Web Portals: An Evolving Gateway to User Value

Web Portals: An Evolving Gateway to User Value

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The evolution of the internet has brought with it the development of a simple concept with virtually limitless possibilities. Today, portal technology is rapidly streamlining business processes, providing greater access to information and creating value for key stakeholders.

Portals have been around since web browsers were brought mainstream in the mid-1990’s, but only recently have they begun to be used to their full potential. Adoption rates across industries vary dramatically but the push for portal technology in construction and service is gaining momentum.
To learn more about what a portal is, the functionalities of existing portals in deployment today and how portals can create value for your organization, please click here.

What is a portal?

From the latin word “porta” which translates to “gate”, a portal, strictly speaking, is any object which serves as an entrance or a means of access. A more modern and practical application, however, is that of a web portal. Web portal functionalities have evolved along with the growing capabilities of web sites. Some of the first web portals, such as Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, offered content aggregation and search capabilities. More recently, however, portals have been expanded to provide organizational and sorting options to support database functionality. Increasingly, the use of unique logins has enabled personalized portals to meet the needs of specific users or groups of users. In addition, portals are now being used as collaborative platforms to allow many users to create or edit documents on a single interface. Further still, web-service functionalities are enabling users to directly impact their business processes through the use of integrated portal software.

Who does it service?

Given the flexible and dynamic nature of portal technology, web portals today are applicable for service to a wide variety of user groups. Potentially, any and all key stakeholders stand to benefit from web portal technology, including but not limited to:

• Employees
• Customers
• Management
• Suppliers
• Partners

Among these groups, employees in particular are benefiting from portal technology through a variety of applications. In a recent survey of 800 U.S. executives, one third of companies already have employee-facing portal deployments. Deployments range from company-wide to department-specific and even individual-level applications. Employees are using company-wide intranets to view announcements, press releases, bulletin boards, and access job postings and personalized pages. Between departments, employee portals are used for project collaboration to share documents, resources, schedules, threaded discussions, and performance indicators. Within departments, tailored portals are serving sales, customer service, finance and supply chain functions through shared business metric, online resources and other collaborative platforms. Individual employees too have stood to benefit from self-service functions, such as accessing online training resources, accessing benefits information, HR policies and procedures and FAQ’s.

Customers, too, are finding increased value in web portals. A 2001 survey of firms with web portal projects indicated that the overwhelming majority of their web portals were targeted to employees. At that time, less than 10% of web portal projects included customers as an audience. Only three years later, however, a whopping 29% of those surveyed had deployed customer-facing portal functionality. In current applications, customer portals are leveraging the same kinds of features as employees (content aggregation, personalization, and collaboration) but are also leading the way as business process enablers. Financial service leaders such as SunTrust and Wells Fargo have provided compelling portal experiences to their corporate and residential customers through a variety of online banking and investment offerings. Even the City of Calgary has employed a municipal extranet for its citizens and experienced resounding success – more than 2 million unique visitors per year .

How do portals create value?

Value creation from web portals can be as dynamic as the portals themselves. Each deployment will have its own business-specific usages, audiences, and resulting benefits. Nevertheless, across a variety of functionalities, realizable benefits from portals will likely fall into one or more of the following categories.

Increased access to revenue streams. Highly-demanded online functionalities can act as effective sales tools for new customer acquisition. As more technologically-advanced clients begin to demand online functionalities, suppliers that offer such capabilities will gain access to new and larger customer segments and will retain important legacy accounts.

Decreased costs through operational efficiencies. Web portals download tasks and information onto users, giving them increased control and greater satisfaction. As such, organizations such as commercial banks have adopted click-and-mortar business models, saving thousands in foregone capital and labour overhead. In addition, online access to customer databases have eliminated double-entry of data and transitioned many business processes into the era of paperless transactions.

Better decision-making. By providing valuable information to the right users in a timelier fashion, web portals are enabling management to make better business.

User satisfaction. In the end, portals are the gateway to a user-centric information environment. Ensuring user satisfaction, be they customers, suppliers or internal stakeholders, is the key to portal success and the force that will drive business value.

How are enterprise portals being used?

As portal technology has progressed, enterprises have found increasingly useful ways to leverage web portal functionality. Earlier web portals have focused on content aggregation, while more recently web portals have begun to serve as business process enablers and onwards to offer full web-services. A recent survey of 81 IT professionals at large North American firms shows that web portals are becoming increasingly used for high value-add functionalities:

Given the proven benefits to increased productivity, decreased costs and user satisfaction, it is little wonder that portal adoption rates have been growing in double digits for the past three years. With a strong foundation of existing users and a plethora of untapped technological capabilities, it seems as if portals will continue to evolve into more meaningful and applicable tools for years to come.