SEC-01
Least-privilege access
Each integration gets the narrowest scope that lets the work function. Nothing more.
Stage 02 · BuildCustomer & partner portals
Giving customers the answer without a phone call
Most support volume is people asking for information you already hold. A portal is worth building when the questions are predictable and the answers are already in a system.
- Access stays in your accounts
- Every change on record
- Written, auditable deliverables
- C01Count the questions firstIn scope
- C02Check the data is fit to showIn scope
- C03Design access properlyIn scope
- C04Start with the highest-volume questionIn scope
- C05Keep one authoritative sourceIn scope
- C06Measure deflection honestlyIn scope
In short
A customer portal earns its cost when a predictable, repeated question can be answered from data already held in a system. Order status, invoice history, delivery documents, account balances, service tickets. It is a poor investment when the questions vary too much to anticipate, when the underlying data is not reliable enough to expose, or when the real problem is that the answer itself is bad — a portal showing a customer that their order is three weeks late does not fix the lateness.
- 5
- Warning signals
- that say this is the work
- 6
- Controlled steps
- each ships something you keep
- 4
- Written refusals
- lines we do not cross
Self-audit
Signals this is the work
Tick the ones that are true where you are. Nothing is sent anywhere — the answer is for you, not for us.
If more than one of these is true today, the problem is usually further along than it looks from the outside. That is not a sales line; it is what the cost of waiting does.
Readiness checklistCustomer & partner portals
0 of 5 true
Nothing ticked yet.
How we do it
The sequence
Each step ships something you keep. You can stop after any of them and still be better off than when you started.
Start with step one- 01
Step 1 of 6
Count the questions first
What is actually asked, how often, and whether the answer exists in a system today. That is the business case, and sometimes it says no.
- 02
Step 2 of 6
Check the data is fit to show
Exposing data to customers raises the standard. Inconsistencies that were tolerable internally become support tickets.
- 03
Step 3 of 6
Design access properly
Who sees what, how accounts are created and revoked, and what happens when someone leaves the customer. Retrofitting authorization is expensive.
- 04
Step 4 of 6
Start with the highest-volume question
One thing done well beats a portal with eleven half-features nobody uses.
- 05
Step 5 of 6
Keep one authoritative source
The portal reads from the system of record. It does not become a second place where truth lives.
- 06
Step 6 of 6
Measure deflection honestly
Whether contact volume actually fell. If it did not, the portal answered a question nobody was asking.
Assurance
Secured and auditable by default
These controls apply to every engagement, including this one. They are engineering decisions, not a certificate on a wall — and you can check each of them.
SEC-02
Credentials in your name
Accounts and keys live in your tenancy. You can revoke any of them without asking us.
SEC-03
Every change logged
Changes, deployments and incidents leave a written trail you can audit.
SEC-04
Restores tested, not assumed
A backup only counts once it has been restored. We test, and we report the result.
SEC-05
Separate environments
Development never touches production credentials or unmasked customer data.
SEC-06
A documented exit
Runbooks written as we go. Leaving means revoking our access — nothing is held back.
What we will not do
The refusals
The things we turn down are a better description of how we work than the things we sell.
Standing commitmentsCustomer & partner portals
- 01
We will not: Build a portal to hide a process problem the customer is right to complain about.
- 02
We will not: Expose data that is not accurate enough to survive being looked at.
- 03
We will not: Duplicate the system of record inside the portal.
- 04
We will not: Ship self-service with no path to a human.
Questions
Before you ask
Anything else, ask on the first call. There is no charge for working out whether this is the right fit.
Talk about a problemWill customers actually use it?
They use it when it is genuinely faster than emailing you, and ignore it when it is not. That means no forced account creation for a one-off task, working search, and mobile that is not an afterthought. If the portal is slower than sending a message, the message wins every time.
Can we use an off-the-shelf portal?
Often, yes — many CRM, commerce and ERP platforms include one, and if your needs are close to standard that is the cheaper answer. Building makes sense when the portal has to join several systems, when the access model is unusual, or when the experience is itself part of what customers buy from you.
How do you handle logins and security?
Standard authentication with multi-factor where the data warrants it, role-based access checked on the server for every request, full audit logging, and an offboarding path that actually revokes. Access control is designed at the start; it is the part that is most expensive to add later.
What about partners rather than customers?
Same pattern, usually more complex, because partners have organizations and hierarchies of their own: who inside the partner sees which accounts, negotiated pricing visibility, and delegated administration. Worth modelling explicitly rather than treating a partner as a customer with extra permissions.
Tell us what isn’t working.
One process, one system, one decision you are stuck on. An engineer replies within one working day with how we would approach it, and whether it needs building at all.