Even when IT executives got the wiring right, the set of features offered was often wrong. Not surprisingly, workers greeted company intranets with monumental apathy, quickly learning that the new portals didn't take them anywhere particularly helpful. "Companies thought they could determine what the users needed, and could push out that information," says Jim Murphy, research director at Boston-based AMR Research. "Guess what? That's not doable."
To avoid the "empty portal" phenomenon that tarnished earlier experiments, some companies now study how employees use their computers, or deploy elaborate monitoring software to glean information on portal traffic. They then apply that information when updating the features brought onto the screen. More important, the latest crop of portal products gives employees more leeway to post content on their sites. "We give each [line of business] the freedom to publish their own content," notes Rajpal. "We don't want to centralize publishing."
Still, persuading users of the virtues of portals often takes time. David Vanslette, vice president of portal services at New York financial-services behemoth JPMorgan Chase & Co., claims his team had to work hard at first to sell management on the merits of an intracompany portal. "They weren't going to go for it if [our rationale was] 'this will save 15 minutes of time,' " he recalls. But since the April 2003 start of the portal project — one that has helped the bank consolidate scores of internal Websites and reduce content duplication — Vanslette says the company's executives are looking for new ways to leverage the technology. "We have more demand than we know what to do with," he adds.
The Simple Life
That's not surprising. When done right, portals make life a whole lot simpler for employees — particularly those who process tons of documents.
Kansas City, Missouri-based Lockton Benefit Group has signed on to become part of an insurance-industry portal called BenefitPoint Aptus, connecting brokers and consultants to about 400 insurers. Lockton employees use the browser-based platform to transmit a request for proposal electronically to a carrier, getting an electronic response from the carrier as well. The portal provides Lockton employees with instant access to a huge repository of historical details, as well as real-time information on pricing and policy terms. In the old days — that is, preportal — tracking down such information took up considerable time. Raves Lockton president Mike Brewer: "If we get just a 15 percent increase in productivity, it will be worth it."
Other portal users see even bigger gains. San Francisco based Wells Fargo & Co., which maintains both a customer and an employee portal platform, will soon roll out internal portal-based credit underwriting. By allowing employees to access a portal, Wells Fargo will push manual processes online and turn credit documents into electronic data files, and the bank's managers expect to shorten the turnaround time on loan requests substantially — perhaps even cutting it in half, according to Danny Peltz, executive vice president (wholesale intranet and treasury solutions). By last year, the company's four-year-old customer portal, dubbed CEO (for commercial electronic office), had grown to 110,000 users at 23,000 companies, accounting for $6 trillion in payments for about two-thirds of the big bank's commercial customers.
Still, how those numbers translate into portal return-on-investment is hard, if not impossible, to calculate (see "Payback Is a Hitch," at the end of this article). And despite vendor promises to the contrary, portal deployments can drag on. "In the marketplace, you hear it can be done in three months," says JPMorgan's Vanslette. "Well, it's definitely not a three-month project. It's a nine-month-plus project."
APP Happy
Of course, software-vendor hyperbole is nothing new. In fact, customer disappointment over earlier claims from portal vendors has contributed to a sizable shakeout in the industry. The numbers paint the picture. Three years ago, there were anywhere from 60 to 100 providers in what Gartner terms the horizontal portal market. Today that total is down to 22. "There's been a bit of a backlash," notes Gootzit. "Some early providers didn't have the best vision or products. And business users thought [portal products] would be easier to install."
Even with greater interoperability, integrating far-flung applications and data onto a single desktop still requires hard work, especially if the apps are from different vendors. Experts point out, however, that portals reduce the number of IDs necessary to access a hodgepodge of programs. And that's a significant benefit, particularly when businesses look to offer a range of online services to customers.
Wells Fargo's CEO portal, which has been revised 17 times since its launch, provides credit services, treasury management, and letters of credit, among other things, to wholesale banking customers. Those products, often run off different systems within the wholesale bank, are tied together by a single log-in for each customer — helping the portal establish its popularity. Says Peltz: "Just having a single sign-on creates a huge amount of value."
Reader Comments» Post a comment