Point of View

What is the fate of the portal in today’s always-on,Web 2.0 world? The answer: It’s more important thanever as a tool for communications, entertainment andhigh-tech companies to deliver the right information, in the right format, at the right time to their customers—preferably before they know they even need it.

Portals Must Evolve toCapture New Customers in the Web 2.0 World

Accenture InformationManagement Services

What is the fate of portals—thosecentralized repositories of essentialinformation for consumer andbusiness users—in today’s world ofNetflix, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube?Those sites are intensely user-determined, with ever-changing, moredynamic interfaces that often providewhat users want before they evenknow they need it.

Have no fear: new technologies andbusiness processes are helpingcommunications, entertainment andhigh-tech companies update theircustomer-facing portals in a way thathelps them keep pace with thesechanges. In particular, new Web 2.0interfaces are making portals easier touse. Meanwhile, social networkingcapabilities have transformed consumerportals into extended knowledge-sharing environments. Enhanced self-service capabilities further push thisdo-it-yourself paradigm.

Putting portals with these capabilitiesinto play isn’t just “nice to have.”Rather, customers demand them: If acompany’s user experience doesn’tmatch that of Gmail or Amazon.com,then people will go elsewhere to find

the experience they are seeking. And while many communications,entertainment and high-techcompanies already have portals, fewhave yet transformed them into low-cost, persistent gateways for creatingnew and personalized customerinteractions across marketing, sales and service functions.

This, then, is today’s portal businessrequirement: to reshape informationmanagement from being just a backoffice or business intelligencefunction, into a discipline that delivershighly relevant, “just-in-time”information that retains customersand closes sales. AccentureInformation Management Serviceshelps companies achieve highperformance through effectiveinformation management. Committedto innovation, we believe that asuccessful portal strategy secures animmediate return on investment bydynamically aggregating content,functions and features into a high-performance workspace relevant to the user’s specific role and responsibilities.

The new portal mandate

To accomplish this mandate, portalsmust do four things:

• Profile customers dynamically.

• Deliver information in context.

• Provide accurate and relevantrecommendations.

• Constantly highlight the bigger picture.

This means that portals must putanything a customer needs withineasy reach—a broad mandate to besure, and one that few companies inany industry have achieved. Forexample, Accenture’s HighPerformance Business research finds that on average, only 22 percent of companies’ customerinteractions are conducted online and processed automatically.1

Hence the opportunity: a companythat can combine its capabilities ininnovative ways to deliverinformation in a user-friendly andengaging manner via a portal willbecome an essential part of its

Today’s portal business requirements:to reshape information managementfrom being just a back office orbusiness intelligence function, into adiscipline that delivers highly relevant,“just-in-time” information that retainscustomers and closes sales.

customer’s buying decisions. Likewise,this company is likely to attract andretain more customers, bydemonstrating knowledge of theirinterests and desires and thenapplying that insight to provide morerelevant value-added services andcontent. In this way, by thinkingabout technology the way theircustomers do, business leaders canachieve High Performance.

The four habits of highlyeffective portal practitionersToday’s portal lives or dies based on a single metric: delivering customersatisfaction and relevance. This goesfor any industry, but is especially truefor communications, entertainmentand high-tech companies, which mustattract and retain customers in ahighly competitive marketplace. Andthe surest—and also often the best—technique for luring and retainingcustomers is to create a satisfying userexperience, which increases customerloyalty, retention and, therefore,profits. As business knows well,keeping your customer costs a fractionof finding a new one.

To better appeal to customers, portalsmust pursue the four capabilitiesoutlined below:

1. Profile customers dynamically

Achieving high performance in thedigital age requires understandingconsumers in motion. A portal mustrecognize a customer’s preferences,track his or her activities andinteractions across multiple sites andmaintain a constantly evolving profileof the customer based on his or herlatest activities. This is a non-stopendeavor that must encompass everymarketing, sales and service channel.

Autobytel—one of the largest onlineautomotive marketplaces in the world,which has connected 27 million carbuyers with local dealers andgenerated billions of dollars inrevenue—discovered that first-hand,when it looked for a way to reduce itsreliance on dealer leads for profit andincrease its advertising revenues.Working with Accenture InformationManagement Services, Autobytelintroduced a new, much moreengaging portal for its customers,which consolidated multiple systems

and included an intuitive searchfunction—crucial for car buyers. By offering a better user experienceand more in-depth information,Autobytel learned more about its users, and translated this intosubstantial year-on-year increases in advertising revenue.

