Benevolent entanglement

Using explosive apps Getting the bills paid Customers and suppliers together Opening up the architecture Picking the winner Portal infrastructure diagram

"Benevolent entanglement." The phrase might be a mouthful, but the concept is what building an extended enterprise network ought to be all about, says Brandon Lackey, portal program manager at energy industry giant Halliburton. In other words, involve customers and suppliers in a business ecosystem that provides such high value, so simply, few would leave it.

"We want our customers to be so enamored with our simple processes, ease of use [and value provided through the portal] that they would never switch from Halliburton based on marginal price differences," Lackey says.

That's the vision Lackey followed as he oversaw the initial development of the myHalliburton.com customer portal, and that guides him as he conjures up new ideas for how to extend the portal's usefulness. Halliburton has now invested approximately $5.3 million in myHalliburton.com and has earmarked $2.4 million annually for ongoing development of the portal, already rich with interactive tools, collaborative applications and e-commerce capabilities that draw on the company's back-end ERP system.

MyHalliburton.com, commercially launched in January 2002, has become the destination of oil company technical specialists and procurement and accounts payable managers when they need something - virtually anything - from Halliburton. It also has become an open door for employees and suppliers, as Halliburton quickly turned myHalliburton.com from a dedicated customer portal to an extended business ecosystem serving all three contingents. Collaboration among the groups is a focus.

The portal, powered by Plumtree Software's Corporate Portal 4.5 software, serves about 4,100 customers, 1,700 suppliers and 10,000 employees, says Shawn LeBlanc, the company's director of emerging applications. As of late 2002, daily hits reached about 92,000, says Jim Schmitzer, development manager in emerging applications.

A point of differentiation between myHalliburton.com and many other portals is how tightly it integrates with a back-end ERP system - in this case, SAP's R/3. Plumtree Gadget Web Services, special Web services components, pull data from the SAP application to give portal users the ability to check account status, submit invoices and conduct other business transactions.

Lackey says he feels myHalliburton.com is one of the bigger payoffs from a previous, five-year ERP deployment. "You really begin to understand the benefits of putting in an integrated SAP system when you start presenting information to customers, employees and suppliers through a portal like this. It becomes evident why you went through all the pain," he says.

"The portal is the key to the delivery for all of our new IT initiatives," adds Art Huffman, company CIO. "We have spent the last several years implementing ERP and data-capturing systems. We will spend the next several providing visibility into that information, analyzing, interpreting, reporting, and measuring it to drive our business.  The portal will provide that customized and personalized platform for our employees, managers, customers and suppliers to interact with each other in a common environment, hiding our complex IT functions in the background."