Portals have gained acceptance in the enterprise due to their capability to streamline and organize diverse applications through a single channel. The productivity gains experienced by an employee, customer, or a partner clearly provide immense functional value to an enterprise, due to features such as easy access to a wide array of enterprise resources, consolidated search capability and content management. Similarly, enhanced user experience through customized content, persistent preferences, and single/seamless sign-on access result in satisfied users.
Due to the need to consolidate applications and content across the enterprise, portals provide subsidiary benefits of aligning business units in terms of the applications they create and the content they generate, with a single customer/user view.
Some of the benefits of having portals are listed here:
Real-time management of consistent and trusted content along with timely publication, using a well controlled workflow.
Efficient business processes with effective synergies.
A single channel view of enterprise data and content through aggregated search capabilities.
Enhanced communications between users and the enterprise through timely and relevant publication of information and use of a collaboration toolset. Employees, partners, and customers can now depend on a single channel to get a view of the enterprise and its functions, instead of having to refer to multiple outlets.
Significant user retention and continued use of the channel due to strong personalization and usability features.
Lower the total cost of ownership, by using open source software and increase the return on investments through improved visibility, productivity, and process efficiency.