Comarch Federated Portal

To find out how to improve productivity, quality and performance – ask the people who do the work.
Harvard Business Review

Problem

The smooth functioning of a company largely dependent on the effectiveness of its employees.
If an employee is forced to perform business operations within the implementation of his/her work in several different systems his/her efficiency clearly falls.
Different systems are often implemented by different vendors. User interfaces and system support look different.
Additionally, the employee is forced to log on separately to each of these systems.
A lack of integration between IT systems will result in work context isolation.
For example, a selection of the customer in one system does not enable the employee to work in the customer’s context in another. There is no possibility to couple all IT functionalities into one business process.

Challenge

In a fast changing business situation flexibility is necessary.
For optimal employee work performance, it is necessary to adopt unified user interfaces and receive support for IT systems and tools.
To reduce the cost of maintenance and centralized support of a system the best solution seems to be access via a web browser.
A common user interface accessible through an internet browser also provides the ability to a single side logon for all systems in the enterprise.
Portal class tools assure a common user interface and this in return provides an organization of functionalities suiting the business requirements.
If, additionally this solution uses the BPM class module, the company will gain tools which both overcome past barriers blocking the effectiveness of work and also business processes equipped for flexible changes.

Solution

The answer to such needs are tools of federated portal class.
The most popular method of user interface integration compared to many different applications is portlet technology (mostly Java applications compliant with JSR 168 specification).
This solution allows to create a federated portal covering functionality provided and rendered by other available systems.
It is also possible (upon vendor request) to include some functionalities incompatible with portlet technology. This is an important advantage in the case of hard-modifiable applications.
For applications providing only business services, it is recommended to combine the solution with BPM tools. This combination offers the possibility to create business-driven interfaces precisely fulfilling current business needs.

Comarch Café is based on a federated portal solution and its main features are:

• Compliance with JSR-168 specification
• Wide usage of AJAX technology
• WSRP 2.0 compliance
• Support for Comarch BPM (Business Process Management) and other vendors BPM tools (JSR-168 compliant)
• Support for Single Sign-On using Comarch Security Access Manager DRACO or any other system
• Flexibility and high performance
• Very high scalability adjusted to corporate needs