Enhancing Enterprise Collaboration with SharePoint

Enterprise collaboration is very crucial for the organizations that are struggling to redress their workflows inefficiencies such as delays, misleading information, processing duplicity etc.

With SharePoint solutions, one can handle any amount of workload. In order to effectively deliver business value, SharePoint enterprise collaboration tools help organizations a lot. Content-centric business processes such as contract management cannot effectively use Web 2.0 collaboration tools without a comprehensive ECM system in place.

With advanced information sharing capabilities, SharePoint Enterprise Collaboration will help you achieve greater business process efficiency and improve your workforce productivity by:

• Improving Business Insight - Better-informed decisions will result at all levels of the organization by efficiently finding, assembling and analyzing critical business information from different sources.
• Eliminating Business Inefficiencies - Enterprise Collaboration helps your enterprise to achieve better results in less time, whilst keeping your IT infrastructure lean and easy to manage.
• Increasing Market Responsiveness - Rich enterprise collaboration tools help increase overall production and receptiveness by rapidly connecting isolated people, processes and data that enrich your structured workflows and processes.
• Enhancing Overall Business Processes - Through team collaborative workspaces, employees will be able to contain the time and effort required to access and act on data from different computing systems.

With Saviance SharePoint consulting in ECM, our clients get the roadmap for making sound ECM decisions and help them to formulate effective ECM strategy planning.

Our experienced consultants work with you to develop a clear understanding of your business strategies, performance challenges, improvement opportunities, business case requirements, timing and budgetary considerations.

SharePoint: A Versatile Development Platform

SharePoint is a robust platform which helps developers to develop various useful applications as per their business requirements. It is a known fact that SharePoint applications are highly scalable, collaborative and content driven.

SharePoint 2013 is a strong SharePoint application development platform for building solutions and apps addressing different requirements and needs. Microsoft has put all the information on MSDN and TechNet website to help build apps and understand how to consume the different capabilities of the platform.

SharePoint 2013 is used for developing apps for SharePoint and farm solutions. There are three types of SharePoint hosting:

• SharePoint hosted
• Auto hosted
• Provider hosted

Windows SharePoint Service (WSS) is a free add-on to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008, realizing a full-featured Web-based platform supports the following features:

• Content Management System
• Tools for Collaboration
• Shared calendars and contact lists
• Notice (including e-mail notification)
• Forums for discussion
• Blogs and wikis -sections
• Management of documents by creating a central repository for shared documents
• Interaction-based Web technologies, collaborative editing shared documents, as well as working space for documents
• Publishing content , including the publication of changes and workflow
• Access control and version control for documents in the library
• Browser-based management and administration.
• technical support and bug tracking
• Management of redundant facilities and equipment (Room and Equipment Reservations)
• Management of material goods (Physical Asset Tracking)
• Sales Management (Sales Pipeline)
• Customizable Web page using special settings panel, web-based tools (web parts), as well as the mechanisms of navigation
• Network load balancing and support of web space (web farms)
• Support for firewalls and demilitarized zones (DMZ)

Save Time and Money Using SharePoint workflows

Do you want to save time for your business processes and increase productivity at the same time?  Well, SharePoint workflows can provide your organization better control, more efficiency, and increased accountability over your processes. They can be customized according to the business requirements. SharePoint workflows also help businesses to streamline business processes more efficiently.

SharePoint Workflow helps in automating processes that route documents for various types of review of file/files. When you save a file to a document library on a SharePoint Server site, you have three workflows available to you:

• The Approval workflow- This workflow asks everyone to approve a file. For example, before giving a presentation, you might run this workflow so that influential people at your company can approve it.
• The Collect Feedback workflow- This workflow collects feedback. For example, if you are writing a new company policy, you might want feedback from people in various departments. Then later, you can integrate everyone’s feedback into a final version before it becomes official.
• The Collect Signatures workflow- This workflow collects digital signatures from people. You might use this if you want someone to sign an expense report, or a performance review.

Microsoft also developed SharePoint applications to continue with the best practices at workplaces and with the goal of empowering customers and other stakeholders to create their own applications. A number of features and capabilities are introduced in SharePoint 2013 which provides tools that IT professionals and solution creators need to develop SharePoint-based applications and workflow solutions that enhance organizational agility and business process automation.

