How can I make the business case for an Intranet, or Corporate, Portal?  What benefits can I include to establish a decent Return on Investment (ROI)?  This article contains some ideas and strategies that might help.

The days of easy money are over

In these post-dot-com days of the 21st Century, the hype attached to IT is well and truly over.  The modern Board is deeply suspicious of large IT projects with questionable benefits and a long-term payback period.

The good news is that a world-class portal implementation has the power to completely transform your organisation and touch everyone, from the office of your CEO to the lady in the canteen.

First a little on Costs

Sorry, but the cost of the software is only a relatively small part of the overall bill; with other major costs in hardware, process change and integration activities.  Your first (and major) portal project is (in terms of cost) more an infrastructure investment than it is an application.

As a rough rule of thumb (for a user base >10,000), budget for