When building extranets for larger clients, our touch point within the company is usually the Marketing department. Yet at the same time, we are building an internal web application so it’s likely that at some point we’ll be stepping into the turf usually controlled by the client’s IT department.
What we’ve learned throughout these engagements is to remind our client of the benefits of keeping IT out of the picture: less burden on IT’s limited resources, a design approach that doesn’t impact internal architectures, and better user outcomes. And as an outside agency we can usually meet a pressing need more quickly than IT would be able to, given their planning and budget cycles.
If possible, it helps to have an advocate within the Marketing department who will stand up and say, gingerly, “We want to build this outside of the usual corporate IT infrastructure.”
Of course there will most likely be some kind of data exchange (internal lists of users, etc.) so IT will need to be involved at that level. However, given the robust nature of web services, XML, or even daily FTP of text files, we always try to convince our clients that even though it is their company’s extranet, it can, if at all possible, live outside of the corporate firewall.
This allows our web applications to be successful because we can bring design understanding to the site that IT doesn’t want to or is unable to. We understand better than IT that usability and clean user interfaces are paramount; they usually are more concerned about making internal tools tie into existing infrastructures than about user experience and site design.
Making the pitch to build an extranet outside of IT can be done. If nothing else, focus on how IT probably doesn’t have the time to support such an initiative, much less build it out. Too often we’ve seen interfaces often get bolted onto existing ERP and SAP systems without enough/any thought of usability. In the end, this increases the need for training and/or support of the tools.
When we as an agency build an extranet, we can focus on web standards and build beautifully functional sites. And because we know exactly why the audience is coming and what they need to do when they arrive, we know when to step away from eye candy and renew the focus on the “application” nature of the site. The spit and polish of the site needs to be in how it works and how it lets its users accomplish their tasks.
Building consumer-facing web sites is often the bread-and-butter of web design firms like ours. But we can succeed as well when we pursue internal opportunities within our clients’ companies and in the process bring our design and usability sensibilities to applications often relegated to whatever IT has had time to put together.