3 Major Reasons Why You Should Invest in SharePoint Consulting

It’s no secret that the vast majority of enterprises use SharePoint as their go-to solution for collaboration and communication. From NASCAR, UPS Store and Nestle Nutrition Institute, to Emerson, Goodyear and Philip Morris International - the list goes on.

The use of SharePoint has seen nothing but growth. The last recorded number of 200 million organizations has been well surpassed for sure.

SharePoint has been praised for its features and benefits, as well as outstanding support; you wouldn’t expect anything less from Microsoft. But, the tool is only as good as its user. Or, to be more precise, the tool has to be customized in order to be fully utilized.

That’s where SharePoint consulting steps into the picture.

Investing in SharePoint consulting helps companies achieve long-term cost optimization and significant productivity savings, and avoid user frustration and resistance to the new environment.

Read more to find out why smart organizations approach SharePoint implementation strategically.

1. SharePoint Consulting Helps You Get the Most Out of SharePoint

The goal of every management team is to try to uniform these procedures so that they are logical and relieved of any unnecessary steps. If there are some mundane tasks, the aim is to automate them. If the organization is aware of the operational bottlenecks, the aim is to remove them from the equation. For instance, SharePoint workflows can be optimized and intranets can be adjusted to serve the actual needs of the company.

Customizing the SharePoint platform brings numerous benefits to the organization. Here are some of the examples:

• User experience and interface can be adjusted to user preferences
• Advanced functionalities can improve efficiency
• Business-oriented and social side of the corporate portal can be well balanced through tailor-made solutions
• Structured document storing can be enabled to fit the organization’s needs
• An optimal hybrid environment can be created for the easiest management of compliance requirements

...and much more

Everything from design and navigation to content and workflows - can be customized. However, to do it right, you need an experienced professional or a SharePoint team of experts that will map out your vision and present the best cost-efficient options to you.

2. SharePoint Consulting Helps You Create a Roadmap for Business Success

SharePoint consulting experts are there to create tailor-made solutions that expand the functionalities of SharePoint. It all begins with asking the most important question: why?

If you’re looking to revamp your current SharePoint platform, you need to know why you want to change it. This is how your chosen SharePoint expert can propose the best design and define project steps and timelines that will bring great results.

The same is for the case if you are just starting out with SharePoint and you want to build a solution from scratch: it takes quite a bit of time and effort to list the pain points of your organization and see how they can be resolved. Plus, your chosen SharePoint consulting firm is responsible for making the overall deployment costs as low as possible.

Truth be told, SharePoint has useful features as an out-of-the-box solution. But in order to really make the most of it, you need to customize it for success. SharePoint consulting experts serve as guides that have prepared answers for all your dilemmas. The DIY approach is not recommended, especially for large companies that need to have a high performing, centralized system with multilayered security.

Companies that manage to tighten up their internal operations note higher productivity levels, better employee engagement, and optimized usage of resources (both financial ones and in terms of time and energy).

In a nutshell, SharePoint can be your strategic ally and help your team focus on other business segments that lay the groundwork for your company growth; the right consultant has the expertise to make this happen.

3. SharePoint Consulting Ensures the Technology Serves the People (Not the Other Way Around)

The situation gets especially difficult when the company has a past record of failed initiatives; these tend to solidify the negative attitude employees have toward anything new. It often happens that the upper management underestimates these previous failures and the consequences they hold on future attempts of implementing any type of changes.

Nothing ever happens in vacuum. People have limited capacity to handle change and overwhelming them is easier than you think. Good communication is the key to success, but it is not sufficient for successful SharePoint adoption.

It’s always smart to make a list of people that are likely to be early adopters and a list of those who are likely to resist. By including needs and work habits of different groups in the early phase of developing a custom SharePoint solution, your employees will be more open to adopting the new technology.

Remember: people who will essentially be the users of the new technology you introduce, need to feel comfortable and to take ownership of the platform.

The technology must serve the people; not the other way around. This is especially why SharePoint consulting is worth the investment. Professionals who are well-versed in SharePoint already have a ton of experience under their belt and they know how to create intuitive, simple solutions that won’t bring additional stress and frustration to your employees.

In addition, the company won’t need to waste additional money and other resources on training.

SharePoint Consulting: Is it the Right Choice for You?

The ultimate goal for any company that uses SharePoint is to get the most value of their investment and to keep their employees happy, productive, and engaged. Some companies are reluctant to invest an additional amount of money to SharePoint consulting services because the deployment is often quite an investment by itself.

However, be wary of where you try to save up money.

You know the saying: buy cheaply, pay dearly. When companies stint and try to optimize their expenses by excluding what they think are “unnecessary” costs, they might regret their decision later down the road, when things get a bit complicated. Precisely because SharePoint is an investment on an enterprise-level, it needs to be deployed and designed in a way that matches the business needs perfectly.

To assess whether or not you should hire a SharePoint consultant, start by asking yourself the following questions:

• Do I have someone in-house who can handle all SharePoint updates, developments in the future?
• How much time and money are my employees wasting on a daily basis due to the inefficiency of our collaboration and communication platform?
• Is our company position on the market jeopardized because of the way we handle our operations internally?
• Do the existing workflows truly match the way it’s natural for our company to handle procedures?
• Which business goals do we want to achieve and how is our tech helping us?

When you try to see a bigger picture and assess the complexity of the project, the scope of it might scare you. This is easily handled by hiring a SharePoint consultant. Think about it like outsourcing your worries so that you can focus on other things that matter, i.e. your core business.

If you’re searching for the best SharePoint consulting services, look no more. Share IT has more than a decade of experience in SharePoint: get in touch with us today.