SharePoint: Enabling Collaboration across the Enterprise

Enterprises today are seeking ‘collaboration’ among their workforce to tap the knowledge, expertise, experiences and skills to stay competitive and achieve desirable business results. To get that, organizations are using the power of social media technologies for their operations. SharePoint 2013 provides a robust enterprise collaboration platform that enables organizations to use social collaboration tools to channelize their business operations for desirable outcomes.

The enterprises consider SharePoint 2013 as a strategic platform for content management, record management, and business process management which fulfills their portal, content and collaboration need. Organizations are using SharePoint for five major purposes:

• Intranet
• Team collaboration
• Portal development
• Document management
• Public internet

Other popular uses of SharePoint involve process management, knowledge management, business intelligence, project management, and case management.

Organizations are adopting SharePoint 2013 platform especially because of SharePoint enterprise collaboration feature which benefits them with a reduced TCO (total cost of ownership) and increased ROI(return on investment).  In spite of its rich features and capabilities, organizations face 3 major challenges, outlined below:

• Need of experts in consulting and implementation- SharePoint consulting becomes indispensable when implementing SharePoint version for strategic planning, aligning with business goals, and a detailed implementation roadmap with budgets and schedules.
• Tools and processes for quicker roll out- despite the fact that SharePoint has undergone significant improvement, there still remains a need for customization to meet specific business requirements. Using out-of-the-box features or using third party tools and processes are the most recommended approaches according to the business requirement. 
• Ongoing support and maintenance cost- With the implementation of SharePoint, it is seen that the end-user adoption and usage grows phenomenally, and because of this the support and maintenance of SharePoint environment becomes the major key challenge for IT department of the organization.

Why Public Sector need SharePoint consulting

Public sector, as we all know is always under tremendous pressure, with acute requirement of delivering best services, productivity using minimal resources, and budget constraints at the same time. This sector is also accountable to other important organizations and agencies, and moreover, they constantly face the pressures of cost reduction and revenue generation.

Considering these challenges, Microsoft has made lot of changes in SharePoint and enhanced its capabilities to meet the needs of public sector organizations.  The new advanced features and solutions give SharePoint Public Sector organizations the ability to meet their requirements and create highly scalable SharePoint environments.

But one cannot ignore the fact that SharePoint has a vast and complex structure, and to make the most of its capabilities, public sector needs a proper SharePoint consulting. SharePoint proves to be helpful for Public Sector organizations in following ways:

• Cyber Security-  provides and maintains security for sensitive information these Public sector organizations deal with. With SharePoint, the enterprise has the ability to collaborate and share information in a real-time and secured manner.
• SharePoint High Availability- ensures that SharePoint content is always available for all users around the world collaborating on the same documents.
• Cloud Computing- Considering the sensitivity of Public Sector data and records, these organizations are taking full advantage of securing and storing data through Cloud storage.
• Data Center Consolidation-Public Sector organizations have been mandated to consolidate data centers to reduce costs and increase its infrastructure ROI. With the help of SharePoint, these organizations are consolidating and centralizing their data into an enterprise SharePoint environment while ensuring performance and scalability. 
• Optimize SharePoint Storage- Now the Public sectors organizations can expand SharePoint storage by shrinking databases/ SQL Server by 95%, thus increasing SharePoint performance and reducing costs. It helps to take back-up of your SharePoint content in no time, and recover documents and site collections with ease. 

Thinking of migrating to SharePoint?

If you are thinking of migrating to SharePoint environment, it is time to ponder over its features and the new advanced capabilities it offers. If you are using some other platform and want to migrate to SharePoint platform, what new features and services you will get? Or are you already using a SharePoint version and want to upgrade to the next version? There are lot of points which should be considered while taking the plunge: such as “Would it be helpful our business or is it just cool to migrate”?  Here we will discuss the new capabilities of SharePoint 2013 and how it becomes the right pick and the favourite platform for users.

As a matter of fact, SharePoint has seen a widespread adoption. Around 78% of Fortune 500 companies are using SharePoint 2013 across the globe. Microsoft has made lot of changes in its SharePoint versions in order to make its complex structure easier and user friendly, like by introducing some new cutting edge features for web content management, workflow, search, and big data, it has won the confidence of the users and they simply love it!

