Incremental Group has been delivering web portals for many years. The first portal we delivered was built for an Event Management company, with global blue chip customers, to manage high volumes of delegate registration for events. The business case was based on their internal Event Managers productivity.
Since then, portals have become a regular feature in our Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Dynamics 365 projects, and this is very much reflected in Microsoft’s acquisition of Adxstudio in 2015, a leading portal solution that integrated with Dynamics.
What sort of things can a portal be used for?
Portals can be used for a range of different functions, we have helped customers deliver portals for the following:
- Event management – book and pay online
- Partner, supplier and franchisee relationships – look at mutual business sales and cases online
- Membership management – online applications, renewals and use of benefits
- HR management – employee services online
- IT or product support – online case raising or warrant management
- Case Management – raise complaints or cases with customer service teams.
What is the business rationale behind the investment?
Here are 8 reasons to invest in a portal:
- Enhanced Productivity – at the end of the day, providing a self-service portal means internal staff aren’t required to service at least some or all customer requests and transactions. In a high volume, repeatable transaction based organisation, the productivity saving can be huge.
- Customer Satisfaction – most if not all of the people reading this will use a portal in some part of their work or personal lives. A portal will actually increase your customer’s satisfaction with the service you provide. It is also easy to use a portal as the platform to collect your customer satisfaction levels and feedback.
- Better Customer Data – every time the customer uses your portal, it’s an opportunity for you to increase your knowledge about them, which in turn allows you to be specific in serving their interests and preferences, thereby raising overall customer satisfaction levels.
- Document Provision and Reporting – a portal provides an opportunity to make documents available to the customer online, avoiding the costs of centralised production and distribution and improving customer accessibility. Similarly, customer specific reports and dashboards can be provided online for the customer’s convenience.
- Showcase Innovation – a portal is an opportunity to showcase capability and innovation, providing a key differentiator from the competition in a highly competitive world.
- Transaction Portability – a portal allows your customer to trade any time, any place, from any time zone, on any device.
- Regulatory Compliance – most organisations have a responsibility at some level to enforce and demonstrate compliance with general and/or industry legislation, for example data protection or health and safety training and qualifications. A portal platform is very effective in supporting the business processes which enforce compliance.
- Integration – you can integrate your portal into your CRM, case management or marketing solution, allowing you to capture data and route this through the correct business process.
Interested in creating a portal for your business? Get in touch today.