TABLE OF CONTENTS A corporate portal is a Web-based, fully automated emulation of a highly proficient, well-motivated call-center operation. A corporate portal is an elegant and efficient way to conduct most, if not all, business interactions hitherto transacted using telephones or faxes. Hence the association with call centers. An alternative name for corporate portals, during the early days, circa 1998, was "Internet call centers." Another often-used name is "self-service portals." Both of these alternative names clearly convey what a corporate portal is supposed to be.
Corporate portals ensure that anybody who has any interest in a corporation, whether it be customers, partners, suppliers, prospects, investors, employees, retirees, or well-wishers, always has immediate and ready access, 24/7, to all necessary information and services. XML and Web services will further extend the scope of corporate portals to include automated interactions with applications running on external computers, thus facilitating pervasive and productive e-business. Obviously, all of these interactions, whether involving humans or software, are always transacted over the Web (or a Web technology-based private network). Today's portal technology is also invariably client-type agnostic. Thus, ready access from mobile wireless devices such as Palm Pilots or even smart cell phones is not usually an issue and represents a fast-growing trend in portal usage. By 2005, voice-based interactions via digitized voice messages across the Web will not be uncommon.
Corporate portals eliminate "non-value-added" administrative intermediaries from the business transaction loop. With a corporate portal one does not have to deal by phone with...
