Many organisations don’t realise SharePoint can unearth new opportunities for increased team productivity and collaboration.
Oftentimes they’re aware the collaboration suite provides a secure place to store, organise, share and access information from any device, yet remain oblivious of features capable of transforming the way they operate.
“I’ve seen organisations dramatically improve their operations, removing internal inefficiencies and increasing collaboration between team members, departments and external partners, ultimately manifesting in a far greater capacity to achieve their missions” - Managing Director of R & G, Gordon Tan.
Organisations should immerse themselves in SharePoint’s collaborative capabilities, including document management and team sites. Additionally, since the future of organisations is moving towards strong partnerships and shared missions, understanding permissions is more important than ever.
Organisations live in a world laden with limitations, so it’s critical they leverage SharePoint to not only squash inefficiencies, but also support the rich, collaborative environment necessary for extraordinary performance.
Continue reading to learn three ways organisations can improve their use of SharePoint:
1. Training Staff in Better Document Management
A mobile workforce can make collaboration difficult. However, SharePoint’s document libraries and versioning capabilities simplify an otherwise messy process.
Document libraries ensure documents are easily classified and located, while versioning solves the problem of trying to determine the correct version of a document, which has been saved locally and edited by multiple users.
According to Chief Information Officer at TMF Group, “employees spent a great deal of time consolidating information, trying to maintain version control, and preventing duplication of their efforts.”
SharePoint’s solution is a ‘check-in’ and ‘check-out’ system, which ensures only one user can edit the document at a time. Staff can track changes to documents by accessing the running version history for each document, and can restore previous versions when necessary.
Training staff in SharePoint’s document management capabilities is absolutely essential if organisations endeavour to build a workforce, which collaborates efficiently. Mastery over this feature will result in reduced workload, fewer time-wasting actions and increase the organisation's ability to achieve their mission.
2. Start Utilising Team Sites
The enduring challenge for organisations has always been how to get remote workers and offices to collaborate successfully.
Surprisingly, the solution to this problem isn’t half as complex. Team sites can be built by selecting a SharePoint site from a template gallery, and customised to act as a centralised source for information for all members of a group.
Members can post announcements, links to resources, have online discussions and more. In addition, SharePoint syncs with Outlook, so staff members are notified of changes to meetings and deadlines in real time.
Global Knowledge took full advantage of SharePoint’s collaborative features, seeking to support their workers in remote facilities.
“With newsfeeds, our employees can share ideas, conduct conversations, keep up with colleagues’ work, and learn about changes to documents as soon as they happen” - Global Knowledge Manager at Woods Bagot, Felicity McNish.
Organisations leveraging these features are better equipped to identify the best resources, locate thought leaders and make informed decisions.
The result is fewer obstacles, quicker resolutions and a unified pathway to seamless collaboration within the organisation.
3. Configure Security Settings That Meet Your Needs
There are two reasons organisations must optimise security for SharePoint. Firstly, to protect the organisation’s data, and secondly, because dwindling resources means it’s beginning to make sense for organisations to collaborate.
Since organisations are responsible for a great deal of personal content, it goes without saying certain sites and content should not be available to all users. Permissions controlling access to site content can be configured through SharePoint groups with restricted membership.
Since 30% of SharePoint users are willing to remove content from SharePoint, even if it compromises security, it’s critical to establish who is responsible for determining who has access to what.
Organisations should establish a governance plan, including the person accountable for decisions concerning what types of information should be shared, and with whom. There should be guidelines for content, room for expansion and enforced compliance.
However, permissions should be configured in a way which protects confidential information, without sacrificing the organisation’s ability to connect and share with potential partners.
Therefore, organisations should make sure they have an experienced administrator to configure access controls for an environment, which supports collaboration between organisations with shared missions.
SharePoint has the capacity reduce inefficiencies and streamline collaboration, enriching an organisation's ability to carry out their mission effectively. Organisations should use the document management capabilities and team sites to simplify the usually complicated process of collaboration. They should also check permissions have been configured to protect organisational data, without impacting on potential partnerships in the future. The inevitable result will be not only reduced effort, but a budding capacity to deliver swift, effective help to those who need it.
Do you need help making the most of SharePoint?
R & G Technologies is a Brisbane IT Support and IT Consulting firm that helps organisations across Australia. We can help you make better use of new technologies - like SharePoint - to boost productivity and increase collaboration. Call us on 1300 562 886 or visit our contact page.