Financial services company Prudential has created a portal for its 20,000-strong UK financial adviser community.

The organisation based the portal on a similar one it created for customers last year.

The current system consolidated numerous customer management systems to provide staff with a unified view of the data (Computing, 5 February 2004).

The new portal provides the firm's financial intermediaries with aggregated information, including an automated view of the products Prudential can offer its customers.

'Rather than build a dedicated portal, we re-used a lot of the services established for the customer-centric portal,' said Jeremy Gray, Prudential UK's head of IT architecture. 'These advisers bring business to Prudential, so we want to be able to offer them the best service and products.'

Prudential's IT department created the second portal by re-engineering its business processes and using reusable components from the customer portal project. This resulted in efficiency improvements and cost savings, according to the firm.

'When an adviser contacts us, by whatever method, we want to be able to create an illustration or quote electronically. We can then automatically track that submission and manage the contract, with the adviser following the sale,' said Jon Cross, head of ebusiness at PruTech, Prudential UK's IT division.

Gray added: 'With the portal, they get validation at the point of entry. It reduces the number of applications returned due to manual entry errors. The benefits to us are that we can manage the process more effectively and turn applications around more quickly.'

The Prudential's IT department used Java-based WebLogic Portal, Integration and Server products. BEA provided professional services to build and power the portal and integrate it with the company's systems.