6 Steps to Start Your SharePoint Journey

Microsoft SharePoint has the potential to generate a real Return on Investment for your business by increasing productivity. A well-designed SharePoint environment can assist with:

• Communication of lists, tasks and alerts to save employees searching disparate sources for information.
• Organisation, management and version control of documents to facilitate better collaboration and governance.
• Automation of business workflows, such as personal leave applications and expense approvals, to reduce paperwork and empower staff.
• Integration with existing Line of Business (LOB) software applications to minimise duplicated effort and disruptions caused by context switching between applications.

Unfortunately, some SharePoint implementations fail to deliver upon expectations because of a combination of reasons that are overlooked by both the buyer and seller.

Loftus devised the following checklist, titled 6 Steps to Start Your SharePoint Journey, to provide you with considerations that might steer you towards a better SharePoint story.

“Prepare for the difficult while it is still easy. Deal with the big while it is still small.” – Tao Te Ching.

6 Steps to Start Your SharePoint Journey

1. Embrace all stakeholders and educate them.

   More so than other application, SharePoint has the potential to be the central hub from which everyone in your business works. Certainly, everyone should be encouraged to use it regardless of whether that’s a cheery part-time admin assistant or boisterous CEO. So, doesn’t it make sense to educate your staff on what SharePoint can do and make sure their voice is heard?

   It’s certainly always nice to be involved from the ground floor upwards on a project. If you involve key staff in planning and design activities, you’re much more likely to get a better result and have automatic buy-in.

2. Engage an architect – plan and design first.

   A house is seldom constructed without a proper architectural design. In constructing a house, an architect considers your needs, provides you with guidance and suggestions, and determines what is practically feasible to achieve. In essence, an architect is the translator that acts a conduit between you and the builder.

   An architect is necessary to properly implement SharePoint. Sure, the basic SharePoint platform can be installed “out of the box” but that’s like moving into a display home – it just won’t meet all of your requirements and it might be hard, if not impossible, to retrofit them later.

   Proper planning also enables you to determine how fast or slow you might go, gain an understanding of budget requirements, and make sure you’re getting what you really want.

3. Don’t dilute your wishes just to get them all, implement in stages.

   So, you’ve embraced stakeholders and engaged an architect but how much is it going to cost? That much! If it’s more than you thought, you might be tempted to reduce the scope of what you want to achieve.

   A better option is to logically sequence and prioritise what you’re going to do now versus later. That way your architect and builder can make sure the foundations will support all future stages. You can therefore make sure your business sees how well you’ve resolved a particular challenge rather than implementing partial solutions to everything.

4. Manage change.

   A worthy SharePoint implementation will introduce efficiency to many areas of your business through improved communication, collaboration and governance. In that sense, it will probably be quite disruptive because the way you’ve always done things will probably change significantly.

   Before you start, consider how you will manage change and who will form your coalition that interacts with the rest of your business (internal) as well as the architect and builder (external).

5. Don’t forget training.

   Training is important – you need to know how to use what has been built for you. Ensure that there’s time and budget for training.

   Some IT firms don’t really offer it because, well, it’s not their strongest skill!

   Firstly, make sure you’re trained by someone that really knows both SharePoint and your business. Secondly, consider a train-the-trainer approach where one or more resources in your business are tasked with becoming experts within your business. If you want someone across the IT maintenance and support, make that known up front. Thirdly, make use of videos and animations rather than wearying manuals – a SharePoint environment is highly visual therefore videos are really helpful.

6. Leave the door open for ongoing innovation.

   The future isn’t written, as the saying goes. New products and services are offered in the IT space just as they are within your industry.

   The best SharePoint designs often incorporate the use of third-party add-ons and other custom tweaks. Even so, it’s worth making sure yours isn’t radically customised. A well-designed SharePoint environment will be easier to migrate to new versions of the platform, whether this is on premise or in the Cloud.

The advice above is intended to be generalist in nature. Every business varies in terms of complexity, risk profile, and budget, not to mention industry type and product offering. Therefore, it’s important to evaluate your specific situation.

Loftus considers that IT should support your business rather than drive it. Consequently, our business exists to, firstly, understand yours and, then, plan how IT can be utilised to drive a proper Return on Investment (ROI).

The Loftus technical team consists of tertiary qualified and industry certified IT professionals with a passion for crafting tailored solutions that lower risk, reduce complexity, and improve efficiency. Our SharePoint team has designed and built environments for government agencies and private sector businesses that have varying goals and requirements.

Sharing our knowledge is important. That’s why we place an emphasis on SharePoint training and offer packages aimed at novices through to experienced administrators. Furthermore, our “Lunch and Learn” sessions enable existing and potential customers to discover more about SharePoint.

Contact Us or phone 1300 LOFTUS (1300 563 887) to discover how we can help architect and build the optimum SharePoint solution for your business.