Why are companies implementing portals?

In these days of tight budgets, you must base costly technology projects, such as implementing a portal (typically costing more than US$250,000), on real business needs and a well-defined return on investment (ROI) case. So, why are companies implementing portals? I spoke with Tim Thatcher, IBM program manager for portals, to get IBM's perspective on the driving forces behind the portal decision.

The reasons companies implement portals depend on where the cost savings and productivity enhancements are the greatest for the company. Given that a portal is a tool for managing relationships between people, the main reason for its implementation is user need. "Fifty percent of the initial projects customers deploy are employee-facing portal solutions," explains Thatcher. By offering employees self-service access to information (e.g., human resources information such as 401(k) forms, benefits, etc.), employees become more productive and you save money on your call center staff.

"The other 50 percent seems to be split fairly evenly between business-to-business and business-to-customer portals. Most of the customers we deal with have a road map where they plan to support more than one constituent," says Thatcher. A need for improved employee efficiency and productivity may drive the initial implementation, but most companies also recognize the value of a portal infrastructure as a way to meet all their relationship management needs over time.

Why not build your own portal?

On a simplistic level, a portal is a bunch of windows that aggregate and personalize content and deliver it to a Web browser. You could argue that it might be just as easy to create your own portal by building a Web application and running it on WebSphere Application Server. Although that might be a feasible approach for a single business solution, the problem with the build-rather-than-buy approach becomes evident when you have to build multiple portals, support the information needs of different user communities, or deliver content to devices other than a Web browser.

When considering a portal strategy, you must choose a technology that can not only meet the tactical needs driving your company toward implementing a portal immediately, but also consider how you can leverage the investment to meet future needs at minimum cost and effort. The cost and effort level of taking a home-grown solution specific to a given business problem and generalizing it for multiple business solutions are likely to be much greater than purchasing an infrastructure component on which you can build multiple portal solutions. Looking at the price tag of WebSphere Portal (typically more than US$200,000 for a realistic production installation), the developer in me says, "Hey, I can build that for a lot less money." However, the architect and businessman in me recognizes there's no way I can build and maintain (let's not forget the maintenance costs) a generic portal infrastructure that meets all the anticipated and future needs of the company for that amount of money.

Critical success factors

In addition to a clearly defined business need and an ROI plan, there are several technology challenges you must face to deploy a portal successfully. The two main challenges are implementing a corporate-wide single sign-on technology and implementing a technology that lets content owners create, edit, and publish content to the portal without IT staff.

Understand the single sign-on challenge

Be sure your portal infrastructure has a directory and single sign-on strategy that encompasses all the information sources and systems the portal must aggregate. WebSphere Portal can store and serve different sign-on information (called credentials) to different systems.

Understand the content challenge

Keeping content up-to-date and pertinent increases the overall value of the portal. Key to keeping that content current is giving the content owners the tools and processes they need to create, edit, review, and publish the content to the portal without IT staff intervention. WebSphere Portal offers some basic content publishing capabilities, but you'll probably have to implement an enterprise content management product.

Evaluate your options

Relationship management is at the heart of portal technology. The value of a portal directly relates to the need for people to access the information they require. Whether you begin with an employee, partner, or customer portal, careful planning, defined business reasons, and an ROI case help you ensure a successful and valuable portal infrastructure.