Why Portal Intranet Workflow Is Widely Used in Today's Business Systems

Web portals, both public and private, the latter often referred to as corporate or intranet portals, are now so sophisticated that workflow management is considered a must-have feature used to organize, manage, and track portal intranet workflow. In fact, public web portals also rely on intranet workflows for organizing the entire operation of a portal, with those actions not visible to website visitors.

In brief, portal intranet workflow should be organized and managed in a fashion allowing certain outcomes to be produced, depending on predefined tasks to be performed. Thus, portal intranet workflow is basically about managing different tasks and the underlying processes that take place within an organization. One should bear in mind that a software system is also a type of organization from software developer's point of view.

Thus, intranet workflow, namely those tasks and processes that are performed within an organization, and whose only visible to outsiders part is their respective outcome, deals with tasks and their statuses. Hence, when the status of a task or a process that comprises multiple tasks changes, the respective task or process is assigned to another individual or group of individuals whose responsibility is to process in further until a certain goal, or status, is achieved.

Web portals and websites rely on workflow management to automate various processes and tasks usually performed in relation to content management and other processes which require high-automation level. For example, a document that is in draft status would be automatically assigned to an editor for further polishing and then scheduled for publication, according to preset rules. On the other hand, all those procedures are inter-dependent, therefore a document would be checked for revision by an editor prior to publication i.e. a document that is not edited cannot be published. Such basic functionality of content management systems is widely used in today's online environment, where automation plays an important role in the overall optimization of processes and procedures used in day-to-day activities.

In addition, portal intranet workflow requires a certain level of interoperability between different software applications because modern-day business systems usually interact with external devices and third-party software, often in real-time. Therefore, reliable portal intranet workflow depends not only on software compatibility and interoperability but also on system's overall ability to communicate with different hardware platforms and devices of various types. For example, the workflow scheme of a web portal may require email messages to be sent to users, or other means of communication to be used, subsequently those messages should be readable by any hardware device that may be used to receive notifications.

In addition, workflow management process applied in public and intranet (corporate) portals should allow for creation of a set of rules, defining steps to be completed within all and every process before it produces the desired outcome. Thus, an administrator can also define user roles and user permissions that provide the framework for completing a task without omitting a step in the process.

In the context of a complex system, portal intranet workflow management is as important as the processes and tasks it is intended to manage. Software vendors, realizing the huge potential of workflow management and under constant pressure by demanding users, now incorporate software tools for workflow management even in free web content management systems. Evidently, licensed software applications feature more powerful tools for managing portal intranet workflow, while the number of affordable solutions in this field has been growing rapidly in the past few years. Thus, reliable and affordable tools for managing portal intranet workflow are now available to both individual and business customers all over the world.

Mobile Challenges that Web Portal Development Is Facing

The general concept of how a web portal should look like and what it would incorporate evolved markedly within lees than a couple of decades, with web portal development now including approaches previously considered integral part of application development only. Those involved in development of web portals have also deal with a very different concept of how things work in an online environment and how software applications and hardware devices interact, thus re-shaping the entire concept of web portal development.

A good number of popular public web portals have disappeared in the course of only a decade, while new players have set foot in the market, introducing new approaches and vision that seem to work, for now. At stake is a huge market niche worth billions of dollars in annual revenues, generated mainly through ads and commissions on mercantile deals. Thus, web portal development is more about design and implementation of successful business ideas rather than simple aggregation of content from numerous diverse sources. Obviously, content aggregation will never lose its primary role in the context of web portals; nevertheless, entrepreneurs and software developers alike are increasingly looking for lightening business ideas rather than methods to implement the idea in practice.

On the other hand, web portal development has never been so a challenging task in the light of new technologies emerging on a daily basis, as well as a booming market for mobile devices. In the space of a few years, web portal developers have been forced to enter into the uncharted waters of software solutions running on a wide range of mobile devices, all of them capable of connecting to the Internet. Thus, the market for web portals suddenly expanded to cover billions of mobile users, with increasing number of these users browsing the Internet mainly on their mobile devices that may include smartphones, tablets, netbooks or any mobile devices that is Internet-enabled.

Consequently, web portal developers and web portal owners re-focused their efforts to enhance a wide variety of services provided by web portals to run smoothly on mobile devices, which in turn operate on different operating systems and use different web browsers. Reliability is a key success factor in the online world, and since web portals are intended to provide services to large audiences, web portal development must cope with the challenges of maintaining the faultless operation of web portals that deal with vast volumes of data on mobile devices and in real-time environment.

