Your clients call for information that is already in your system
Where is my order, what did I order last year, could you send that packing slip again. Every question costs someone on your side five minutes, and the client waiting time. A portal removes those questions by showing the data that is there anyway.
- The same question comes back every week, from different clients.
- Someone manually forwards overviews that come out of the system.
- Your suppliers or engineers email statuses that you then retype.
- The phone rings most between nine and eleven.
- A client asks for an invoice from last year and someone goes looking for it.
- Part of your inside sales team's time is spent reading out what is on the screen.
- Large clients ask for an integration that you currently solve with an export.
- When it gets busy, things take longer — not because there is more work, but because there are more calls.
Recognise two or more? Then the conversation is worth it.
When a portal pays off — and when it doesn't
A portal pays for itself in calls saved and in clients who don't walk away because they can't see anything. But it only works if there is something behind it to show.
When the data is already there
You have an ERP or inventory system that knows what the client wants to know. The portal only has to make it visible, not come up with it.
The volume is there. Ten clients who call twice a year aren't worth a portal; a hundred clients who call every week are.
Your clients already work digitally with other suppliers and now expect it from you too.
When there is nothing behind it
If the information is only in someone's head or in loose files, you are building a shop window for an empty shop. Then the system behind it comes first.
Your clients are a handful of large accounts with a fixed contact person. They want to keep that person, not a login screen.
The real problem is that your stock levels are wrong. A portal doesn't solve that but magnifies it — now the client sees it too.
What you get, and what we need from you
- A portal with its own login per client, supplier or engineer, and permissions per role.
- An integration with the system the data comes from, so nobody has to update anything.
- Single sign-on if you already have an identity provider: Microsoft 365, Google or your own.
- An admin screen where you add and block users yourself.
- Documentation of the integration and of the permission structure.
- Someone who actually does the process, half a day every two weeks. Not just the manager.
- Someone who can make decisions without consulting first.
- Access to the systems we integrate with, or to whoever arranges that access.
- A decision on who may see what. That is rarely technical and often the longest discussion of the project.
We are clear about this up front, because afterwards it is always an awkward conversation. Part of what we build is custom work for you. Another part consists of components we developed ourselves and use for more clients — and that is exactly why you don't pay again for every part. What falls under which agreement is in the contract before we start, not in an appendix you get at delivery.
If you want certainty in case we disappear, we arrange source code escrow: an independent third party holds the code and releases it to you when needed. For larger assignments that is a normal procurement requirement, and we cooperate with it.
How a portal comes about
A portal almost never goes live for everyone at once. We start with a small group that wants it, and expand when it works.
-
01
Half a day · free of charge
Listening in at the phone
We listen in for half a day with the people who get the questions and count which question comes how often. That count determines what goes into the portal.
-
02
Defining permissions and roles
Who sees what, and what may someone change. This comes first because changing it afterwards is expensive.
-
03
A portal for one group
For example only order status, only for your ten most active clients. Small enough to fix if it isn't right.
-
04
Every 2 weeks
Expanding feature by feature
Invoices next, then documents, then self-service ordering. In that order, because that is how trust grows too.
-
05
After the pilot
Opening up
Only once the group using it is happy with it do you invite the rest. A portal that stumbles at launch never recovers.
What a portal costs
The screens are the cheapest part. The money goes into the integration with your system and into the permission structure — who may see which data, and how do you prevent someone from requesting another client's order.
A portal is also the kind of project where the second phase often turns out cheaper than the first: once the integration is in place, every next feature is a fraction of the work.
Count how many questions you get per week and multiply by five minutes. At 50 questions a week that is over 200 hours a year.
That is the sum that counts. Not what the portal costs, but what it costs today not to have one.
Talking to your system
If your ERP has a decent API, this takes a week. If a layer has to be built around it, it is the biggest item of the project.
Who may see what
Simple if every client only sees their own data. Expensive as soon as group structures, branches or shared accounts are involved.
Passwords or SSO
Your own login is built quickly. Connecting to your client's Microsoft or Google environment is neater and costs more.
For those who want to check
This part is for your IT manager or for whoever will do the maintenance later. If you don't have one, you can skip it — it changes nothing about what you get.
Laravel with Vue or Inertia
A portal is screen work, so here we more often go for a richer frontend than with an internal system.
Permissions on every request
Authorisation lives on the server, not in the screen. Every request is checked again, even if the button wasn't visible.
Queues, not live queries
Your ERP is not queried on every page view. Data comes in through a queue, so the portal keeps working when your ERP is slow.
Login via OAuth or SAML when the client has its own identity provider.
What that looked like in practice
14
hours of retyping saved per week
Packing slips that book themselves
Technical wholesaler, 140 employees — PDFs from the mailbox are read, checked and created as orders in the ERP.
Laravel · RAG · ERP integration
6
weeks until the first integration went live
A core system from 2012, opened up again
Manufacturer in the Brainport region, 320 employees — an API layer next to the existing system, without production downtime.
Laravel · API · migration path
38.000
documents searchable with their source
The archive gives answers
Engineering firm, 85 employees — staff ask a question and get the answer with its source.
Laravel · embeddings · SSO
Half an hour costs you nothing
Tell us which process takes the most manual work. We will tell you honestly whether AI is the right answer — and sometimes the answer is: fix your integration first. Then you have that too, without an invoice.