The Skinny on KM Portals Knowledge management portals are now on companies' radar screens after first appearing two years ago, says Carl Frappaolo, executive vice president and cofounder of the Delphi Group, a Boston-based consulting company. And as companies start operating globally, efficient collaboration among a workforce scattered worldwide has become crucial. Frappaolo says that KM portal interest is strong in the corporate world. According to a Delphi Group survey, about 8 percent of 1,100 organizations polled in the first quarter of 2000 said they have already deployed an enterprise knowledge management portal, while 7 percent of respondents were in the test phase, and another 10 percent were still considering vendor products. Indeed, in the first half of 2001, more than half said they were thinking about or are interested in deploying a portal, Frappaolo says.
Portals also help companies recover from the institutional knowledge gap left by employee turnover.