Platform, personalization and process are the three requisite ingredients for a successful portal.  Each provides part of the picture, but without all three, you're leaving potential value to your employees and your clients unrealized.  In the title above, I've purposely used the multiplication symbol to emphasize that the benefits are more than additive; platform times personalization times process results in P3, not 3P.  And with that, I present a conceptual framework for thinking about and executing your portal design goals.

Today there are many robust platforms for developing portals.  At Fenwick & West, we've found Microsoft's SharePoint to provide a very stable and flexible foundation for our internal and client-facing portals, but ultimately the technology you choose is less important than its ability to deliver targeted information and business process support that can be translated into more value for your clients with a little effort.  Let me explain what I mean by each of the "Ps" above.

Platform
Platform is more than just servers and software.  It's the "plumbing" that allows information from all of your backend systems (finance/accounting, human resources, client relationship, docketing, etc.) to be integrated and presented in a single logical collection.  This could mean pulling together client financials, contact information and documents all on one Web page, creating a complete picture of a matter that includes docketing information from one system and records from another, or it might mean combining employee data from your human resources system with a training calendar to provide a complete picture of professional development.  All of these are examples of what I call "information flattening," the process of breaking down barriers between systems and creating a "flat" and transparent information landscape for your users.

Personalization
Once your platform is in place, it's time to personalize the content.  Your attorneys and staff have different information needs; your litigation and corporate practice groups have different information needs; and each individual needs quick access to just the matters, contacts or documents with which they're immediately involved.  Creating this level of personalization requires digging into the core systems - but you'll find almost all of the data you need to "slice" the information:  timekeeper numbers, client and matter IDs, dates, practice groups and job codes and departments.  Whether the integration layer is created through custom SQL queries and Web service calls, or through a third-party middle-ware application or some combination of the two, the effort will result in your firm's employees finding the information they need in less time.

Process
After there is a platform that integrates and "flattens" the firm's information and a means to deliver the right information to the user, it's desirable to wrap processes around that information.  An obvious example is that of opening a new client or matter.  This process both draws on and creates data in core systems (finance/accounting, client relationship, records) and involves a number of individuals across the firm.  Workflow software allows you to orchestrate this flow of information and human activity from new-business memo through conflict check, approvals and finally, automatically updating the back-end systems that support the work.  Because any activity involving people is, by nature, unpredictable, the workflow subsystem selected should be able to handle exceptions and manual intervention in individual instances of a process as necessary.

Successful Portal
While there is a progression from platform to personalization to process, there is also a great deal of overlap.  Modern portals must be developed, refined and revised quickly to allow them to respond to ever-changing needs and an evolving understanding of what features are possible and desirable.  When looking for tools with which to build your P3 portal, you should therefore consider the tool's extensibility as well as its out-of-the-box feature set.  Likewise, look for finance/accounting, client relationship, human resources and other applications with well-documented and accessible databases or a Web services interface, rather than those that trap their data in opaque, monolithic systems.  At Fenwick & West I've found the P3 framework very helpful in articulating and planning our portal-related activities, and I hope you will, too.

About our author . . .

Mark Gerow is Portal Architect at Fenwick & West LLP, where he is responsible for defining and implementing the firm's intranet and extranet strategies using SharePoint technologies.  Mark has just released his new book, titled "Creating Client Extranets with SharePoint 2003" (Apress), that provides a soup-to-nuts guide for installing, configuring and customizing SharePoint to provide a robust extranet solution.  He can be reached at MGerow@fenwick.com.