At first glance, the prototype design for the Culinary Garden looks much like any portal. Still, several factors make it unique compared to out-of-the-box service portals with many service management tools.

 

Adoption Through Convenience

The first feature that makes this portal unique is that it is an actual service portal where people log in and access their applications, services, and other information.

 

This addresses the portal adoption issue many companies face: how to get people to their portal.

 

Looking at this from the standpoint of a store or corporate user, the portal is where they go to access their store-related SAS business applications, email, and productivity apps (in this case, MS Office). As their primary desktop, they are in the portal all day, making it easy to shop, request support, or request services. Even portal chat is easily accessible.

​

Portal Organization

The next thing to note is that the portal is organized like a staff member would think: store sales, logistics, marketing, and back-office support are common retail functions. Back-office support, where all administrative and IT functions occur, is a common retail term.

 

Support and help with store infrastructure are located under store sales, while facility and desktop computing needs are part of back-office functionality. As in the typical retail environment, this includes HR and Finance functions.

 

Again, back-office support isn’t organized by department but by function: items employees need, manager’s needs, site and technical support.

 

The Company Store is an On-Line Department Store

The company store offers everything employees need to obtain or procure: point-of-sale devices, supplies, computer gear, furniture, and more. They don’t need to access different departments’ service portals or think about who provisions their item. Like Amazon, they can search or browse for what they need.

​

Automation

You can’t see it here, but in the back end, all fulfillment that can be automated has been automated:

• Software is automatically installed when ordered or approved

• One-time payments and bonuses are automatically added to paychecks on approval

• Pricing changes are automatically deployed on approval

• Tax forms are set up as downloads

​

Employee Lifecycle Management and Access

The Employee Lifecycle Events, like Onboarding, Separations, and Transfers, are links to the HR system processes that kick off these activities, not tickets that get logged. Once the process is finalized from an HR perspective, the HR system will spawn the appropriate tickets/work orders in the Service Portal's back-end system.

​

There are NO access requests in the system. All access is handled through roles associated with the employee. If they take on temporary responsibilities, their HR record is updated first as a job change. When the assignment ends, their access is revoked.

​