The SharePoint migration has been of two kinds, firstly, the companies which were using other platforms like Lotus, Oracle. etc. are now migrating to SharePoint platform. Secondly, the companies which were using older versions of SharePoint are now upgrading to SharePoint 2013. The reason being it’s new and advanced features some of which are listed below:

• Advanced Apps 
• New improved workflows with an add-on feature called as ‘Workflow Manager’.
• Yammer Integration
• Big Data support
• Web Content Management
• Improved Design Capabilities
• Improved Publishing Capabilities via Cross-Site Publishing

SharePoint : The Multipurpose Tool

SharePoint provides a multitude of features which are helpful for developers as well as for users. SharePoint provides a set of services for collaboration and foundation for building Web-based applications.

Creating an app for SharePoint is now easier with SharePoint 2013 as it is a strong development platform for building solutions and apps to address different requirements and needs. Using the tools which SharePoint provides, one can instantly create apps and publish them in a corporate catalog or in the Office Store.

Apps for SharePoint enable users to get new capabilities. They are versatile, reusable, and scalable. Developers can design their apps as widgets, extend the SharePoint interface, and provide a great experience to users.

MSDN provides plenty of information on SharePoint application development as how to start building your first application and how to consume the different capabilities of the platform.

SharePoint is composed of multi-purpose set of web technologies that are useful for many organizations. Microsoft recently released Windows SharePoint Services which is a free add-on for Windows Server 2003. Organizations and business units of any size and structure can use SharePoint services to increase the efficiency of business processes and improve team productivity. With tools for collaboration that help people stay connected across organizational and geographic boundaries, Windows SharePoint Services give people access to information they need.

Built on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services also provide a foundation platform for building Web-based business applications that are flexible and can be customized to meet the changing and growing needs of your business.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 introduces some useful new capabilities and features. The following new capabilities and features are particularly relevant to building custom applications.

• Libraries and Lists- SharePoint Services 3.0 introduces a number of new library and list types, which can be used as the basis for SharePoint applications and you can store a lot of data and files in these lists and libraries.
• Content Types- A content type is a reusable collection of settings that is used for content management. It enables to reuse the metadata and behaviours of a document or item type.
• Site Columns- Site columns provide a central, reusable model for column definition or template which are helpful for users to pick for multiple lists across multiple SharePoint sites.
• Workflow- SharePoint workflow is defined as the automated movement of documents or items through a series of actions or tasks for a successful completion of a business processes within an organization.
• Feature Framework- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 contains a new structure called a “feature” which reduces the complexity involved in making site customizations, leaving out the requirement to copy large chunks of code to make simple changes in the site.
• Event Enhancement- This is used for core events like changes, additions and removal of lists items or list columns. It is also used for deletion of sites and site collections.
• Mobile Device Access - SharePoint Services 3.0 provides new capabilities to the users to browse SharePoint site on their mobile devices easily.

The new features and enhancements in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provide an array of opportunities for the developers. It provides enterprise-scale capabilities to meet business requirements such as content management, site plan or site collections and streamlining business processes. Using Windows SharePoint Services organizations can enable their users to create, manage, and easily build their own SharePoint sites.

Why Public Sector Organization need SharePoint Consulting

Today public sector organizations are focusing on how to reduce operational costs and streamline their workflows to achieve optimum productivity. Public sector organizations and agencies in critical sectors such as law services, taxes and finance etc. have to deal with massive amount of paperwork and paper records every day.  To secure the important data contained in these paper records is capital intensive and requires efforts like managing, tracking and disseminating. These organizations in public sector face numerous constraints to meet their requirements effectively.

SharePoint public sector solutions have given the users to organize important information, an easy access to that information, manage documents, and enable efficient collaboration, all in a familiar and Microsoft Office-integrated environment. With the digitizing of the paper records, public sector organizations and agencies can now meet the challenges and requirements they have been facing, reduce the costs and improve their productivity significantly.  

SharePoint offers ample solutions and applications but organizations sometimes are unable to make the most of its features and capabilities. For that purpose SharePoint consulting becomes indispensable. The SharePoint consultants assist their clients in leveraging their SharePoint investments and enable them to use SharePoint effectively as a tool. 

