Web Portals Open Doors To One-Stop Services - human resources Web portals

HR Magazine, Nov, 1999 by Bill Roberts

Benefits, expense reports, travel, procurement--portals can help pull together HR and other business applications with a single user interface.

Por*tal, n.: 1. A doorway, entrance or gate, esp. one that is large and imposing. 2. An entrance or means of entrance: a portal of knowledge.

--The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition

Most folks who talk about HR web portals would agree that the second definition applies. As you soon will see, it does. But before you get a portal, take another look at the first definition. It may require a large and imposing effort to build an HR web portal worthy of the name--one that offers transaction applications, content and information, as well as easy navigation and integration with other corporate business processes.

A serviceable definition of an HR web portal comes from Jim Holincheck, an analyst at Giga Information Group's Chicago office. "It's a way to provide an interface to a user so they have the resources they need to do their job, linking into a variety of different business transactions, business information and other content and services that might be external or internal," he says. "That's what a portal is. To some degree it is an extension of the work done already in web-based self service."

HRIS and HR practitioners will hear a great deal about portals in coming months because many new web-based products are being launched to help companies build corporate portals. The big HRIS vendors are also gearing up to market products that tie into their back-end enterprise resource planning databases, including the HR database.

In September, SAP launched Myoseptum, which embraces HR and other areas the employee needs to do his or her job. PeopleSoft will offer a similar product early next year. Both vendors have already been adapting existing applications, including HR transactions, to the web.

Many companies already are taking small steps to build corporate portals for HR and other processes. Some call their efforts a portal, but many do not. So, before we take a look at a couple of HR portals, let's ask: What is a portal, anyway, and why might you want one for HR?

Surfing with Purpose

There are dozens of portals on the public Internet. A web portal is a gateway to the Internet, which provides the end user with a more compelling experience than merely jumping on and surfing at random.

The best web portals offer users a high degree of customization. They organize information and news in useful, related links to other web sites. A good web portal helps you navigate through all the information on the public Internet. Yahoo is one example of a portal.

I'm going to take a break from writing and click over to www.yahoo.com. What do I find? The first screen has links to lots of stuff: headlines, news stories, online stores, movie reviews, weather, chat rooms, e-mail and more. There's a section of related links organized by categories: arts, education and science, for example. I click on "Society & Culture."

I get a set of topics to click on to take me to other links. I choose "Bibliographies" and get a screen of web-based bibliographies for a range of topics from the erotic to the esoteric. I choose "Freedom of the Press" and find myself at a site that gives me all kinds of sources on and off the web regarding press freedom.

From any of these pages I've visited, I can click to the basic content areas, like news. I do so and get a screen of headlines covering top news of the moment. From any of the screens I can also click "My Yahoo," which takes me to a place where I can register and then get access to my own personal page, which I can customize as I wish, emphasizing only subjects that interest me and avoiding ones that do not.

Your Life, Online

This is a cool way to procrastinate and put off my writing, but what's it got to do with HR portals? Keep in mind what Yahoo does for the visitor on the Internet while you imagine the following corporate intranet experience:

From the company's home page a user can click on Employee Services, which takes her to three possible links: My Life, My Career, My Staff. If she clicks on My Life, she'll find places where she can make changes to basic information in the employee database: change a phone number, add dependents, record her new address and the like. She can make these changes without dealing with a human being. From My Life, she can also click on a link that takes her outside the corporate firewall to the company's 401(k) vendor. There she can move money around and see how her investments are doing.

My Career offers job postings, training opportunities for both skill and career development and the ability to sign up for this training. My Staff lets managers make changes regarding their employees. One application lets a manager tell the HR recruiters which job candidate should get an offer and begins the process for getting that offer out. User IDs and passwords protect everything, and employees can access these sites over the Internet from home or from the road.