Benefits of Enterprise Information Portals

We live in a time of wave-upon-wave of innovation in Information Technology: Client/server Systems, Distributed Object Technology, Data Warehousing, Work Flow Systems, Document Management, Groupware Systems, ERP and packaged applications, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). The game of introducing each succeeding wave always follows a similar pattern. The new innovation first appeals to "innovators" –the technology enthusiasts. Next, it is adopted by visionaries -– the "early adopters"-who believe it will produce substantial competitive advantages for them. But then it becomes necessary to persuade "pragmatists" to use the new technology. At that stage of the technology adoption process, the pressure is on information technology vendors to demonstrate the benefits of their new innovation, calculate its costs, and show that the ratio of benefits to costs is favorable enough to make the pragmatists want the innovation. "What will it do for our bottom line?" becomes the critical question in deciding whether to go ahead with an IT innovation.