Practicity solutions can also be easily integrated with groupware applications, to fully leverage or capture work and information. Document management systems manage processes for which the output is exclusively a document. As such, document management systems are optimized to manage simple workflows between contributors and approvers, create an audit trail of edits and annotations, and store documents efficiently in a specialized repository. Customers are sometimes allowed to access these systems, but the processes are normally internal, proprietary, and limited to document sharing. The Practicity solutions can also be linked to or tightly integrated with document management systems to re-use and capture work.
Portals are platforms for corporate information publishing.
As such, they can link to applications, but do not provide any application functionality themselves. Portal solution providers have little, if any experience in managing services engagements. And while portals can provide a personalized front end, they lack the back-end repositories and security to capture multiple types of interaction and to support outside users as active participants. In comparison, Practicity is a web-based application designed specifically for professional service engagements. It can also be seamlessly linked to a portal for corporate look and feel.