Illuminating portal possibilities

Utility companies are creating Web portals to optimize interactions with employees and share knowledge.

Recent years have been unkind to the worldwide utility sector. Industries such as oil, gas, water, nuclear power, electricity and petrochemical have seen their share of woes - from the doleful economy to deregulation to increased governmental scrutiny because of the Enron collapse.

As IT budgets begin to thaw from their multiyear freeze, utilities are increasingly investing in portals. These Web sites aggregate data and provide a customized gateway to a multitude of applications , promising to reduce operational costs and improve efficiencies.

In a recent AMR Research study, gas and power utilities rated employee and customer portals second only to application integration as their top priorities for next-generation technology investments.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Recent years have been unkind to the worldwide utility sector. Industries such as oil, gas, water, nuclear power, electricity and petrochemical have seen their share of woes - from the doleful economy to deregulation to increased governmental scrutiny because of the Enron collapse.

As IT budgets begin to thaw from their multiyear freeze, utilities are increasingly investing in portals. These Web sites aggregate data and provide a customized gateway to a multitude of applications , promising to reduce operational costs and improve efficiencies.

In a recent AMR Research study, gas and power utilities rated employee and customer portals second only to application integration as their top priorities for next-generation technology investments.

A lack of data accessibility kept most utility companies from deploying portals until fairly recently, says Jill Feblowitz, service director of the energy practice at AMR. Companies such as Plumtree Software, SAP and Vignette  now offer technology with built-in connectors to enterprise applications, significantly easing the task of building and deploying portals. Deployment costs range from about $50,000 to $1 million, depending on the scope.

Many utilities start by deploying a portal to replace employee paperwork. That is often just the beginning of the journey as they expand their portal to more strategic opportunities, such as sharing knowledge to improve performance throughout the organization.

Like many of its peers, gas and electric utility Cinergy has endured multiple rounds of downsizing in the past few years. Reducing costs and increasing efficiency became imperatives in the Cincinnati company's ongoing struggle to get the best rates for its 1.5 million electric customers. In October 2001 - only six weeks after selecting Plumtree as its portal platform - Cinergy rolled out the iPower portal for its 7,800 employees for $1.5 million, including $900,000 for software and hardware, and $600,000 for implementation services.

The portal's chief function is online employee benefits enrollment, which had previously been outsourced to Hewitt Associates. Over time, Cinergy's portal investment will save money by bringing HR in-house, says Ginny Segbers, supervisor of the new media group for Cinergy. In the meantime, other cost savings include aggregating content on iPower that they would otherwise have to purchase separately. The IT department also built the front end to Cinergy's data warehouse on Plumtree.