Even though SharePoint is deployed by about 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies, it’s not necessarily well-liked by users. In fact, according to a Forrester survey highlighted in an article from InformationWeek, more than half of users say they don’t like the platform.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. Here are six keys to a successful SharePoint strategy that will make the platform work better for your organization.
- Plan carefully: An important part of effective planning is to understand that SharePoint is a platform, not an application. The level of customization has historically been much more than most buyers anticipate, although SharePoint 2013 does offer more out-of-the-box usability features than previous versions. Still, SharePoint will involve some configuration to make it useful for an organization’s unique needs. The key is to understand what specific business problems you’re trying to address and solve with SharePoint. This involves clearly understanding the context within which a user operates (roles, responsibilities, colleagues and content). Then map those needs to the functional capabilities in the SharePoint platform.
- Make effective use of social enterprise: Identify concrete ways that social can improve productivity. For example, our resource manager posts on news feeds when he makes changes to resources scheduled on projects. This has allowed us to reduce meetings, because the management team as well as PMs can quickly see project changes in their news feed and understand how they impact them. Users can filter what’s relevant to them, which is far more productive than sitting through meetings in which 90 percent of the updates aren’t relevant to them.
- Keep it simple: The challenge with SharePoint is that organizations see a demo with the full feature set and decide that they need everything. The reality is that most organizations use about 25 percent of the functionality of any mature, full-featured software solution. Focus on finding the 25 percent that’s necessary to meet your specific use cases. You can always add features later.
- Consider SharePoint 2013: Even if you choose to upgrade to SharePoint 2013 solely for the enhanced enterprise search capabilities, it’s probably worthwhile because they can have a tremendous impact on user experience and usability. This is particularly true for organizations that haven’t deployed enterprise search and done much customization around that. Lack of enterprise search is one of the most common complaints we hear from users.
- Don’t be afraid to take the hybrid approach: There’s nothing wrong with moving to the cloud in phases, starting with Exchange and then exploring options for SharePoint, which may make sense on-premises or in the cloud via hosting on SharePoint Online. This can be especially useful for companies that have concerns about sensitive information being stored in the cloud and want to keep some information stored on-site for security or regulatory purposes. From a user experience perspective you need to make certain you’ve thought through things like single sign-on, integration and content replication so that the manner in which you’ve deployed the solution doesn’t adversely impact the user (i.e. signing in to multiple systems).
- Consider add-ons: Third-party solutions can be especially valuable in closing the functional gaps in SharePoint, particularly around workflow. The knock on SharePoint and other collaboration solutions has been that they don’t delivery measurable business value. Workflow tools like Nintex that are tightly integrated into your SharePoint deployment can help address that issue. On the user adoption front, tools like Harmon.ie can also provide a more familiar way for users to interact with SharePoint through a tool they use every day such as Outlook. At the same time, be mindful not to create unnecessary costs and complexity by loading up your SharePoint deployment with too many third-party apps. Keep it simple and focused on business value and user adoption.
Keeping these tips in mind can help improve the SharePoint user experience, and hopefully make the platform more well-liked among users.
Source: InformationWeek, November 2013
