Setting Up Materials Portals for Mere Mortals

You made the decision to find a partner to help centralize your branded materials ordering. Now it's time to design your ordering portal.

Things to consider:

1. Who will be using the portal?
2. How will they need to access it?
3. Will users have reliable internet connections? 
4. What should it look like? 
5. What kinds of reports will you need to run? How frequently?
6. Do you need to have orders approved or will spending caps be placed?
7. Will you need to integrate a digital asset management system?
8. Will you need to house downloadable assets in addition to hard copy orders? 

Sounds like a lot to think about - trust me, if you are able to answer these questions before you embark on your implementation journey, you will be grateful you did. 

Remember, your portal should be attractive, easy to use and easy to navigate. And anything that is a good experience for the user requires quite a bit of work ahead of launching the portal.