Is It Time To Consider a Portal Environment?
By Adam Wilburn and John Bissa
Universal Advisor, 2005 Issue No. 2


Portals or information gateways, provide a secure, single point of interaction with diverse information, business processes, and people. Over the past few years, they’ve generated quite a bit of attention. Many organizations have migrated their intranets and extranets to portal platforms, convinced that consolidating their mission-critical web applications on portal software platforms will be beneficial over the long term. And why not? After all, they’re scalable, cost effective, modular, and can be personalized to a user’s needs and responsibilities. But these benefits alone aren’t reason enough to migrate to a portal environment.

It’s important to keep business considerations in mind. Staff training, content migration, the amount of time inherent in rolling out the portal software — these are genuine concerns. Moreover, it can be difficult to determine whether a portal implementation will yield significant business benefits.

Before embracing portal technology, ask yourself the following questions. If the answers are yes, chances are your organization could benefit from portal technology.

Do you have a substantial amount of information that’s hard to navigate and sort by relevance? Do some users or groups have needs that don’t apply to others?

If all staff members tend to access the same information every day, a portal may be unnecessary. A simple website could suffice. However, if various users need to access disparate information or a variety of web based applications, a portal is more likely to suit your requirements. The goal of a portal is to provide each user with the appropriate, relevant information; as such, it often includes a personalization component that targets specific information to specific users.

Does your organization thrive on information sharing and collaboration?

Some organizations are inherently better suited for a portal environment. It comes down to corporate culture. Organizations that need to collaborate across multiple locations are good candidates for a portal. Many portals include collaboration solutions or offer specific modules to provide online collaboration, which provide an easy-to-use solution for managing projects or providing an informal online meeting space.

Are there multiple stand-alone, single-function solutions within your organization?

Portals afford organizations the ability to integrate multiple systems into a single, easy-to-use solution. Data can be integrated, specific user interfaces can be embedded, and single sign-on mechanisms allow users to have one login to access multiple systems, which typically have different user names and/or passwords.

Will your users embrace the portal technology?

Assuring a successful portal implementation is a lot easier than assuring user adoption. What’s the best way to assure user adoption? Require it. However, to ensure a smooth transition, it’s important to provide reasons why users would want to use the portal.

Most organizations store information on shared network drives. Some organizations serve that need with portals. However, portal-based intranets and extranets can be more complex than simple websites. It’s important to define a structure and tailor functionality to simplify the user experience. Many systems now allow users to browse a portal as easily as any website. For more sophisticated users, however, advanced functionality is available.

Does your organization have specific business needs that a portal can fulfill?

Most experts agree that with portals, it’s not a question of if, but when. After all, portal technology can be very valuable. It offers considerable power and functionality, provides substantial business value, and the return on investment can be compelling. But there are many questions and issues to consider before choosing to move forward with a solution. Further complicating matters, there are a dizzying number of tools, technologies, and standards from which to choose.

In short, don’t implement a portal simply because it’s hailed as the latest and greatest technology; make sure it fulfills a specific business need, and take the time to determine which solution best meets your organization’s needs. For more information on whether a portal environment is right for you, please contact Adam Wilburn at 248.223.3555 or John Bissa at 248.223.3684.