For example, a good number of web portals include tender modules, where individuals and corporations can post offers and strike deals. Design and implementation of underlying algorithms for such a software module can be a challenge itself, but the real challenge lies with the implementation of such a module to support various operating systems running on different hardware, including mobile gadgets, while interacting with all other modules that make a reliable web portal.

Other mobile factors that influence web portal development are related to the general design of a web portal that is intended to be accessed through a mobile device. Display resolution and display size, availability of touch screen functionality, colors scheme, and available memory all are essential factors that a web portal developer should have in mind in the process of developing reliable software to run on mobile devices. Evidently, design and functionality are inter-dependent, but in the context of mobile devices design and interface issues can cast shadow over an otherwise full-functional software application.

It is still unclear in what direction mobile device evolution will head, but it is quite evident that hundreds of millions of people around the globe now use mobile hardware to access online services, including various web portals. As far as the general concept of web portals is well-defined, or at least is defined to a reasonable extent, web portal development is destined to focus on mobile devices in the foreseeable future.

Optimize Organization’s Performance through Automation of Portal Intranet Workflow

Intranet portals are widespread systems to manage various business applications and data used in day-to-day activities of a corporation, specifically designed to improve the overall performance of an enterprise through the means of different tools like portal intranet workflow. Workflows and intranet workflows in a corporate context consist of a number of steps aimed at improving the technical aspects of task performance, in addition to better organizing the overall process of job communication, collaboration, and completion of tasks. Thus, the corporate portal intranet workflow is an invaluable tool to automate various processes and procedures, while tracking the progress of a particular task, a project, or a set of projects.

Evidently, intranet workflow is where planned and actual performances of tasks meet, and where automated procedures can be applied in order to better the outcome of a particular task. Hence, an intranet portal serves as a primary hub for not only exchange of information and collaboration, but also as a tool to improve corporations’ efficiency, providing room for application of numerous automated procedures in the field of corporate reporting, scheduling, and many others.

Communication and interactions between both business software applications and users within an intranet portal is performed in a more secure way compared to open systems that allow third-party users to access the system. An intranet portal usually also provides access control functionality and user or group based security that prevents or allows access to particular intranet resources and data. Furthermore, a user or a group might be prevented from accessing outside networks, as well as to get automatic denial when attempting to get remote access to the system, while enabling system administrators to create strong hierarchical user trees.

Another dimension of intranet portals is their ability to utilize templates that automate particular tasks or even trigger actions depending on the state of a task or a project. For example, a template can be used to distribute mass-messages to groups or individual users when a certain event, like scheduled appointment, occurs. Other tools to manage workflow can also be incorporated into an intranet portal, enabling managers to keep close eye on internal work processes.

Workflow depends on data and information that is used within an enterprise as well as data and information coming from outside sources like contractors, clients, and suppliers. Therefore, an intranet portal is usually equipped with software modules to process, handle, and transfer such data in various formats that allow for interoperability between enterprises and within the company. Portal intranet workflow may comprise prices of information originating from different business applications thus creating a working environment that should cope with the challenge of various data formats, standards, and procedures. The automation of such processes can relieve employees of duties related to manual exchange and re-formatting of data and provide secure medium for inter-departmental communication and collaboration.

While many people think of portal intranet workflow mainly in terms of calendaring and scheduling optimization, a full-fledged intranet portal can feature modules that optimize and automate the work process across all departments and cover virtually every aspect of running a business. The functionality allowing for triggering scheduled and accidental actions is unparalleled in terms of organizing and optimizing performance, while providing early warnings and reminders caused by the occurrence of a particular event or lack of action.

Furthermore, the entire corporate paperwork can be regarded as an element of the portal intranet workflow and managed according to preset corporate policies and procedures. Overall, a reliable intranet portal provides unlimited opportunity to automate myriads of processes involved in the portal intranet workflow that would otherwise require manual actions, thus improving efficiency and boosting performance.

What Drives the Success of Web Portal Development in India?

Whether it is a personal or a corporate portal, a growing number of customers worldwide look for services related to web portal development in India to get first-class yet affordable product. Web portal development is still a rapidly growing business, with huge potential for further expansion, despite that the first web portals have emerged a few decades ago. The inevitable need to collect and present data from various sources at one site, to place offers and make trades online, to communicate with individuals and businesses gave birth to different types of web portals: from personal to corporate to governmental to tender portals.

Equipped with features like free or paid email services, stock quotes, news, and research tools, web portals are considered a major driver of the Internet’s progress as a whole, while organizations, both private and governmental, are eager to promote their own personalized web portals that might be public or not. Thus, fueled by excessive demand, web portal development evolved into a lucrative business, while the affordability of portal development services soared, especially quality services provided by reputable software developers and vendors. This undesired development, from customer’s point of view, had happened mainly because of the concentration of web portal development services in the West where market fundamentals presuppose higher costs of web and software development as well as higher payroll costs.