A portal must recognize a customer’s preferences,track his or her activitiesand interactions acrossmultiple sites and maintaina constantly evolvingprofile of the customerbased on his or her latest activities.

1 Source: “High Performance IT 2008: There’s NoSubstitute for Substitution” (Accenture)

2. Deliver information in context

Delivering information in context leadsto numerous business upsides. Forexample, imagine an entertainmentportal through which a consumer canwatch a movie preview on hersmartphone, purchase a movie ticketand then get directions to the theatre.When the movie becomes available viaDVD and for download, the portal thenoffers a reduced rate for purchasingeither one. In both cases, contextualinformation makes for happy customers,while also providing the opportunity toup-sell to an existing client.

But to maintain an accurate and up-to-date profile of each customer, portalsmust persist across multiple devices,including PCs, laptops, kiosks, mobiledevices and perhaps even televisions. Onall these devices, companies must alsooffer a rich experience.

3. Manage information

More than just presenting information,portals must make sense of what usersdo or do not want to do, to the extentauthorized by the customer. Such real-time insights, based on context andactual customer preferences, will helpcompanies point customers towardinformation, services and products thatthey may find interesting.

Such data is also crucial for businessintelligence purposes—to create a near-real time feedback loop for businessleaders to finetune their business modeland practices. For example, Accenturehelped electronics retailer Best Buybetter track each of its customer’spurchases across multiple transactions.This allowed the retailer to gain greaterinsight into customers’ wants, needsand habits, and to fashion moreeffective sales and marketing campaignsand service programs. All of this led toincreased sales, profits and customersatisfaction levels.

4. Highlight the bigger picture

Portals must connect customers withrelevant information, and also withother people with similar interests.Mastering the mores of the emergingsocial-networking ecosystem, however,requires a multifaceted understandingof customers’ online activities, buyingand browsing habits, plus the socialnetworks in which they choose toparticipate. Of course, next-generationportals are an excellent tool foramassing such insights and their abilityto capture such insights is highlightedas a primary business benefit by early adopters.

Perhaps no one has better mastered this new paradigm than the high-techproduct manufacturers and broadbandproviders. For example, when a servercustomer or a DSL subscriber requireshelp with troubleshooting, a company’sfirst line of defense can be its portal-based, customer-driven supportcommunity. This approach is cost-effective to build and maintain, and alsogood for business, because it providesconsumers with an “always on” channelfor immediately solving any problems.

Portals must connect customers withrelevant information, as well as otherpeople with similar interests.

The business upside of better informationmanagement

By constantly profiling customers,delivering relevant and contextualizedinformation, offering targetedrecommendations and going the extrastep to facilitate social networkingconnections, portals can become morethan the sum of their technical, socialand data aggregation parts. Inaddition, an effective portal will itselfbecome a social magnet—and don’tdiscount the importance of popularityin the Web 2.0 world—which allowscompanies to create self-reinforcingportals, which lead to enhancedcustomer interactions and moreeffective service.

This, in fact, is a much moreinteresting proposition for remakingportals. According to a recent IDCreport, the combination ofinformation, relationships andconversations “will give users apowerful information discoveryplatform that leverages trustedrelationships with other people tofilter and rank information.”2

High performance with portals: seven steps

How does a communications,entertainment or high-tech companybegin to develop the vision,infrastructure and capabilities requiredto create a new kind of portal? Pursuethese seven steps:

1. Analyze the existing site: Evaluateyour existing online portal based onbest practices and target businessobjectives. (This will be instrumentallater in creating return oninvestment goals and tracking theirrelated progress.)

2. Prioritize focus areas. Create andprioritize one or more scenarios ofhow customers will use anadvanced portal, to achievebusiness goals. (Wherever possible,also quantify these aims.)

3. Understand the market. Identifycompetitors’ best practices toensure your approach meets orexceeds those capabilities. But alsoconsider competitors as potentialpartners, if they could offerextended, complementary services.

4. Know the customer. Use directresearch, analysts’ insights andnews reports to study howcustomers use the web and whatthey need and want, then use it torefine and validate each of yourportal-use scenarios.

