The phone in the accounts office rings all morning. A dealer wants to know whether yesterday's order has left. A customer needs a copy of an invoice from March. Another asks what they owe, and whether the last payment has been counted. Each call takes a few minutes of someone's day, and each answer is already sitting in a system the caller cannot see. Customer portal development is the work of giving those callers a safe window onto their own records.
We are a product engineering team at Infopark in Kochi. We build customer portals and other web applications for businesses in India, the UAE and Australia. This guide is for owners and operations heads who are considering a portal for customers, dealers or suppliers. It covers what a good one does, what makes one hard to build, and the cases where it is too early to build one at all.
The short answer
A good portal answers the questions people phone your office to ask, shows each account its own data and nothing else, and takes its figures from the system your staff already use. It is worth building when the same enquiries arrive every day from many accounts. It is not worth building for a handful of customers, or before the data behind it is reliable. The screens are the easy part. The connection to your ERP or accounting software is where most of the work and most of the risk sit.
What a customer or dealer portal is
A portal is a web application that people outside your company sign in to. Each account sees its own orders, invoices, payments, documents and requests. Nobody sees another account's records. It runs in a browser on a computer or a phone, so there is nothing to install.
It is different from your website. A website is public and the same for everyone, and its job is to bring in enquiries. A portal is private and different for every account, and its job is to serve the customers you already have. Our comparison of a web app and a website sets out the difference in more detail.
The word covers several kinds of system. The table shows the common three.
| Customer portal | Dealer or distributor portal | Supplier portal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who signs in | The people or companies who buy from you. | Dealers, distributors and their staff. | Vendors and contractors who sell to you. |
| What they look up | Order or job status, invoices, payments, documents and service history. | Price lists, stock availability, order status, account statement and schemes. | Purchase orders, delivery schedules and payment status. |
| What they do | Raise a request or complaint, download a document, make a payment. | Place and repeat orders, raise returns and claims, download invoices. | Acknowledge orders, submit quotations and upload invoices. |
| What the office gains | Fewer status calls and a record of every request. | Orders arrive already typed, checked against price and credit rules. | Fewer follow-up calls and one place for supplier paperwork. |
What a good portal does
A good portal is judged by whether people stop phoning. Seven things separate the ones that get used from the ones that are opened once.
1. It answers the questions people already ask
Start with the calls and messages your office receives, not with a list of features. For most businesses they come down to a few questions: where is my order, what do I owe, can I have a copy of that document, and has my request been dealt with. A portal that answers those four clearly has done most of its job. One that offers twenty menus and hides the order status under the third has not.
2. It shows each account its own data and nothing else
This is the rule that cannot be broken. A dealer who sees a rival's prices or balance, even once, will not trust the system again, and neither will the rival. Access has to be enforced on the server for every request, not by hiding a button on the screen. A dealer with several staff may also need roles of its own: the owner sees the statement, the storekeeper sees only orders.
3. It draws on the system of record
The figures in the portal must be the figures your own staff see. If someone has to retype orders from the portal into the ERP, or upload a statement every evening, the two will disagree within a week. Then the calls come back, with an argument attached. The portal should read from your ERP, CRM or accounting software and write back to it.
4. It lets people act, not only look
Viewing status removes the enquiry calls. Letting people act removes the data entry. A dealer who can place an order, repeat last month's order or raise a return has done work your staff would otherwise do. Every action needs rules behind it, such as minimum quantities, credit limits and approval above a set value, and those rules should be the same ones the office applies.
5. It works on a phone
Many dealers and customers will open the portal on a phone, in a shop or on a site, on a slow connection. Screens have to load quickly and work with one thumb. A well-made web portal handles this without a separate app. A dedicated mobile app becomes worth its cost when people use the system many times a day, or need features such as push notifications. Our article on whether your business needs a customer app covers that decision.
6. Signing in is easy and safe
If signing in is a struggle, people go back to the phone. A one-time code sent to a registered mobile number suits users who sign in rarely and forget passwords. Your office also needs a simple way to add an account, change who has access at a dealer, and remove someone who has left.
