Customer Portal

Customer portal

 Written by Biel Soler, on 12 December 2025

In today’s business environment, the challenge is not only storing documents, but sharing them securely and efficiently. This is where the Customer Portal comes into play.

The Customer Portal is the external-facing screen of your document management system, providing a virtual interface for customers to retrieve, download, and upload data securely while integrating with the various forms of document management. Unlike random emails or lost attachments, everything can be managed centrally through a single portal, with controlled access, full traceability, and the use of AI for classified, validated, and efficient document management.

With OpenKM, built on rich AI components, the best principles of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) provide natural-language answers based on available internal document resources and the content customers already want from your organization.

What is a customer portal in a document management environment?

A customer portal is a web extension of your document management system. From there, your customers can access, for example:

• Electronic invoices, tax documents, and accounting reports.
• Legal files from law firms or specialized legal practices.
• Employment documents from payroll and human resources companies.

In other words, a customer portal is a document hub linked to a central repository where the software categorizes content, assigns permissions, lists version dates, and enables file sharing between your team and your customers. Thanks to a system like OpenKM, AI can be deployed with state-of-the-art OCR technology to recognize the type of document, extract relevant metadata, and perform automated classifications.

A good portal provides three features not found in basic solutions like shared folders:

• The ability to manage access and profile details.
• Encrypted and verified communication with comprehensive logging.
• Automation of repetitive document management tasks through intelligent processes that can recognize important information so that key documents are not missing.

Why connecting the customer portal to the document management system matters

When the customer portal is truly integrated with the document management platform, you stop having “information islands” and start working with a single unified system.

1. Reduce manual work to increase efficiency

Every time your customers upload documents to the customer portal:

• They are stored directly in the unified document management repository.
• They are classified according to defined rules: customer, document type, project, area (accounting, labor, tax, corporate, industrial property, etc.).
• Workflow automation is triggered (approvals, reviews, alerts).

OCR through OpenKM’s AI functions also suggests relevant metadata using advanced OCR with the ability to identify inconsistencies or omissions while detecting documentation. This saves significant time for employees and reduces frequent errors.

2. Improve your customers’ experience

A well-implemented customer portal improves the experience from day one:

• During customer onboarding, you give them access to their private area with all the necessary information.
• Your customers can consult historical documentation—for example, download an electronic invoice, review accounting reports, or check the status of their projects—without calling or writing.
• With a mobile-friendly design, the customer can access it from anywhere.

On top of this experience, it is possible to incorporate AI-based assistants that help your internal users locate the right documentation faster or resolve questions about the information stored in OpenKM through natural-language questions (for example, about deadlines, model types, or required documentation). In more advanced scenarios, the same technology that OpenKM uses in OpenKM Intelligent Search—based on RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)—can be leveraged so the user receives concrete answers supported by the documents available in the repository.

This type of interaction creates a sense of order and professionalism that strengthens trust.

3. Security and regulatory compliance

Every organization handles sensitive data, whether proprietary tax information, critical contracts, or medical records. Sharing this data by email is very risky, but an integrated portal like OpenKM allows you to:

• Secure access with username and password, and even two-factor authentication.
• Secure document archiving in a controlled environment, with backups and access logs.
• Full traceability: you always know who uploaded, downloaded, or modified each document.
• AI tools run on this same controlled infrastructure, so document analysis (OCR, data extraction, classification) is performed while respecting permissions, privacy, and the entity’s security policy.

This way, you protect your customers’ data and meet security and privacy obligations without sacrificing agility.

Use case: customer portal for uploading tax forms and tax documentation

Let’s now look at a very common concrete example in advisory firms and professional practices: managing tax services and documentation.

1. The customer generates the forms in the Tax Agency app

The customer uses the official Spanish Tax Agency (Agencia Tributaria) application to generate:

• Periodic VAT, personal income tax, and withholding forms.
• Documentation for the annual tax closing.
• Files linked to the income tax return.

