More than one-third of global firms with revenues of $1 billion or more have built enterprise portals this year. As portal entry costs continue to fall, more firms are tapping vendors and systems integrators to build a new type of portal — the process portal. These emerging portals will reduce costs and achieve greater efficiencies by combining business process management (BPM) suites with back-end systems to create customized, action-oriented, and integrated applications that benefit both employees and external customers and partners. Tomorrow, at the debut Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) TechRankings Summit, “Building The Best Enterprise Portal,” more than 100 business and IT executives will learn which portal strategies and vendors best suit their objectives. The Summit is being held at The Grand America Hotel and ends September 19. It features a Technology Showcase Reception tonight at 6:00 p.m.

“To ensure that investments in corporate portals deliver more value than employee bulletin boards, firms need to understand how process portals guide users through business scenarios, as well as how their existing IT architecture can resourcefully support these needs,” said Joshua Walker, research director at Forrester.

“Forrester’s TechRankings research team has performed dozens of laboratory-based evaluations of veteran and upstart vendors in the areas of content management, enterprise portals, integration server, application server, and our newly launched business process management,” added Walker. “Through our collective analyses and interviews with users and vendors, Forrester will help firms make the right business and technology decisions before and during their portal development, as well as create bulletproof RFPs based on Forrester’s objective analysis of the best vendor offerings on the market today. Our analysts will also prepare attendees for process portals — the next portal evolution.”

In addition, the TechRankings Summit will feature case studies and panel discussions delivered by leading user companies and systems integrators in the industry including:

  • Bipin Patel, Director of Management Systems, Ford Motor Co.
  • Michael J. McCreary, Human Capital Solutions Principal Consultant, PwC Consulting
  • Michael Cantor, Vice President, Critical Technologies Organization, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young
  • Benoit C.A. Gaucherin, Chief Technology Officer, Sapient
  • Don Giudice, Vice President, Solutions, Roundarch

Forrester speakers include:

  • Joshua Walker, Research Director
  • Nate L. Root, Analyst
  • Sharyn Leaver, Analyst
  • Nicholas Wilkoff, Analyst

Business Process Management TechRankings Launches
At the Summit, Forrester will also debut key insights from its ninth TechRankings category — Business Process Management (BPM) — the critical component that turns corporate portals into process portals. Forrester invited all major companies in this market to partake in its evaluation process, and eight vendors participated: FileNET, Fuego, IDS Scheer, Intalio, Metastorm, Savvion, Staffware, and Ultimus. For this TechRankings evaluation, Forrester defines BPM as software for designing, executing, and optimizing cross-functional business processes that incorporate systems, people, and partners.

TechRankings evaluates enterprise software products through rigorous hands-on scenario-based product testing, in-depth research and user interviews, and objective analysis of global vendor offerings. Since every BPM strategy and portal deployment is unique, TechRankings lets clients use online tools to customize the research — and product evaluation rankings — to focus on the most important criteria and vendors for their projects. Forrester does not charge vendors in any way to participate in TechRankings. Forrester extensively checks and verifies results.

Forrester offers TechRankings research, analysis, and selection services in nine software technology markets: application servers, business process management, commerce platforms, content management, customer service applications, enterprise portal servers, eProcurement applications, integration servers, and marketing automation applications. Forrester will continue to add important vendor evaluations and update the existing categories to reflect buyers¿ evolving needs, in addition to adding new categories of software for evaluation. To learn more about TechRankings, visit www.forrester.com.