Malanaphy Consulting, LLC

By Brian Malanaphy

An Enterprise Portal – it sounds like Star Trek meets David Copperfield. But, what is it and how can it help to transport your company to new levels of competitiveness and profitability?

An enterprise portal is a secure website, used within an organization, that offers a broad array of resources and services and has a consistent and intuitive user interface. It can be used within your organization, whether you're the CEO, a manager, or an administrative assistant, to be more productive and to work smarter.

By implementing an enterprise portal your company can be more competitive, increase sales, reduce costs, and increase profitability. For non-profit, charitable, or government organizations, the benefits include improving employee productivity, improving efficiency, and providing better services to beneficiaries and stakeholders.

An enterprise portal aggregates data from various systems within an organization and funnels that data to the end user. Instead of using multiple applications on your computer to search for and access information, an enterprise portal allows you to simply login to the site and access the information and tools you need to do your job. An employee would have the ability to login and access financial and sales reports, documents, external and internal news, human resources materials, payroll materials, policies and procedures, customer account information, research and development materials, business and strategic plans, project management materials, discussion forums, or collaborative e rooms.

Functional aspects of an enterprise portal include knowledge management, content management, document management, version control, workflow, collaboration, dynamic reporting, personalization, search, traffic reporting, and security.

•  Knowledge Management - the methods, procedures and tools an organization uses to capture, store, categorize, retrieve, and reuse the proprietary know-how that the organization owns.
•  Content Management - the ability of the end-users of the system, with the proper security access, to add information to the site. An HR Manager, for example, would be able to post a new expense reimbursement policy on the site.
•  Document Management - the ability of the site to organize and index documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, Visio), maintain version control, and allow check-in and checkout capabilities.
•  Version Control - the ability of the site to maintain previous copies of content and to track their versions.
•  Workflow - the ability to define and modify the routing of documents between individuals in an organization. Approval levels and alerts are part of workflow.
•  Collaboration - allows the users to share documents in an interactive web session.
•  Dynamic Reporting - allows the user to define and configure the presentation of reports within their web-browser and also to print them.
•  Personalization - the ability of the site to present different content and options to different users or user groups. The receptionist would have a different view of the site than the sales manager's view or the HR manager's view.
•  Search - the ability to search the contents of the site (within the parameters of the security).
•  Traffic Reporting - the ability to report on the traffic patterns of the site, and to report on the activities of specific users on the site.
•  Security - controls the access users have to the information on the site.

A few years ago it was not uncommon for a company to build an enterprise portal from scratch, because the software for enterprise portals was either immature or did not exist. Today, however, given the availability and functionality of enterprise portal software, it wouldn't make sense to build one.

The benefits of an enterprise portal include:

•  Improved productivity - management and employees can spend more time on value-added activities instead of spending time processing transactions, tracking down information, or assembling information.
•  Improved ability to find information - employees can quickly find what they are looking for via the site's search capabilities.
•  Anywhere, anytime access - employees can access the site from work, home, or while traveling on business.
•  Standardized reporting - instead of employees manually compiling reports from two or three sources, which is prone to error and sometimes prone to tweaking, reporting is standardized across the organization.

As you can imagine, depending on the extent of functions and features required, implementing an enterprise portal can be a complex undertaking. For medium and large, geographically dispersed organizations the ROI of an enterprise portal is clear. For smaller organizations the cost to purchase, implement and maintain an enterprise portal is prohibitive.

As the technology evolves and more business applications are web-enabled, having an enterprise portal will be as common as having a computer or telephone.