Conclusion
ROI and related measures are required now to justify virtually all significant IT investments, and portals are no exception. A family of calculations are available to the IT practitioner, but they are not flawless. Care and intellectual honesty are required when making assumptions about the soft benefits of portals. ROI and related measures are useful tools, but they are not infallible. However, at the end of the day, if you want to deploy a portal and you need to cost-justify it, use ROI, NPV, and possibly IRR. If you can sell the portal on gut feeling alone, fine—but going through the ROI exercise helps everyone understand both the hard and soft benefits of the portal.
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