Enterprise Portals often leverage best of personalization and one-to-one marketing, allowing for targeting of content and message to unique individuals. Thus, a customer might have access to product manuals or white papers that a partner would not be able to see. At same time, portals often rely on sophisticated CRM and campaign management systems in implicit and explicit personalization and communications of site, allowing company to interact with its customers and partners in better and more lucrative ways. Finally, Enterprise Portals offer amazing analytical data to companies about their customers and partners via direct feedback utilities, or tracking of usage and navigation of site (and implications of what their users are interested in).

In order to offer up such versatile functionality, Enterprise Portals are increasingly built on sophisticated development technologies. Often they'll have at their heart a complex application server/personalization engine such Broadvision One-To-One, ATG Dynamo, or BEA Weblogic. Additionally, Enterprise Portals many times need to integrate with backend legacy systems, requiring a robust and scalable EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) architecture. Open systems languages such as Java and XML make this easier by reducing proprietary interfaces and inconsistent standards.

Obviously, building a system that could be compared to a mini-ERP implementation is never easy, and business process and data issues involved in constructing an Enterprise Portal are as complex as any of application development issues. With that said, companies recognize operational efficiencies, cost savings, and potential revenue offerings of such sites, and it's only a matter of time before Enterprise Portals are as ubiquitous as company 1-800 phone number.

To view a real Customer certified report, visit survey results of our customers from our other Internet business at this URL:

http://www.bizrate.com/ratings_guide/report.xpml?mid=19250

With this information your new customers, current customers and you know how your customers feel about your company, services and products. You can make necessary corrections to your operations, by monitoring your weekly results and reviewing real customer feedback.

In summary: It is hard to tell who to do business with on Internet these days. You can put your customers at ease by letting them know you care about their satisfaction. There isn't a better way to reduce customer apprehension and assure customers of your legitimacy, than to have "Customer Certified Ratings" posted on your web site. Do not work in dark, let your customers light your way by allowing them to tell everyone why they should do business with you.