With
rapid globalization, businesses are required to cope up with the
trend to operate from locations outside the office; hence the need
for efficient communication becomes all the more evident. Dynamism
and agility are the ultimate necessities for businesses to have a
competitive edge, but paper-based processes or poorly structured
documentation storage are becoming a hindrance, given the time as
well as the effort needed in searching for information.
So
far as paper documents are concerned, it is inconvenient to track
them. Very often, there is the probability to lose them and moreover,
manual processes can result in errors. Since the process state is not
visible, considerable time has to be spent in completion of actions
or monitoring the process. Poor visibility may also be caused by
storage of documents in inadequately structured shared drives,
wherein manifold versions often lead to duplication and loss of
visibility for the most recent version. All these issues combined
together lead to lower productivity and higher cost, with dire
consequences such as litigation in case processes fail.
Across
the years, SharePoint has emerged successful in solving these common
business problems. With the passage of time, this product by
Microsoft has become the standardized
means for storage as well as sharing within an organization. Every
client has a different manner of SP utilization for solving problems.
Let us discuss three common business problems that SharePoint has
solved.
Document Management : It is a fact that a number of businesses make use of sub-folder structure for storage of documents and emails are being used to distribute them. In this case, locating documents within a deep set of sub-folders or going through loads of emails might be a great hassle. Being a central location for the complete set of documents, SP is able to solve these problems to a great extent, enabling rapid access of documents.
A
powerful feature of SharePoint document management is that the
storage of “meta-data” or information is possible against the
documents within columns. A much more robust solution is provided by
SP, which brings together the data as well as documents. Moreover,
document control features such as the capability of viewing track
changes or version history have great potential especially in cases
where using the latest version is extremely essential. Again, a
document's major and minor versions enable a department or an
individual to make alterations to a document without publishing the
alterations before they are entirely ready. Version conflicts are
prevented by the check-in and check-out features, and documents are
also made available for out-of-office use.
Workflow
Issues : Since SP empowers non-technical users with the
capability of fixing efficiency issues, it is indeed a great tool for
solving business issues as well as making room for rapid development.
So, now employees who are well-versed with the issues can leverage SP
to solve them without involving the IT department. This is where the
beneficial uses of SharePoint workflows come in, which help in
accelerating the process, reducing errors, doing away with
unnecessary steps, providing better documentation along with
enhancing communication.
SharePoint
solutions also enable convenient document movement through approval
process, updating information from other databases or software
programs, and so on.
Collaboration
: SharePoint
goes a long way in doing away with the problems of disparate systems,
unstructured data and decisions, thereby resulting in increased
collaboration. Considering the collaborative aspect, the major areas
wherein SharePoint comes in handy are HR Management, Compliance and
Business Intelligence. As an efficient collaboration portal,
SharePoint empowers investors, clients, partners, coworkers,
stakeholders to share ideas and information on dedicated SP pages
which store information pertaining to that particular project.
Moreover, with the help of SP, a team environment can even be
promoted amongst employees who work remotely, irrespective of the
frequency at which employees meet each other.
Thus,
it is clear that SharePoint, with its powerful features have been
able to solve critical business problems thereby leading to immense
benefits. Proper implementation and management can indeed lead to
great business improvements. Sharepoint
2013 mobile development
teams can help you build products within allocated budgets and time
schedules.
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