InformationWeek

The portal contains E-mail, scheduling, sales and marketing information, headlines on the competition, new product information, internal news, job postings, biweekly newsletters, and a ticker that displays Staples' stock price. The portal is used for a variety of applications, such as procurement and expense reporting. In addition, the contracts division uses the portal to track customer contracts, the sales and marketing staff for contact management, and human resources for new employee orientation.

Some companies are virtually running their entire businesses from their portals. LoanCity.com has put as much of its loan-processing business on its internal portal as possible, and it's adding more every day. The portal has been deployed for less than six months, but it's been successful enough that the company is beginning to use it as a business-to-business portal by offering access to hundreds of other lending companies.

Dybalski says more than 100 LoanCity.com executives, managers, and loan specialists use the portal to track every loan, from the application process through credit checks and certifications, and to produce documents required for a closing. The portal integrates the company's PeopleSoft Inc. financials application, its SQL Server database applications, and its HR operation. The sales force uses the portal for contact management and order-tracking.

"We expect to get our money back in a year," says Dybalski, who declined to discuss the cost of the portal, which is based on InfoImage Inc.'s Freedom portal. "There is a lot of turnover in the mortgage industry; people hire and then shrink their staffs. We're making the portal as easy to use as possible for the next time we have to hire so we won't have to devote as much time to getting our new people up to speed."

Amway Corp. in Ada, Mich., last month implemented a portal that eventually could have as many as 6,000 users in the United States and 4,000 more worldwide, according to Craig Abbot, the architect and manager of the rollout. The portal, which cost less than $250,000 to build using an infrastructure of Lotus Notes and Domino 4.6, was designed with the idea that it would free up an hour a week per employee--time that had been spent searching for data.

"Right now, we've only rolled out the portal to 550 people," Abbot says. "But if you take an organization and give its employees 550 hours a week they don't have now, what could they do for you? It's big money."

The home-products vendor initially rolled out its portal to a group of scientists, engineers, and researchers. Operations, finance, sales, and HR also are eyeing the portal to see whether they can get the same benefits as the research-and-development unit.

"Our intranet was flooded with information on products managed by different groups and all stored separately," Abbot says. It often would take several days to find out who had the needed information, contact them, and get a response. "We don't want to eliminate people or cut positions to save money," he says. "We want to free up researchers and let them be creative."

South Central Community Health's Gillespie says his organization's portal, which is built on HealthVision's CareVision product, will provide a complete desktop to give physicians and other caregivers a single point of access to any information they need. Nurses, lab technicians, and others will use the portal to read physicians' orders, and to enter information about a patient's condition.

Once a patient's diagnosis has been made, physicians will be able to enter information about how the problem is being treated and any needed follow-up care by dictating information that will be transcribed by a speech-recognition system. Physicians also will be able to print their notes for the patient, he says.

The health system is also rolling out a patient portal tied to the medical portal that will let patients preregister for a hospital stay and resolve issues about insurance coverage in advance. "Capturing this information before the patient gets to the hospital is going to be an important time saver and money saver, not only for us, but for the patient," Gillespie says. "Capturing that information on the front end will also help us avoid collection problems, and that will benefit patients and the health system."

The patient portal will include certain information from the medical portal, Gillespie says. For example, patients will be able to use the portal to access information on their diagnosis and treatment plan. They'll also be able to use it to order prescription refills from the system's pharmacies.

For some companies, a portal has become the new desktop. And the appeal is clear: easier access to information and applications, reduced costs, and more free time. It remains to be seen whether great numbers of companies will take the same approach. Still, there's no doubt, as Forrester's Walker says, that "this is the year that corporate portals are rolling out in a big way."

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