5. Press the business case. To launchthe project, set an achievablebusiness goal—based on one or moreof your high-priority scenarios.

6. Start with a bang. Build the buzzaround the new portal, and whatit’s offering, to drive high levels ofadoption out of the gate.

7. Measure performance. Calculate the return on investment for each business goal achieved. Use this business rationale tocontinue investing in advancedportal capabilities.

2 Source: “Information Access and AnalysisPredictions for 2008: Consolidation,Specialization, Eureka 2.0 and the Wisdom of Crowds,” January 2008 (IDC)

For more information about AccentureInformation Management Services for the Communications & High Techindustries, contact Astrid Bohé, Executive Director, Accenture Information Management Services—Communications & High Tech, Global, e-mail: astrid.bohe@accenture.com.

Play to social networks

The new portal paradigm offers a simpletechnique for maintaining a competitiveadvantage: build a better portal, improvecustomer satisfaction, yield greaterrevenues. Just don’t forget the socialnetworking component. Globalpenetration of social networks amongstall internet users has increasedsignificantly and is up to 58% globally.3

Indeed, more than half of all consumers’buying decisions are most influenced byother people’s opinions.4

What this means for communications,entertainment and high-tech companies,of course, is that customer relationshipscannot be viewed as a binary equation:bought or didn’t buy, subscribed or didn’tsubscribe. Rather, companies mustmanage their customer information—including people’s previous and currentbuying activities, social networks, andwebs of trust—to create precisemarketing segments, and then generatea differentiated sales, marketing andservice experience for each of thesesegments so that they can lure newcustomers and retain existing ones.

One of the world’s leading mobilecommunications providers, for example,needed to consolidate multiplemarketing systems onto a singleplatform and to enhance customercommunications and sales. Accenturehelped the company transition to a newenterprise content managementplatform offering greater functionality,reliability and scalability. Today theportal supports 52 country-specificsites and more than 50 languages. Even better, it has increased awarenessof the company’s brand, leading to a 2 percent increase in market share—anannual revenue increase of more than$50 million.

The portal payoff

Having a more evolved customerunderstanding enables communications,entertainment and high-tech businessesto deliver high-quality and highlycontextual content via multiple channels.Better information—delivered via businessintelligence tools, content managementsystems and, yes, also portals—helpsbusiness leaders make more successfuldecisions, continually improve customerinteractions and transform theirbusinesses to become high performers.

Indeed, managing the customerrelationship correctly—by creatingdynamic customer profiles, deliveringjust-in-time information to customers,providing reliable recommendations andconnecting the current interaction withthe bigger social networking picture—enables businesses to perform at ahigher level, as well as increasecustomer satisfaction and retentionlevels. Such customer-centricity andbusiness agility eventually increasessales, leading to greater profits.

What underlies the new portalmovement looks a lot like karma. By more effectively meeting the needs of customers, businesses better help themselves, significantlyimprove their bottom line and enablehigh performance.

Better information—delivered viabusiness intelligence tools, contentmanagement systems and, yes, alsoportals—helps business leaders makemore successful decisions, continuallyimprove customer interactions andtransform their businesses to becomehigh performers.

3 Source: “Power to the People, Social Media TrackerWave 3,” March 2008 (Universal McCann)

4 Source: “Digital Consumer Behavior Study,”October 2, 2007 (Avenue A | Razorfish)

About AccentureInformation Management ServicesAccenture Information ManagementServices is a global cross-industryorganization focused on bringingclients solutions to better manage theirbusiness, interact with customers andmake strategic, financial andoperational decisions. Working acrossAccenture’s service lines and industrygroups, this network of 13,000professionals specializes in informationmanagement services includingbusiness intelligence, portal andcontent management and datamanagement and architecture. Formore information about AccentureInformation Management Services,visit www.accenture.com/informationmanagement.

About AccentureAccenture is a global managementconsulting, technology services andoutsourcing company. Committed todelivering innovation, Accenturecollaborates with its clients to helpthem become high-performancebusinesses and governments. Withdeep industry and business processexpertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture canmobilize the right people, skills, andtechnologies to help clients improvetheir performance. With more than186,000 people in 49 countries, thecompany generated net revenues ofUS$23.39 billion for the fiscal yearended Aug. 31, 2008. Its home page iswww.accenture.com.

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