Soft ROI is achieved largely through increased user productivity and satisfaction. Increased productivity is obtained by providing an efficient and personalized Web interface that enables users to find the content they require more efficiently. Portals also improve productivity via collaborative capabilities that improve user communication and task management. Many of the applications outlined under the heading more efficient use of staff can not only reduce headcount, but also improve employee, customer and trading partner productivity, and thus satisfaction.
Soft ROI is difficult to estimate and to measure. Many portal projects are based on soft ROI benefits and thus appear to have superficial business cases. Often these projects have strategic business objectives such as building a more customer-centric organization or creating a paperless business. These long-term goals are difficult to express in short-term financial benefits; therefore, the ROI associated with these projects is rarely measured. Metrics for measuring software ROI, however, must be developed to ensure that a portal's success can be quantified and also to justify the costs of incremental portal improvements.
Portal technology is now being integrated with other evolving information technologies (business analytics, content management and business process management, for example). This trend enables portals to not only provide the incremental cost savings identified here, but also to have a major positive impact on business revenues, costs and profits. For example, a company using a business intelligence system to monitor its customer orders may determine that customer product returns and customer order delays are excessive. This type of business problem inevitably leads to customer dissatisfaction and loss of orders. A portal could be deployed to provide a view of the complete supply chain from customers to suppliers. This would enable both internal business users and suppliers to monitor the supply chain to detect and correct bottlenecks and product quality problems. Hard ROI is obtained by increased revenue, and soft ROI is obtained by improved customer satisfaction. This ROI can be estimated during portal business case development, and the business intelligence system used via the portal can measure the business improvements (and thus ROI) obtained by optimizing the supply chain.
Portal technology is becoming a key component in all IT business solutions, and the portal interface is destined to become the business user's new desktop. Not only does a portal provide a single and secure Web interface to the business content users need to do their jobs, but it also connects other IT applications in the enterprise to form an integrated business solution. This solution can be used to run, monitor and optimize business operations with the objective of reducing costs and improving the business bottom line. The key to success, however, is to develop a portal project plan that identifies ROI metrics that can be used to validate the success of the portal project.
iSummation technologies offers Enterprise portal development services. For more information, please contact us.
