As an advocate of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server I spend a lot of time explaining the benefits of the product. I understand that not everyone is as interested in this as I am, but I do find it a little odd that for a product that offers so much in the collaboration and productivity stakes that MOSS does that we still struggle to get the appropriate buy-in and support.
Simple things, such as a centralised absence management application or an expenses processing system, would bring benefits to an organisation that doesn’t have these things. This is just small stuff. Imagine the savings, both in take and money, that could be made by tackling some of the larger opportunities.
So why do we struggle so much? I think the issue is that many companies do not see their intranet as a serious productivity tool. Their judgement is clouded by their experiences on the internet. The internet and an intranet are two very different beasts. They have different purposes, different audiences and different content.
But do they really? Or is it a matter of scale?
I see the internet as three distinct “offerings”;
Services – what do I mean by services? Well, any site that offers it’s audience a service, be it online banking, e-commerce or a window to a high street shop. They are all offering you something and you have to pay for it.
Information – this group would include not-for-profit and government facing websites. The World Health Organisation (WHO) would be an example. The British Library another. This group would also include user groups, such as the SharePoint User Group UK.
Throwaway – these are the kind of sites that have a short shelf life. Sites thrown together that don’t really serve any purpose and usually wither and die due to lack of interest by their owners. These kind of sites often appear when free hosting is offered by a service provider.
There is a fourth category, adult entertainment, which could be argued that it would sit under the Services section – I suppose there is a service in there somewhere! We’ll ignore it as we only want to talk about the useful stuff.
Services have a purpose, they are there to generate money. Information covers knowledge exchange and Throwaway is, well, expendable! It is possible for sites to start out in the Throwaway section but move into Information section as they become more popular and then start to serve a purpose.
So, what does this have to do with SharePoint? It’s all about perception. If your experience is based around the internet then approximately 85–90% of the sites you come across will be in the Throwaway section and will have not painted a very good picture. You may also have used the Services and Information based sites to a limited degree but you have probably had a good reason to use them. Fact finding and product ordering? The number of people who have not used e-commerce sites is getting smaller by the day.
Let’s look at this from the point of view of a senior manager who has very limited knowledge of SharePoint. How do you convince them to spend the time, cost and resources into supporting an enterprise installation of MOSS? How do they see the end product? When do they get to realise the benefits? What do we need it for? How much?? You can just imagine the conversation.
We could do “death by PowerPoint” to get the message across but they would probably be asleep by the end of it. So what is the answer?
A forward-seeing senior manager might commission some investigation work – go and see what other companies are doing. Do they have applications that you can see? Personally I think this is the best way of selling SharePoint. Frankly the document management and collaboration side of it is just the tip of the iceberg and they’re pretty self explanatory.
Extolling the virtues of SharePoint as a productivity tool is always a good starting point. Most organisations have shared network drives, some may have Microsoft Exchange Public Folders. They will all have information stored in various places and will most likely not have a robust information architecture for it all. SharePoint would certainly help here – documentation all in one place with version control and the ability to check-in and check-out documents. Think of the collaboration opportunities let alone search! Think of the reduction in the number of emails with large attachments flying around the network. Think about the workflow and approval functionality. Think of the benefits that could be realised and this is just the document management side of things.
Let’s take it a step further – how many spreadsheets are out there that do nothing but hold lists? No functions, no formulas, just basic data. Again, these files are stored in various locations and are not exposed to any kind of search facility. You can’t easily share them. They serve virtually no purpose as they are. Now if we were to move them to a SharePoint custom list, what could we do with them? They are still just lists of information but they are now exposed to the SharePoint Object Model – they can be used by other applications, other users and other lists. More often than not if you need a list with that information in it then someone else is also likely to. Why not share it? Make it useful.
Next stop? Online absence management system? Online expenses processing? All pretty simple stuff that we all know would make life a lot easier if they were available as online applications.
Where do you stop? I went on a course for SharePoint Designer 2007 with Learning Tree International last September and the instructor said something quite important – “if you can think it, you can do it in SharePoint” – I have not seen anything to the contrary yet.
Imagine an application which linked into your profile data on My Site and exposed everything you need for your daily routine in one place. Fully customisable. Your home page built around your role and your needs. All of those paper processes are now online. All of the information you need to get your hands on is available and searchable. Real time data appears via a dashboard to senior management. Detailed data available to those that need it. Sounds ambitious? With a bit of time and investment there is no reason why all this should not be available to everyone that uses SharePoint. Would you be a fool not to back something like this?
So, to all of you out there who are trying to get SharePoint implemented as a strategic solution, keep at it – one day those with their hands on the money will see the light!
As always, your comments on my posts are welcome.
Until next time…
