InformationWeek

A wide range of large companies and organizations are rolling out portals that are expected to cut costs, free up time for busy executives and managers, and add to the bottom line. That has prompted some to describe company portals as the next "killer application."

"The whole portal idea is a timely piece of technology," says James Dybalski, chief technology officer and senior VP for Loan City.com Inc., a mortgage broker in San Jose, Calif.

Last year, corporate portal deployments were limited to between 1,000 and 20,000 users, according to Gartner Group analyst Gene Phifer. This year, large companies are designing and developing portals for audiences of as many as 200,000 business users, he says.

"Last year, there was a lot of questioning and a whole lot of tire-kicking in the portal space," Phifer says. "People thought there was applicability, but with Y2K looming, it got in the way of deploying portals. Once the Y2K issue faded away, people turned their attention to corporate portals and how they can make money for their businesses. This is the year of deployment."

In simple terms, a company portal is an internal World Wide Web. The portal's home page, or start page, is displayed in a Web browser and generally includes search engines, as well as essential tools such as an appointment calendar and E-mail interface. Portal products are software suites that contain scores of applications that perform a variety of functions. Portal software vendors also offer special utilities--Plumtree Software calls them "gadgets"--that let users add other features such as stock tickers, clocks, and hotel, restaurant, and weather information. More sophisticated portals provide strategic, company-specific data.

Corporate information and technology managers say the portals they're rolling out this year are already contributing millions of dollars to the bottom line. Others say their return on investment will be measured in minutes and hours of employee time that is better and more profitably used. For example:

• DuPont & Co. estimates it will save up to $66 million from the first phase of its portal, based on the XML Portal Server from Sequoia Software Corp., which was rolled out last month to its sales and marketing business unit. Jim Wessely, portal architect and project leader for the Wilmington, Del., company, says many of the 550 sales and marketing personnel who use the portal every day have already made it their standard desktop. "Almost everything they need is on the portal," Wessely says.
• Hewitt Associates in Lincolnshire, Ill., a human-resources outsourcing company, is saving $8 million annually and providing 75% faster responses to client requests for benefits information after implementing the IBM Enterprise Information Portal, says Helen Tipton, Hewitt's ContentConnect product manager. The portal serves as the primary desktop for about 500 employees, and the company is studying ways to make it useful to as many as 11,000 employees worldwide, says Heidi Self, a Hewitt IT manager.
• General Electric Appliances in Louisville, Ky., expects 6,000 executives and managers to use portals specific to their business functions, according to Chad Fowler and Bill Nall, senior systems professionals who share responsibility for the portal design and implementation. "If we're able to save each individual 10 minutes a day, what's that worth? We think it's worth a lot," Fowler says.
• Staples Inc., the $9 billion office-supply, furniture, and technology chain in Framingham, Mass., is phasing in a portal for as many as 10,000 of its 46,000 employees worldwide. "For us, the portal is about slashing the cost and hassle of running the office," says Tom Tracey, IS manager, intranet, and chief IS officer for the company's enterprise information portal.
• South Central Community Health System in York, Pa., plans to roll out in July a portal that's expected to save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, safeguard patient health, and serve as a complete desktop that contains everything needed by its two hospitals and hundreds of primary-care and specialist physicians, pharmacists, and other caregivers and administrators, says William "Buddy" Gillespie, the health system's CIO and VP.

In general, there are two types of portals. The most common is a workplace community portal, which mainly displays information that's interesting or important to employees, such as notices of employee gatherings or information about job postings and benefits packages.

But the new generation of portals has a more serious purpose. These portals display information from virtually all of the company's most important databases: financials, sales and marketing, inventory, supply-and-demand tracking, human resources, procurement, and research and development. Data can originate in enterprise resource planning applications, as well as in databases, spreadsheets, word-processing documents, or presentations. Data can be integrated from applications residing on a wide range of hardware, including the newest Unix servers, AS/400 systems, and mainframes.

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