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What
is corporate portal ?
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The
development of corporate portal software creates
distinct purposes with the public or internet
portals. A public portal is aimed to get attention
from a large number of viewers, with the main
target to reach revenues from advertisers or
product's buyer. These are Yahoo, Google, Altavista,
Amazon.
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But
a corporate portal will help corporate information
or knowledge workers to make decisions and stay ahead
in front of competition. Corporate portal integrates
application and information from internal source (intranet,
documents, ERP, collaboration) or external source
(partners, customers, internet) into a single and
personalized view.
Portals
enable companies to create simple, task-based applications
for self-service users, such as customers seeking
delivery updates or factory supervisors adjusting
production schedules. Therefore, rather than providing
SAP, PeopleSoft, and Siebel Systems clients to every
user, a simple portal page can only incorporate the
combination of functionality a particular user needs
from each application to complete a transaction.
Corporate
portal solves basic problems to manage information
such as :
1.
Increasing number of knowledge workers
who collects, analyzes, makes decision, and distributes
information through out the company.
2.
Increasing volume of information, as
the company grows. Finding relevant and accurate information
becomes difficult, sometimes impossible, and often
requires searching multiple systems.
3.
Too many login to use applications or accessing
information, and to many guides to use each. Information
is accessed through different methods, such as web
browsers, email clients, or other desktop applications.
4.
Information is scattered throughout the
intranet in a multitude of sources and in all
kinds of formats. Moreover, information that published
on-line is often structured in a disorganized way.
5.
Lack of collaboration between employees,
companies, partners, or customers. It is ironic
for companies that have internet connection,
but employees use it in contra productive way.
6.
Personalization, since every employee
has different needs and different roles of using information
and applications.
7.
Interfacing to on-line databases of
critical corporate operational information, such as
enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship
management (CRM) application.
Benefit
Access
to information - as universal access point, portals
improve productivity on providing integrated access
to general corporate information, enterprise
applications, business intelligence and collaboration
tools.
Reduced
costs
- less time
to search information, less training and administration
with simple and consistent interface to learn.
Knowledge
sharing - improve
customer, partner, and supplier relationships as a
result of better information exchange, driving long-term
retention.
Less
paper
- paperless
office means easy to manage and faster information
flows. It reduces time needed to transform raw information
into knowledge that decreases management overhead
for information gathering and decision making.
Process
improvement
- linking
separated processes will lead company to seamless
business process, moreover if these
processes come from various applications.
Common
functionality
- employees
can work across departments and applications without
worrying about different conventions for things like
product names and production techniques.
Retain
valued employees and customers
- in times
of tight labor markets, portals can reduce employee
frustration with unnecessarily bureaucratic tasks
such as HR benefits selection and managing retirement
accounts.
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