7. It tells your office what happened
Every order, request and download should leave a record of who did it and when. The office needs its own screens too: a queue of new requests, a way to answer them, and a view of which accounts use the portal and which have never signed in. Without those, the portal is one more inbox that nobody watches.
Where the real work lies
Most of the effort in a portal goes into the connection to your existing systems and the state of the data in them. The screens a customer sees are a small part of the work.
The link to your ERP or accounting software
A portal is only as good as the system it reads from. If that system has a documented API, the link is predictable to build. If it only exports files, the link is slower and more fragile. Many Indian businesses keep their books in Tally, which has import and export interfaces a portal can use for ledgers, invoices and outstanding balances. Our article on Tally and ERP explains how operations software sits in front of the books without exposing them.
The state of the data
A portal puts your data in front of your customers. A statement with an unallocated payment, a customer who exists under three ledger names, or a stock figure that is a week old were private problems before. Now each one is visible to the person it concerns. Clean the masters before the portal opens, and decide how fresh each figure has to be.
The rules nobody has written down
Which dealer gets which price list. Who may order on credit and up to what limit. Which orders need approval. In most offices these rules live in the heads of two or three people. A portal has to apply them without those people, so they have to be written down first. Agreeing them often takes longer than building them. What all this does to the budget is covered in our guide to web application development cost in India.
When you do not need a portal
A portal is the wrong purchase for a good many businesses, at least for now. Hold off if any of these describes you.
You have a small number of customers and each is looked after by a person they know. A phone call is the better service.
Your customers order rarely. Few people will remember a sign-in they use twice a year.
Your ERP or accounting product already includes a customer portal. Some packaged products do. Try that first.
Your records are not yet reliable. Fix the data and the internal system before showing them to customers.
Your customers only need invoices. Sending each invoice by email or message when it is raised may be enough.
A portal earns its cost when many accounts ask the same questions every day, when orders are being retyped from messages into your system, or when customers have begun to expect self-service from suppliers like you.
How to introduce a portal
A portal succeeds or fails on adoption, so the first release should be small and the launch should be planned as carefully as the build.
Count the calls. For two weeks, note what customers and dealers ask for. The top few items are the first release.
Start with viewing. Order status, statement and invoice download carry little risk and remove the most calls.
Pilot with a few accounts. Choose dealers who will tell you plainly what is confusing.
Add ordering and requests next, once the figures on screen are trusted.
Have your own staff use it. When a dealer phones, the salesperson should point to the portal and walk them through it.
Keep the old channel open for a while. Forcing everyone across on day one creates resentment.
This is the same six-stage process we follow on every build, with working software every fortnight. For a portal with two sides to it, see BuildQuot, a construction quotation platform we built with separate buyer and supplier accounts.
Frequently asked questions
What is a customer portal?
A customer portal is a web application that your customers sign in to, where each one sees their own orders, invoices, payments, documents and requests. It takes its data from the systems your staff already use.
What is the difference between a customer portal and a dealer portal?
A customer portal serves the people who buy from you and is mostly about status, documents and service requests. A dealer portal serves the businesses that resell your products and adds ordering, price lists, stock availability, schemes and claims.
Can a customer portal work with Tally or our existing ERP?
Usually, yes. Tally has import and export interfaces, and most ERP products offer an API or a way to exchange files. How well the portal works depends on how complete that interface is and how clean the data behind it is.
Should we build a portal or a mobile app?
Start with a web portal that works well on a phone. It reaches every user without an installation and costs less to build and maintain. Add a mobile app later if people use the system many times a day or need notifications.
Is it safe to put customer data in a portal?
It can be, if security is designed in from the start. That means access checked on the server for every request, encrypted connections, a record of who viewed and changed what, and a clear process for removing access. Ask any vendor how they test that one account cannot see another's data.
Conclusion
A good portal is a narrow thing done well. It answers the few questions your customers and dealers ask every day, shows each of them only their own records, and takes its figures from the system your office already trusts. If the calls are few or the data is not ready, wait. If the same enquiries fill every morning, a portal will give that time back to your staff and give your customers an answer at any hour.
We are happy to look at what your customers ask for today and say whether a portal would help, including when the answer is not yet. Tell us how your customers reach you now and we will start from there.
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