Customer portals and personal accounts

What clients typically do in a portal

• Track orders, deliveries, applications or cases, with status history.
• Download documents: contracts, acts, invoices, certificates, policies.
• See balances, payment schedules and outstanding invoices, and pay online.
• Submit requests and see their progress instead of chasing a manager.
• Manage their company's users — add a colleague, change permissions.
• Receive notifications when something changes.

Which of these matter depends on the business. A logistics company's clients want shipment status; an insurance client wants the policy and the claim; a wholesale client wants to reorder and see invoices. See, for example, logistics companies and insurance companies.

Where the data comes from

Most portals do not create new data — they show data that already exists in your CRM, 1C or another accounting system, a warehouse system or a custom database. The portal reads it through APIs or scheduled exchanges, and writes back what clients submit. That makes the integration design the most important part of the project: how fresh the data must be, what happens when the source system is unavailable, and which system is the master for each field.

See CRM integration and 1C integration for how we connect these systems.

Roles and access

Client companies are rarely a single person. A director needs everything, an accountant needs invoices, a logistics manager needs shipments. We design roles and permissions around these real jobs, with an admin role on the client side so their own team can manage access. The principles are in designing roles and permissions.

Security and personal data

A portal holds commercial and often personal data. The basics:

• Strong authentication, with optional two-factor sign-in for sensitive accounts.
• Strict separation between clients at the data level, not only in the interface.
• An audit log of who viewed or changed what.
• Encrypted connections, secure storage of documents, regular backups.
• Compliance with Azerbaijan's personal data law where personal data is processed; see personal data law for websites.

Rollout

Portals succeed when clients actually start using them. We plan the launch with your team: which clients get access first, how they are invited, what managers say when a client calls with a question the portal answers. Usage analytics show which sections are used and which need rethinking.

What we need from you

• The questions clients ask most often, ideally from support or sales records.
• Access to the systems that hold the data, with their API documentation.
• Your rules on who in a client company may see what.
• A group of friendly clients willing to try the first version.