All this documentation, which previously arrived by email or even on paper, can now be routed through the customer portal.

2. The customer uploads the forms to the customer portal

From the OpenKM-based customer portal:

• The customer logs in with their credentials and enters their private space.
• They select the corresponding project or case file (for example, fiscal year 2025).
• They upload the forms generated in the Tax Agency app.

These documents are sent directly to OpenKM, with no intermediate steps, without re-sending files, and without depending on third-party storage systems. And stakeholders will receive a notification every time the customer makes a change in their customer portal space.

3. Metadata extraction and automatic cataloging

This is where OpenKM’s document management platform makes the difference:

OpenKM can apply advanced OCR combined with artificial intelligence to extract metadata from the forms: form type, tax ID (NIF), fiscal year, period, amount, filing date, etc.

With that metadata, the system automatically catalogs each document in the appropriate structure: customer, year, quarter, tax type, and links it to other relevant documentation (such as the associated electronic invoice or accounting reports).

If a document is missing, OpenKM can generate a task or alert within the internal workflow, or even show the customer which requested documents are still pending, supported by intelligent rules about the expected document set.

Thus, OpenKM’s customer portal is not just an inbox, but the entry point to advanced document management that keeps everything organized and ready for consultation.

4. Continuous communication, traceability, and regulatory compliance

In addition, from the customer portal itself:

• The firm can publish drafts, settlements, and receipts so the customer can review and approve them.
• Automatic reminders can be scheduled, using expiration metadata, ahead of due dates—reducing delays and errors.
• Everything is recorded in OpenKM, with a history of versions and actions, integrated with your filing plan and records management.

Thanks to OpenKM’s filing plan, each document type can be associated with a retention rule (for example, keeping accounting documentation for the years required by applicable regulations). When the retention period is reached, the system can generate alerts, propose review or controlled deletion of documents, and help you free up space while still maintaining traceability of the decisions made.

The result is a complete flow: from generating the form in the Tax Agency app, to its final archiving and eventual disposal, and later consultation from the customer portal in OpenKM—supported by intelligent automation processes and a filing plan aligned with regulatory compliance obligations.

More scenarios where a customer portal makes a difference

This same approach can be applied to many other processes:

Billing and finance

The customer accesses their invoices (especially the electronic invoice), quotes, and receipts, all integrated with your management programs and, if desired, with your ERP software. AI can help detect amounts, dates, or references and automatically link them to other documents.

Legal and industrial property areas

Firms that manage trademarks, patents, or litigation can use the customer portal to share filings, decisions, commercial registry documentation, and any other confidential document, with secure communication at all times—and leverage AI to classify case files, locate key clauses, or generate summaries.

Human resources management

By combining an employee portal and a customer portal, it is possible to manage payslips, contracts, and personnel files as part of a single document management strategy, using AI to extract key data and improve the lifecycle of employment documents.

In all cases, OpenKM customer portals help save time, improve your customers’ experience, and minimize common errors associated with manual document handling. And when a higher level of knowledge exploitation is required, the organization can incorporate solutions such as OpenKM Intelligent Search, which applies RAG on the repository to turn documentation into a true knowledge base that can be queried in natural language.

Conclusion: OpenKM as your customer portal

A modern customer portal is not just a file download area: it is the entry point to complete and professional document management.

With OpenKM you can:

• Build customer portals adapted to your corporate image.
• Unify your team’s work with your customers’ work in a single document management system.
• Automate key processes, from receiving Tax Agency forms to generating and archiving electronic invoices, relying on advanced OCR and artificial intelligence to recognize, classify, and enrich documents.

And when your organization is ready to take the next step, OpenKM’s intelligent search and RAG capabilities allow you to evolve that customer portal into a true living knowledge base, where your users and internal teams stop searching for files and start getting answers.

If your goal is to improve efficiency, provide secure communication, and give your customers a digital experience that meets their expectations, OpenKM’s customer portal—AI-powered and RAG-ready—is the natural solution for your organization.