Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Any Storm in a Portal

When the technology downturn took the exuberance out of the software business, Mapics Inc., an Atlanta supplier of enterprise systems, decided to shed real estate rather than people. The company made such a commitment to telecommuting that three-fourths of its staff now work from home, client sites, or other remote locations on any given day.

A slimmed-down headquarters keeps the overhead low, but it poses a number of managerial challenges. E-mail, chat rooms, and, of course, telephones keep communication and collaboration alive, but what about the more mundane aspects of life at the office, such as distributing benefits forms or the voluminous paperwork associated with hiring, job changes, and annual health-care enrollment? For those and a growing number of similar tasks, Mapics, like many other companies, relies on an employee portal, a one-stop, Web-based window that allows employees to sign in and have instant access to a range of software applications and data sources, often tailored to their specific needs. One Mapics executive calls the portal "the heartbeat of our organization" and says it allows almost every department at the company to operate off-site. Except finance, which continues to show up at the office every day, mostly because of the demands of Sarbanes-Oxley.

Any Storm in a Portal

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