Enterprise Portals? Construction

[JacobWardrop]

I am not too sure which area to place this in.

I have a presentation at a software company who design software for the construction supply chain called Workspace.

I have to present the Strategic importance of the enterprise portal to the construction supply chain.

I am not entirely sure what an enterprise portal is and the role it plays? I understand it includes database management and internet and extranet? I was wondering if anyone knew more about Enterprise portals?

 

[FireFleur]

A portal is just an entrance.

So, Google is a portal to other sites, by virtues of the search engine.

Yahoo is a portal to other sites by virtues of its directory.

I am not being fair to either one there, or perhaps I am just highlighting their main virtues.

A portal site is a place to visit to visit other sites, it wants your bookmark, and it wants to inform you about the other sites you could go to.

In a book the Index is a portal, so are the chapter listings.

 

[Bruce_Andrews]

In corporate terms, otherwise known as a knowledge base.

If it's properly designed, constructed and used, it makes for a very powerful tool - mind you, that applies to anything - doh!

The concept is that all corporate company information is stored centrally and accessible to all those that need it via a (normally) web based interface.
So (for example) drawings normally kept in the drawing office can be called up and printed out on site, so in theory, the latest version is always available.

Purchase orders, time sheets, health and safety reports, local authority permissions, etc. etc. are all available anywhere to anyone with the appropriate authority.
So planning should be more accurate - less wasted time - time is money - and hence important to the supply chain!

All of this assumes that the back office systems can make all this lovely info available in electronic format, and that all users can follow the rules - and this is where it normally all falls down.

It also helps if anyone is still building anything