Improving personal productivity and overall business performance with Microsoft’s SharePoint and Enterprise Project Manager

Our business world is constantly changing but for most organisations it means being leaner, meaner and better than our competition in order to achieve the corporate goals and maximise profitability. It was with no surprise that the extensive agenda, business drivers and value being offered at this exclusive Microsoft event was of great interest to many companies. However after 50 registrations within 3 days we had to close the booking site and open up a new date/venue for the future. It seems improving projects, collaboration and simplified, integrated business systems are high priority items!

The headline message which attracted so many was ‘Improving personal productivity and overall business performance with Microsoft’s SharePoint and Enterprise Project Manager’. The day combined business thought leadership with a technical know-how, to result in clarity of thinking with complete end-to-end advice. The full day event was targeted at providing direction and thought provoking ideas on how to appreciate and then create more efficiency across the organisation and also how to enable that efficiency through better use of technology.

The opening sessions focused on ‘What do we know in our business about what we know?’. Not a confusing message but one which is sadly lacking in many organisations – do we provide the right access and visibility to our people of all the information they need to do their jobs to the best of their ability? Facts and figures show that over 30% of most people’s time is wasted searching and finding information and people. Other time stealers include simple activities such as creating, storing and sharing documents; the issues around shared drives highlighted the lack of naming conventions, security, controls, compliance and ultimately confidence to use what we find. But imagine we could start to erode these ‘bad habits’ and remove ineffective procedures and replace them with automation, simplistic activities and without worrying about security, accessibility and control.

This is where Microsoft steps in. Microsoft’s SharePoint technology is a multi-functional business toolkit which provides the foundations for improved performance. It is part of Microsoft’s family of business tools and intuitively links and works with other Microsoft technologies in a seamless and manageable way. For some time I have been promoting the benefits of a ‘single productivity technology architecture’ with the 2007 and 2008 product tools delivered by Microsoft!

The key to helping us make it happen is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with its integrated portal, forms, content management, search and web processing functionality. It links with most back-office and processing systems (including SAP, Oracle, Excel and other ERP systems) and acts as the ‘automated administrator’ to alert you of when important activities occur (we are human after all and do forget things); simplify the way we submit information (users should not have to think about routing document and authorisation – make it automated) and collates and surfaces critical knowledge which helps people make better decisions.

But how do we make this happen in your company? This may all sound very interesting but I am sure many have reservations and as always a few look at Microsoft with disdain. BUT this time Microsoft got it right! Over 50% of organisations questioned in a recent Gartner Survey (Dec 2008) are using SharePoint in anger within their organisations. Some are simply providing collated content management (Intranet) whilst others are exploiting the real power of SharePoint for knowledge creation, competence development (behaviour and technical skills), automated learning programme deployment and collaborative community generation. It is no longer acceptable to ‘pretend’ to collaborate. We must build new systematic and collective ways to feed from each other, improve our value as individuals and drive that effective working policy across the business through our colleagues and peers.

The event did not only focus on the theory and principles but provided case studies, demonstrations of technology in use and real end-to-end business modelling showing how to capture ideas, generate the business case, profile the project and deliver a working consumer product – with high visibility, portal services and automated escalation and approval. Now that’s a result!

A hearty round of applause was provided to our two main speakers, myself and Paul Major of Program Framework, whilst our technology guru’s, Jaret Aldridge and Gero Renker received many plaudits from the more technical attendees.

Our events are open to everyone and I would encourage attendance. We provide more than technical insights but a complete holistic approach which covers people, process and technology excellent, working in harmony, so your organisation can deploy these ideals and make its own impacts

David Gardiner
Microsoft Practice Consultant