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Table of Contents

• What is Portal Software?
• The benefits of Portal Software
• Typical features of Portal Software
• The cost of Portal Software
• Considerations when purchasing Portal Software
• Relevant Portal Software trends

What is Portal Software?

Portal Software allows business owners to create a digital gateway through which their employees, customers, and business partners can access enterprise software systems. The intranet-based platform can be customized to consolidate functions such as customer relationship management (CRM) tools, company information, and workgroups.

The benefits of Portal Software

• Creates a centralized repository of employee information: The portal software allows you to create a consolidated platform for employee documents, forms, benefits, contact details, and frequently asked questions (FAQs). It provides a channel to update rewards, recognitions, work anniversaries, and other similar events.
• Provides secure data transfer to end-user: The portal allows you to exchange sensitive information such as financial data with clients and partners without the need for USB drives or external file storage facilities. Data security can be ensured via a secure login and secure sockets layer (SSL) data encryption. Additional processes may include token authentication, single sign-on (SSO) or lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), group security settings, and SOC 2 compliant hosting.
• Enables self-service: Employees, customers, and clients can directly use the advanced search feature of the intranet platform to retrieve the information. It is a simple, convenient, and effective approach to free up customer service personnel from responding to queries and requests for information that translates into reduced staff costs and decreased overheads.

Typical features of portal software

• Content management: Create, update, monitor accuracy, and ensure brand consistency for all written materials that are distributed to stakeholders.
• Search: Search available resources to locate the required information.
• Access controls or permissions: Define levels of authorization for access to specific files or folders.
• Calendar management: Create, manage, and share multiple calendars.
• Collaboration: Online forums or groups where users can ask questions, share ideas, best practices, etc.
• Document management: Collect, upload, store, and share all documents in a centralized location making it easier for everyone involved to access information.
• File sharing: Digitally share a wide variety of media types.
• Unified directory: Store, modify, and track user accounts and access in a centralized directory.

The cost of Portal Software

Most products in the market are priced on a “per user, per month” basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on their starting price.

Price ranges*:

• $3 - $5
• $5 - $19
• $19+

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offering that was found on vendor websites on November 1, 2019. These ranges correspond to 25th, 75th, and 100th percentile of the pricing information gathered from the vendor websites of sample products.

The above list summarizes pricing for the base plans of most products. An enterprise or premium product, which is priced higher, may include additional features such as anonymous or guest intranet access, custom branded URL, and external collaboration with contractors, interns, or clients.

Considerations when purchasing Portal Software

• Flexibility to control content access permission: Your portal software should provide role-based access for employees to reduce the risk of exposing sensitive content and avoid overloading them with information that is not relevant to them.
• Availability of social tools: Portal software should allow you to incorporate two-way business communication tools such as discussion, idea forums, calendars, voting, and polls that help in drawing on staff innovations and receiving feedback. Additionally, these tools also help you in collecting content from various departments and curate them for personalized user experience.
• Compatibility with portable devices: Enhanced mobile integration in intranets ensure that remote team members of different organizations will find it easier to work from anywhere they want. Intranets need to be user-friendly for every device, situation, and location. A mobile-friendly intranet interface and features will mean touchscreen optimization and responsive software for mobile devices.

Relevant Portal Software trends

• Chatbot user interface driven by artificial intelligence (AI): The idea behind using chatbots is to provide hassle-free access to information and quick suggestions without having to search for it on the intranet page. Chatbots are trained to use keywords to find answers to user questions by searching the entire knowledge base, intranet, CRM, and ERP software. They help increase employee engagement in terms of utilizing the intranet more often and subsequently boosting adoption rates.