Globally, businesses are adopting agile methods for creating and implementing their business and IT strategies, and they are also searching for chances and strategies to improve their data management capabilities. Solutions that offer benefits in terms of usability, dependability, adaptability, portability, speed, efficiency, context, and safety are required for proper data management.
Talking about effective & robust data management, SharePoint is the software that comes to mind. SharePoint is widely used for document storage, keeping files, guidelines, procedures, and other types of documents there. Some people think of SharePoint as an “internal website,” content management software, and a way to communicate within the corporation. It is also beneficial in conducting business intelligence, performing advanced searches, collaborating on material, and much more.
More than 75% of Fortune 500 organizations, notably Viacom and Windex, use Microsoft SharePoint due to its many advantages.
What is SharePoint?
SharePoint is an internet-based collaborative software developed by Microsoft in 2001. In general, this software is used by users for managing their documents and even as an online storage capacity.
It also helps you & your team to collaborate with other individuals, even from different sectors of your firm, to work as a team.
It enables corporations to create an Intranet that is widely used for storing, managing, and sharing business-related information for a specific project. In addition, it also gives the business the authority regarding who can access the information and helps self-regulate the workflow.
What is the Use case of SharePoint?
The world is now moving towards a completely digitalized era where data management is becoming more important than ever. Businesses and organizations, too, have started to opt for modernized technology so that they can have complete control of everything in their hands and their employees can persistently satisfy customers’ needs.
Moreover, like every other tool and software, SharePoint has its pros and cons. The only difference is, in this case, the pros overcome the cons. Nevertheless, one of the biggest reasons and highlights of Microsoft SharePoint is that it is completely compatible with all the platforms, such as iOS, Windows, macOS, Android, etc. Given below is a list of the usefulness of SharePoint.
- It is widely used for uploading and storing documents in the SharePoint Docs Management Library. All types of files, docs, and information can be saved in that library, and the authority of ‘who can access it’ lies with you, ensuring your data’s privacy and security.
- People given access to a specific document can access it remotely at any time, enabling multiple individuals to work on a single document as a team.
- It also has this amazing feature where you can keep the old document version while making changes to it. In clear words, one can have both the older and the edited version of a document.
- It consists of a search box, which makes the process of navigation very easy and less time-consuming. You can enter the keyword in the search box, and by pressing enter, it’ll directly lead you to the file you’re looking for.
As it is a Microsoft product, it works appropriately with most of its software. It means it’ll easily coordinate with other tools used by you, and the process of documents and file management will become less exhausting for you.
Additional Read
The Top Benefits of Using SharePoint: Have a look!
1. Customization:
One of the key features of SharePoint is its Customization. You can completely customize it according to your requirement, or you can use the default settings too, whichever suits you and the business best. We start with basic configuration, but it can be customized extensively, as required.
It provides you with the ability to create custom elements and web parts seamlessly. In addition, you have the capability to change the look, feel and overall interface, which helps showcase your brand appropriately. SharePoint also allows you to add multiple sites, libraries, web parts, pages, links, tasks, lists, additional applications, and more, to make the platform your very own.
2. Better Communication:
Communication is pivotal if you and your team wish to manage your business successfully or complete your tasks without distraction.
Without proper communication or because of miscommunication, the quality of your team’s work might deteriorate. With the help of SharePoint, efficient and accurate information can be provided to a group of people at one time, which helps in saving time and effort and reducing email and other clutter. Moreover, this information is completely secured, as the authority to edit or upload the information lies with the admin or can be delegated to trusted team members.
3. Collaboration:
This core capability of SharePoint gives you and your business the ability to work seamlessly with other departments and branches to work on a particular project with easy data sharing, management and communication. Going a step further, external collaboration with other entities is possible, if desired.
Due to these characteristics, it becomes easy for an individual/corporation to work with other workers and businesses on a project which helps improve the quality, save the team time & effort, and get better ideas & desired results.
4. Central Management:
Central and simplified management are also one of the greatest characteristics of Microsoft SharePoint. The administrator has quick access to all the features and settings, such as operational settings, security control, updates and a wide range of fine-grained central policies to control features and capabilities and restrictions in the SharePoint environment.