Gradually, this Western hegemony in the field of software development, including web development and portal development, has faded away, after new market players from Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America unveiled products and services featuring high quality and reasonable pricing. Today’s market for web portal development is much more customer friendly in terms of pricing, customization, implementation and support services available to customers as well as in terms of number of providers to choose from internationally. Moreover, the emergence of advanced online collaboration technologies has largely eliminated the obstacles preventing enterprises from adopting solutions developed abroad and installed or hosted internally through the means of remote assistance.

Web portal development in India is a relatively new phenomenon; nevertheless, the market is growing at tremendous pace, powered by rapidly expanding demand for outsourced software and web development services, mainly in the West. At present, even large multinationals outsource web portal development, implementation, and support to India-based vendors, looking for external expertise, optimization of costs and more affordable service. While the costs of web portal development in the Western hemisphere have plummeted markedly in the past decade, software developers in Asia/Pacific region are still unequaled in terms of price/quality ratio, giving them notable competitive advantage over rivals.

This is of particular interest to medium- and small-sized business looking for affordable solutions to design and implement an organizational web portal. Such an organizational web portal may feature advanced capabilities like online collaboration tools, workflow management, content management, as well as ability to connect to the system remotely and safely through a module designed to controls user access. In fact, those types of systems are widely adopted across virtually all industries and within enterprises of all sizes, which in turn means that India’s software developers can apply their skills in many different spheres where website portals are used.

The recent emergence of cloud computing as the next big thing raised questions whether the Cloud is to put an end to locally hosted and administered web portals, both public and private, while offering even greater opportunities for those involved in web portal development. As far as the cloud is considered a growingly safe environment, software developers and customers alike can take advantage of advanced third party software and hardware infrastructure to develop, host, manage, and administer web portals, which also greatly reduces the overall cost of running a public or a private web portal. Thus, web portal development in India is now trying to expand into the territory of cloud computing, where promising opportunities are hiding.

Western Corporations Look to Benefit from Web Portal Development in India

A broad definition of 'web portal' covers web sites so varying in specialization, size, target audience, and structure that making a dissection of the market structure of web portal development in India is a task close to impossible. Nevertheless, based on market reports by Gartnter, Inc., one can make a safe bet that the trend of outsourcing projects is set to grow in the long-run, with the country topping the list of places where the software and web development outsourcing is flourishing.

Public web portals emerged in a natural way a few decades ago, offering valuable services like free e-mail, aggregated news, stock market quotes, etc. In fact, most of the widely popular public web portals have been developed outside India, mainly in the United States. At present, however, India is an unrivaled leader in world's software development outsourcing, including development of web portals, in a broader sense. Additionally, India has managed to establish a number of research and development centers, apart from traditional universities and colleges, where well-educated professionals graduate.

Average users tend to think that only a handful of worth-mentioning web portals exist on a global scale. Although such a statement has valid grounds when the matter in hand is which web portals we use to access news sources and e-mail services on a daily basis, a web portal, as said before, is a product that web surfers use much more often than usually anticipated. Those who deal with the services of the e-government on a daily basis are a good example of customers visiting a web portal regularly, while those may include services like healthcare, social insurance, unemployment services, etc. Thus, the market for web portal services is not limited to the commercial use of the product but also covers the public sector, which rapidly adopts online services.

A booming market for mobile devices worldwide is another major factor that boosts development of various web portals aimed at users in every niche imaginable. Furthermore, existing web portals have to be re-developed to provide reliable services to sky-rocketing number of mobile users, while software development in the West is costly compared to services offered by India's peers. Therefore, thanks to a combination of growing in numbers skilled software developers and lower payroll costs, India is becoming a major hub for development of various software applications and web-based solutions. The country still leads the pack of global destinations for high-quality and non-expensive software development, competing on equal terms with software developers based in Latin America and Eastern Europe.

A growing number of U.S. and Europe-based corporations outsource development of their intranet web portals to developers in India, which sparked fierce debates in the United States, and the driving force behind this evident trend is not purely economical – the lower production costs – but has its roots in the quality of service provided by local software developers. Despite some regulatory measures, taken by the U.S. and the European Union authorities, the business is increasingly looking to the Asia/Pacific region in search for affordable and high-quality software development services. That being said, one would safely forecast that web portal development in India, in particular, and software development outsourcing, in general, will be among the fastest growing segments of India's economy in the next decade.