SharePoint helps Public sector organizations to save money in following ways:

• Reduces support and IT costs by getting all your enterprise solutions under a single product license.
• Reduce development costs, by using comprehensive out-of-the-box components.
• Provides a single, easy-to-use interface for end users and for IT administration and governance.
• Improves employee productivity, by implementing collaboration tools.
• Enhances the effectiveness of customer service and sales teams by providing a quick access to information.

Why do businesses require SharePoint consulting?

As we know SharePoint comes with a broad platform including a slew of features and sometimes it becomes difficult for the organization to fully optimize its vast capabilities. There is no doubt in the fact that SharePoint has a complex structure and users sometimes find it difficult to leverage it for their business processes.

Every organization has unique business requirements at different stages of SharePoint applications. There are various SharePoint service offerings like Consulting, Implementation, Applications and Solutions set which provide organizations opportunities to leverage management strategies and cost effective business tools. And for a smooth running of business, it is important that users should have a better understanding of all the various functions of SharePoint.

This is where SharePoint consulting becomes necessary. It is always recommended to hire SharePoint consulting services so that SharePoint consultants can study and understand your business requirements and find out what actually is needed for your organization and provide a best solution. The most important reason to hire SharePoint consulting firms is mainly because of their cost effectiveness. Hence with the help of SharePoint consulting services, your requirements are met and your business value and profit gets increased at very low cost.

SharePoint consulting services also provide high security for your business information. It is very difficult to protect the information from online hackers but a consultant can secure your data with various security options available. They also explain you how to secure the data and actions to be performed to protect the data and help you in choosing a safe external hosting service. Thus consultants make the work easier and reduce the unwanted expenditure of an organization.

Managing Public Sector Records with SharePoint

Public sector organizations and departments have to deal with massive paper work and records every day which contain important and crucial information. Handling and keeping the confidential information stored in these records intact and secure is the main priority and a major concern for these departments. Sometimes it is difficult to deal with enormous paper records at one time- managing, tracking, storing and disseminating them on urgent basis.

Earlier Public Sector organizations and agencies used to face many challenges like losing or misplacing of the important data in paper records, which used to hamper the productivity and faster delivery of services. But the deployment of SharePoint has made the life of Public Sector employees easier especially in the departments like justice, human services, tax and revenue where there is the maximum demand of effective records capture and management solutions.

SharePoint Public Sector solutions enable organizations in the public sector to make content management easy for all employees and compliance across all documents. This leads to better, faster, and more secure processes that can be managed through a familiar environment, integrated into business collaboration infrastructure, and improve services more effectively. Also, it reduces the cost of storing the valuable paper records and improves the productivity of the departments by giving them effective content and records management capabilities.

By leveraging SharePoint 2010 solutions, these departments can now scan, capture and index information directly to a SharePoint library, where it can be securely managed, searched and retrieved. Thousands of organizations in Public Sector are turning to SharePoint to manage paper work more effectively, lowering costs, streamlining business processes, improving customer services and reducing compliance risks.

SharePoint: An Effective Project Management Tool

If you are a software development project manager, it is important for you to address the technical aspects of managing projects. SharePoint project management gives you an ease to manage large multi team or complex projects effectively. Using SharePoint for Project Management, you'll not only understand how to apply common and practical project management concepts in SharePoint, but also learn how to build a Project Management Information System (PMIS), which can be customized to the requirements of your project. This enhances an effective communication and collaboration among team members.

The key objectives that SharePoint meets are:

• Centralize Project Information – project contacts, calendars, task lists, resource lists, documents, templates, forms and checklists.
• Facilitate Team Communication and Collaboration – including scheduling meetings, project announcements, jointly developing proposals and requirements. 
• Streamline Project Reporting – by simplifying project tracking and status reporting.

Professional SharePoint consulting and training become vital when organizations deal with complex SharePoint projects consisting of large teams in order to ensure that  the participants understand the concepts and best practices of project management methodology, and learn how to put them into practice. The SharePoint consultants and trainers have a better understanding of risks and challenges involved with your projects and provide professional project management solutions and practices for the development and optimization of business processes.

SharePoint is a great platform on which project management infrastructure can be built successfully. It provides a wide range of tools for the optimization of internal and external cooperation. These properties make SharePoint an optimal solution for the improvement of project management and make business processes simple and transparent.