The company portal is the brain of the information network of every company. If it is built and managed well, it allows each member of the company to find relevant information in short time. The company portal is not only a passive information source, but it can be an active information broker: it can automatically notify individuals or groups, when a document, relevant for them is created or changed. The company portal supports workgroups, helps users share knowledge, and ensures collection of individual knowledge for the purpose of making it company knowledge.
To ensure the success of a company portal - Internet or intranet site - Arcanum Development starts work with an environment study to discover the customer's existing information infrastructure, document-related processes, document flows, security considerations, available document formats, information content of documents, information retrieval requirements. Consultation continues with rationalization of document flows, corresponding to the workflow and information flow. Based on the consultation we design the necessary functionality of the portal maximizing its usability and information-richness. Besides the document-like components, applications may be also added to the portal; the simplest one is site search. Existing applications are integrated.
When the expected functionality is agreed, the next step is the selection of the portal software, providing the infrastructural background of the portal. We also pay attention to ensuring that the graphic design is in line with the functional requirements of the portal and the possibilities of the portal software. Department- or even employee-specific personal pages can be designed upon request.
Besides creating the 'skeleton' of the portal, data migration is the other key issue of portal building. As detailed above, our company is ready to migrate the existing document base of our client into the company portal. We provide training and continuous consultation to users after the company portal is built and introduced.