Providing your customers and partners direct access to information pertinent to them can provide a key business advantage to your company.

Many organizations across vertical industries are exploring options for providing customer access to data via web portals that manage everything from campaign responses to orders to self-service support. Customer portals are not right for every business or even for every customer. While portals can overtime reduce the number of calls to service and support departments, they also reduce the amount of contact a business has with its customers.

A growing trend in CRM solutions is providing partners access to leads, sales tools, proposal and support knowledgebases, and marketing information directly via specialized web portals. Insurance companies, for example, have enabled local vendors to compare different plans and complete subscriber paperwork through the partner portal. Other industries inform partners of new product releases or even new RFP (Requests for Purchase) opportunities in their territory.

There are two keys to a successful portal implementation: being strategic about what functionality to provide to both customers and partners, and picking CRM and ERP foundation platforms that can be easily integrated with a portal.