Week 4 Project

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Enterprise Portals—Part 1

An enterprise portal is a Web interface that provides a single entry point for all accessing organizational services and information so that all information appears to be coming from one source.

Let us consider an example. When Plumtree introduced the �rst portal product in 1998, the portal provided users with one place to access all the content and services they needed to do their work. Over the next few years, Plumtree expanded its suite of products or applications to integrate collaboration, content management, and search to meet business problems. Such business applications increase sales productivity, streamline supplier collaboration, perform research and development, and improve call center management.

Over the last few years, Plumtree has implemented enterprise portal solutions in seven service-oriented application categories:

Collaborative workspace applications: Organize ad hoc or established project workgroups, cross-functional or departmental teams, and online workspaces. Across the enterprise individuals use these interactive workspaces to collaborate on projects, set schedules, assign tasks, share documents, and exchange ideas. Geographically dispersed project teams can interact with other resources integrated into the portal.

Customer service applications: Draw heavily on the portal’s search and categorization services to create a knowledgebase of support articles and industry research. Virtually all support applications also offer online collaboration and direct access to systems that track invoices, order status, inventory, and pricing.

Employee services applications: Integrate corporate communications, self-service transactions, policy documents, and key business processes in online resource centers. These applications give employees, retirees, and their spouses everything they need to be productive and motivated without costly paperwork and training. Beyond simple, Web-enabling human resources systems, employee services applications can index policy and procedure documents for easy access, integrate third-party services for bene�ts and pension plans, and allow employees to post ideas and questions to improve the workplace.