The 3 keys to a successful SharePoint implementation

So you’ve decided your business needs SharePoint. Congratulations! You’re about to join the 78 percent of Fortune 500 companies that made the same decision. But you also know that SharePoint is an incredibly versatile platform. And with that versatility comes your next decision⁠—which business goals you want SharePoint to address, and how to make it happen. This is the time to plan carefully for a successful SharePoint implementation.

How to implement SharePoint the right way

This may come as a surprise, but SharePoint implementation itself is simple. In essence, the challenges of SharePoint implementation aren’t technical—they’re organisational. You need to know what you want and how you’re going to achieve it. Then, when the implementation is done, you need to get all your staff onboard.

We can break a successful SharePoint implementation into three steps:

• Define your business requirements
• Identify the best SharePoint solution
• Engage staff with SharePoint training

Looking for SharePoint advice from the experts?

1. Conduct a business analysis

There’s one thing all businesses have in common: they’re all different. The first step in SharePoint implementation is getting your stakeholders together and discussing what processes you want to streamline or automate.

Perhaps your remote workers are having trouble accessing up-to-date documents. Maybe your onboarding process is getting bogged down in a complex paper trail. It could be there’s no way to effectively inform staff about company policies. Or are GDPR requirements obstructing your marketing activity? Whatever is holding your business back should be noted, so the issues can be tied in to a SharePoint solution.

2. Identify the right SharePoint model

Depending on the issues you identified earlier, a qualified SharePoint consultant can point out the service model and features you need. It’s worth considering the pros and cons of SharePoint Online, on-premise, and hybrid. Then you’ll want to consider the specific features required, and any necessary customisation.

Some of the most popular features include:

• intranets
• extranets
• forms
• calendars
• forums
• news feeds

However, with custom SharePoint development you can create everything from BI applications to record management systems.

3. Ensure adoption with SharePoint training

Any new technology has a learning curve. Thankfully, SharePoint is designed with non-technical users in mind. The WYSIWYG interface allows staff in all departments to create and configure their own SharePoint sites. Even so, some basic SharePoint training is necessary if you want your staff to get full value from the platform.

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