Microsoft SharePoint is a collaborative web-based platform that’s heavily integrated with Office 365. It’s designed to streamline everyday office workflows and lets companies create private web portals for employees and business partners where they can store, share and access documents using any internet-enabled device.
SharePoint features a range of components, including a server that you can deploy either online or in an on-premises data center. The cloud-based component, however, is included as part of certain Office 365 plans for businesses.
Manage Your Documents
Businesses have long relied on a ton of paperwork that had to be stored and sorted meticulously using increasingly complex filing and spreadsheet systems. However, SharePoint does away with the necessity of handling ream upon ream of paper in the typical busy office environment by providing the digital document management solutions you need to build a collaborative, team-driven working environment.
The platform offers multiple ways for you to organize your digital documents, digitize hard copies and share them throughout your organization and beyond.
Aside from providing a centralized platform for storing, organizing and accessing your documents, SharePoint also provides versioning control to help ensure the consistency of your data. Integrated support for organizational data allows you to assign certain attributes to your files so your team can use the search function to find the information they need quickly.
Document management also lets you protect documents from unauthorized access using Information Rights Management, which provides features for restricting access and assigning permissions.
Build a Corporate Knowledge Base
Since the launch of Wikipedia in 2001, web-based knowledge portals have become the gold standard for displaying information online in the form of a knowledge base or encyclopedia. Using the Wiki Library feature, organizations can now build their own internal encyclopedic resources to provide support, training and any other information that the team needs easy access to. Whether it’s a complete product information library or a repository of business discussions, launching a knowledge base is a great way to facilitate information visibility across the organization.
Providing unprecedented customizability, a SharePoint implementation typically starts with a social team website that’s exclusive to your business. Here, employees and other relevant parties can post updates, start discussions, share ideas, access and work on the same documents and even organize social events such as team building and training programs.
Administrators can also organize their sites and shared document libraries using their own network folder, which integrates into Windows and can keeps your files synchronized thanks to OneDrive integration.
Access Business Intelligence Anywhere
With SharePoint Online, you’ll have the tools you need to give your employees easy access to corporate intelligence no matter where they’re located and which device they’re using. Since the platform works through any modern web browser, it’s fully responsive on all mobile devices and other platforms.
Thanks to greatly enhanced accessibility, your business can minimize downtime by empowering employees to respond to requests and emergencies quickly. After all, with the cloud on your side, access to important business information only need be a click away.
SharePoint also helps team members make sense of complicated analytical data by providing a range of methods for visualizing performance information and other statistical data. For example, administrators might use the platform to create bar or pie charts on their team pages to graphically represent things like sales reports.
The advanced graphical representation tools are both quick and easy to implement, and they provide a far more engaging way for your team to relate to the performance and progress of your organization than a confusing amalgam of statistical data.
Here at SpectrumWise, we’re all about bringing small- and medium-sized businesses into the modern age of team collaboration by implementing solutions like SharePoint. If you’re ready to adopt an IT strategy that keeps your business moving forward, call us today.
