Portals in Large Enterprises

This chapter discusses two aspects of the use of portals by large corporations: the roles of portals set up by corporations and the use made by corporations of portals other than their own. The purposes for which large enterprises have built Internet portals are identified as: public corporate information, product information, customer service, selling, supply chain management, and business to employee. Each of these types of portals is examined with examples being drawn from a range of Australian and international large corporate Internet sites. The uses of portals by large enterprises provided by other companies are discussed, including: the development and demise of collective procurement portals (corProcure, Cyberlynx, eSteel, MetalSite, and the like) and the slow development of supply chain management portals. A number of directions for further research are suggested, including: large enterprise plans for collective procurement portals in the late 1990s, the potential of supply chain portals that are not dominated by a single buyer, and the potential for increased transparency in the supply chain by development of supply chain management portals.