All these settings and controls are updated and monitored by a software/application called ‘SharePoint Admin Center in Office 365. It works as an alternative to SharePoint Central Admin available in SharePoint on-premise environments, which helps in administration at a central level and ensures a smooth, consistent and compliant experience.
5. Improved Security:
Privacy and security are also significant reasons why you should opt for SharePoint.
The reliability of your data is directly proportional to the optimization and policies around sharing, which means more optimization of share ability and access to information will result in more dependable data. You can control the settings easily regarding share ability, editing, uploading, viewing and other security restrictions., in SharePoint.
Additional Read
6. Administration of Content:
At Reality Tech, we leverage Content Types to manage content, and configure the Content Types centrally. When first designing Content Types we configure policies and metadata. These can be updated before or after content is created and associated with the Content Types. This covers a wide range of all associated metadata fields as well as the overall Information Policy defining the lifecycle of all associated documents.
Content can be set to be published and become available based on metadata defined scheduling. This means you can set a specific day, date, time, and place where you want to make the content visible.
You can share both commercial and official docs, which you can publish & share with anyone through this platform, whether they work in the organization or (if allowed by policies) external to the organization.
7. Seamless Upgrades:
Until a few years ago, most of the users felt anxious using SharePoint, especially when it came to on-premise. Users found it exhausting and complicated to work with because it was slow and outdated visually with a dated user experience. Upgrades could be tedious as well, with a labor-intensive upgrade or migration process.
Some of them do not prefer SharePoint to the date. Nevertheless, times changed. In the past few years, SharePoint has updated tremendously, it has become user-friendly, responsive, adapted to all form factors, with real-time dynamic upgrades; whether in Office 365, or the latest on-premises version with continual updates.
Users do not face issues of ‘slow-loading’ and do not feel that the platform is clunky given the new Modern UI interface. In addition, it easily gets along with other Microsoft software, providing you with a better overall experience.
8. Utmost Intranet Technology:
It’s been 19 years since SharePoint launched in the global market for users. And it is the preferred solution tool for collaborative systems.
SharePoint is used for services such as Intranet, Online communication, collaboration, workflow and document management., by approximately 80% of the leading firms. And it was only possible because the developer, Microsoft, altered the way of taking feedback from customers and extending SharePoint to be at the heart of the Office 365 enterprise product offering.
But as time changed, the company started taking customer feedback seriously, which made SharePoint the leading intranet technology.
9. Flexible Functionality:
According to the viewpoint and reviews of users, flexibility is one of the biggest advantages of SharePoint, it can function as an internal website of a company (an intranet), which is used to share data, information, contacts, schedule tasks, security but also be a Document Management / Enterprise Content Management System, and also function for collaboration and co-authoring.
The flexibility extends to the security. The admin can authorize and assign different permissions, considering the level and status of the user. Moreover, this collaborative platform is also useful for sharing docs, managing files and data, business information, social networking, and nearly all the tasks necessary to conduct business.
10. Better Productivity:
As of now, we are aware of the fact that SharePoint is a part of the Microsoft family, which means it is as efficient as other applications and software of Microsoft, such as MS Word, Excel, MS Teams, etc. Going Microsoft means Office 365 which brings SharePoint along for the ride.
And due to this, SharePoint gets adopted, as it is easily integrated with the existing software, apps, websites, and workflow and comes integrated with all the Microsoft applications and services. It integrates of several features such as Business intelligence, SharePoint analytics, Power Automate workflows, and so on.
These features aid companies in utilizing the overall information during the process of self-management of the business. Combined use of these features saves a lot of time and increases productivity.
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Conclusion:
To wrap it up, SharePoint allows you to collaborate and share files through any device. And due to ease of access, easy collaboration, and all the benefits mentioned above, it is currently the preferred collaborative platform.
Unfortunately, there remains a lack of deep knowledge and insight within smaller IT departments on the best practices to configure SharePoint optimally and enable features for users, and provide training and customization. Sometimes it is lack of time to support its myriad features, or evolving capabilities or just adequate knowledge and experience in SharePoint.
It is a necessity in this digital era, as threats and risks have increased due to security challenges to properly set up sophisticated collaborative and enterprise systems optimally. It is advisable to learn and get along with Microsoft SharePoint if you wish to enable business success.
And if you are looking for a leading Microsoft SharePoint services provider, then we can help you out! Reality Tech is your one-stop destination for a variety of SharePoint services.
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