It can be difficult to remember, but in an era before the Internet, people would actually have to call an establishment to understand what product offerings they had and what was going on with orders. If you have a question about a particular service, you can't just send a quick email or take it to Twitter to get instant information. You literally had to pick up the phone, speak to a living, breathing human being and talk through whatever you were trying to accomplish.
In the past, company operations management was often done via a combination of paper, spreadsheets, phone calls, and sometimes even rudimentary methods of record tracking like Post-It notes. Thankfully, these days are long gone. Why are techniques like using spreadsheets to store data like a database still seen as acceptable just because they're part of "the way things have always been done?"
The answer is clear: they shouldn't be. And they don't have to be, thanks to the wide range of benefits that techniques like web portals offer.
Web portals now replace all these methods and more, all via an opportunity to consolidate information into an easily accessible website that can be accessed anytime, anywhere, and from any device on the planet with an active Internet connection.
All told, a web portal can improve your business in many different ways, all of which are certainly worth a closer look.
What is a Web Portal?
At its core, a web portal is any type of online website that consolidates information in a way that makes it easier to use than it otherwise would be. This is especially helpful for users who need to interact with that data and make better and more informed decisions based on the insights contained inside it.
The Different Types of Web Portals
All told, many different types of web portals can help improve your business. Just a few examples of these include, but are certainly not limited to, ones like:
- Client portals. This is a place where customers would go to not only find out important information about your products and services but also check on their availability, place orders, and even have them delivered. A client portal manages all communication between the client and the company, thus allowing you and your employees to constantly create better consumer experiences.
- Community portals are places where segments of your users go to get information about a group or association that they belong to. This is a perfect chance to understand schedules, get information about upcoming events, and research all sorts of different related activities. Community portals are notable because they often contain private areas where members can chat amongst themselves.
- Finance portals are places where customers can go to review information about their personal financial assets and relevant financial information. Examples include investments, bank accounts, and even loans.
- Government portals are websites designed for a particular branch of the government that let the population gain information about or generally interact with that agency. Top examples of this would be the website for the Department of Motor Vehicles or Healthcare.gov.
- Knowledge Base. This is a particular type of web portal that consolidates information about the use and productivity of a product or service. It can also be a perfect way to educate your users, ensuring that they understand your products and what they do. Knowledge Base portals often include videos, tutorials, and more.
- Patient portals. These are portals that patients and even healthcare providers can use to both access and share information about appointments, prescriptions, and someone's medical history. It's also a way to communicate in terms of outcomes and more.
- Product service portals. This is an example of a portal that allows clients to request service on their products, and to better understand the outcomes and statuses of those service requests.
- Student portals. This is undoubtedly familiar to anyone who has attended a modern university in the last decade. Through the web portal, students can gain information about their class schedules, the syllabus for a particular class, and more. They can also get assignments, upload their finished homework, and even communicate with professors.
- Vendor portals. These are online places where subcontractors or suppliers interact with a particular company to manage their services or products.
- Work management portal. Finally, these are great ways to manage your workforce's activities. This can include not only job management but also scheduling, invoicing, inventory, materials management, and more. Equipment management, employee time tracking, and project workflow would also be examples of a work management web portal's functionality.
Custom Web Portal Development
In a lot of situations, organizations need custom web portals to be designed specifically for their unique needs.
They do this because in the vast majority of all cases, commercial off-the-shelf products simply don't meet their requirements. Every company has a different way of doing business - indeed, this is a big part of how they're able to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Commercial software would cause them to marginalize their approach to that end, thus losing out on that competitive advantage that is so important.
Custom web portal development usually involves hiring a seasoned software development firm that specializes in this task. The firm will also have the skills necessary to capture business processes and translate them into software, all to empower automation and streamline productivity.
Cost Savings and Efficiency of Web Portals
All told, web portals bring with them a host of unique benefits—cost savings being chief among them. Web portals help a business reduce the number of people needed to manage information while streamlining the vast majority of all processes.
Keep in mind that the concept here involves allowing a business to grow in all of the ways that it needs, all without scaling its costs linearly. This does not mean firing people—far from it. Automation, in particular, isn't about replacing a human workforce at all. Instead, it's about supporting and empowering them.
Web portals allow team members to do far more at a faster pace - thus empowering a period of greater productivity across the board.
Because of this, the business's bottom line stays consistent, even though the top line grows far faster than it would have under other conditions.
Therefore, creating a web portal that standardizes business processes allows a company to scale faster—which may be the biggest benefit of all.
Technology Used to Develop a Web Portal
There are many different types of web technologies, but the preferred one for developing web portals is usually the Microsoft platform ASP.NET.
A related database technology – Microsoft SQL Server - is typically employed to store the data behind the portal.
This ASP.NET technology from Microsoft dates back to 2002 and is very mature and robust. It brings benefits like the complete flexibility to build anything the client desires, enabling better growth and scalability moving forward.
In the end, there are a host of unique types of web portals available depending on your needs. But regardless, companies that want to create a legitimate competitive advantage for themselves—all while improving their customer experience—should always consider developing a custom web portal for their organization.
Keep in mind that while there may be a lot of similar organizations that do what you do, nobody does it quite like how you do it. Therefore, a custom web portal is a way to capitalize on what makes you unique in a way that separates you from your direct competitors in the most efficient way possible.
There are many benefits to creating a portal. Still, they all serve the same basic goals: improving your business and enabling greater organizational efficiency in ways that will serve you well for years.
To learn more about our ASP.NET software development outsourcing capabilities, or if you’d like to discuss how to create a web portal with Keene Systems CEO Lance Keene, click here to book a call with him. You can also download our eBook - Why ASP.NET Development Services Fuels Business Growth - to learn more about this essential topic.
