Back in the "good old days" of a paper based office, a filing cabinet was an essential piece of equipment for the storage of all "vital" organisational documents. However, now in this new and ever developing working environment, described as a "paperless office" there are software platforms such as Microsoft’s SharePoint 2007/2010, which offer the same but enhanced functionality electronically.
Within, such "off the shelf" packages there are many standard functions. SharePoint 2007/2010 provides a document management function, like your old filing cabinet. This is where all documents can be submitted and categorised/classified and stored to enable quick and easy retrieval within the organisation by anyone suitably authorised with access to the network or the internet.
SharePoint is well known for the document management capabilities which leads to the misconception that this is the only function it has. SharePoint is a package that offers much more, which is often overlooked. The additional functions available in SharePoint include: task lists, announcements, image libraries, form libraries, workflows, web part pages, custom pages, dashboards, and Web 2.0 social networking functions to name but a few.
All of the functions listed above are essential to aiding any organisation wanting to develop and utilise the information stored within it, whether for competitive advantage, performance improvement or for compliance. However, due to the lack of knowledge of SharePoint’s full capabilities, these components are not developed and utilised as well as they could or should be. Accenda focus on ensuring that these components are developed and applied to an organisations optimum business advantage.
Utilising workflows within SharePoint is one of the ways of getting the most out of this software solution. While it can store numerous documents and images etc., the workflows can be developed in such a way for each individual organisations requirements to replicate manual business processes, reducing the opportunity for error, and increasing the speed, geographic flexibility and the ability to monitor and control the flow of information.
An example could be; an electronic form is created and completed and is "checked in" to SharePoint. The form’s information may initiate a workflow process within SharePoint, where it uses certain mandatory fields on the form to access internal data lists using search criteria. The form, an order for example, could then be routed for authorisation and credit check and if approved, it could then continue through the workflow process.
This workflow could reduce the complete process time down to a few minutes rather than hours or days, while providing progress visibility throughout. This offers an organisation a much smarter and more cost effective way of operating.
Accenda knows that every management team wants to be able to track how their organisation is doing. This is usually done by way of reports. SharePoint has the tools that can provide these to be displayed via the dashboard functionality. This enables timely pictorial views, like traffic light key performance indicators (KPIs), of the data to be shown in reports. This Business Intelligence aspect in SharePoint can be developed further by the use of PerformancePoint which is now incorporated as part of SharePoint 2010.
While the common misconception of SharePoint is that it is simply a replacement for the historical filing cabinet, this is evidently not the case. It is, in fact, an essential business tool that should be utilised and developed to meet an organisations needs and requirements. Accenda prides itself on moulding SharePoint to support and help an organisation develop work processes, to be smarter and more cost effective. In today’s market can any organisation afford to be without this essential tool?