Introduction

One prominent aspect of globalization is the voluminous flow of information. Many organizations today deploy internet and mobile devices as they believe that their workforce needs to be empowered with multiple tools to work and access information to be efficient and effective. Partly as a consequence it has become increasingly difficult to navigate the resulting rich information environment and find the right information.

A solution that has emerged in the last decade is the corporate portal or businessto- employee (B2E) portal. B2E portals represent a customized, personalized, constantly changing mix of news, resources, applications and e-commerce options intended to be the desktop destination for everyone in the organization and a primary vehicle through which people do their work (Ransdell, 2000). Accessed from the desktop, or using notebooks or even personal digital assistants (PDAs), such portals link employees to a range of internal and external information and connect them with other employees. The portal provides not only general corporate information for employees, but also some applications aimed at assisting employees with workrelated and specific tasks, such as managing benefits, insurance and payroll cheque. The portals also provide employees with the personal information they need in the form of web links such as to stocks and shares information, weather forecasts, travel sites or even shopping services. Using B2E portals, employees can manage their work as well as personal matters without the intervention of other administrative staff.

Plumtree Software (2002a) has identified the main drivers for B2E portals (see Figure 10.1). The promised benefits include (Forrester Research, 2001):