7. Reduce custom development of the core platform where the site is running on.
1. The seemingly quick implementation approach makes maintenance later cumbersome and costly
2. Use off-the shelve software where possible
8. Select a suitable platform that meets most of the core technology requirements
1. Needed capabilities include personalization, application user experience management, user access control, component development, site control & navigation, and integration of Applications, Content and Identity?
2. Portal server products & technology provide the above for self-service projects
3. Move away from providing traditional purpose-built transactional Web applications to a more rich, dynamic and streamlined user experience

The graphic as well as content has been incorporated from Oracle white papers.