Proven Portals: Best Practices for Planning, Designing, and Developing Enterprise Portals

Assessing the Return on Investment

You should make preliminary ROI calculations (see Chapter 5) once you have gathered requirements. When the design step is done, reassess the ROI calculations. At that point you should have more detailed cost estimates and should be able to better assess the savings realized by the portal. Perhaps most importantly, you will understand the technical and organizational hurdles that remain (there are always a few).

With the new numbers in hand, make your best assessment about whether or not to continue the project. If the numbers still favor a portal, move to the implementation step.