A Generic Model of an Enterprise Portal

With the rapid development of Internet technology, the portal has been envisioned as one of the greatest opportunities to improve the management of enterprise information. A number of portals associated with enterprise information management have been developed and implemented, for example, custom portal, employee portal, e-market portal, business portal, enterprise collaboration portal, enterprise knowledge portal, enterprise portal or enterprise information portal, etc. As one of the most important applications of portals, an enterprise portal is more attractive because it could be used not only to improve information management and business processes management (Collins, 2002; Detlor, 2004; Terra & Gordon, 2003), but also to promote business collaborations and interactions both internally and externally (Dias, 2001; Detlor, 2000). Although research publications related to enterprise portals are multitudinous, most studies have been concentrated either on enterprise portal design (Ben-Arieh & Pollatscheck, 2002; Bock, 2001; Detlor, 2000), or enterprise portal application (Collins, 2002; Daniel & Ward, 2003, Detlor, 2004; Dias, 2001; Terra & Gordon, 2003). There seems to be a lack of a generic model on depicting an enterprise portal. To fill the gap of the enterprise portal research, a generic model is presented to clarify both connotation and extension of an enterprise portal, which will be conducted based on a number of recent publications. The model presented in this article could contribute to a comprehensive understanding of an enterprise portal from several perspectives, for example, the fundamental concept of an enterprise portal, various applications of an enterprise portal, and plentiful benefits of implementing an enterprise portal. The clarified connotation and extension of an enterprise portal could also contribute to both enterprise portal study and enterprise portal management.