Since its introduction, SharePoint and now Office 365 more broadly have become an industry standard platform delivering collaboration capabilities for companies and enabling communication across teams and storing, sharing, and updating documents and content.
It is a highly secure platform with huge potential for optimizing and simplifying a wide range of company functions, processes, collaboration and ongoing work efforts.
SharePoint, Power Automate and other Office 365 tools reduce manual efforts and associated errors by enabling streamlining and automation of a range of operations.
If you’ve decided it’s time to move to or upgrade SharePoint or improve your current setup, you’ll want expert assistance to smooth the migration and transition. But how can you pick the best SharePoint services firm to assist you in achieving your objectives?
This article will cover SharePoint service providers, what they do, why organizations need them, and a variety of aspects.
What’s Included in SharePoint Services:
Let us now examine several SharePoint services:
- SharePoint consultants assist you with the design, architecture, development, deployment, and maintenance of various SharePoint and Office 365 technologies.
- SharePoint experts are essential in migrating from an outdated version of SharePoint to the Office 365 cloud or from a file share or legacy content management system to SharePoint.
- They help you configure and customize SharePoint to meet your specific company needs.
- A SharePoint Consultant can help you create workflows, and configure metadata, search, structure an intranet and refine and enhance document management and collaboration.
- They may assist with SharePoint training, documentation and planning.
- They also assist in the enhancement of numerous corporate processes and activities.
- SharePoint experts can also assist with automating and completing various activities and business requirements.
Additional Read
Points to Consider While Selecting a SharePoint Services Company:
Here are some characteristics to consider while selecting a SharePoint services company:
1. Deep Technical Expertise:
Although configuring and making Office 365 and SharePoint fully functioning should be a priority, organizations must understand that it is just another component of overall enterprise policy, including security and compliance, and needs to be manageable from the start.
Many people with varying skill levels will be users, so hiring a consultant knowledgeable with “soft” skills like SharePoint governance and user acceptance is critical.
Even if a consultant is extremely knowledgeable about the technology, the user implementation may fail if they cannot assist or advise on leadership and user adoption or fail to configure the Office 365 tenant settings in alignment with corporate policies.
2. Knowledge about Data in your Organization:
SharePoint is a fantastic Enterprise Content Management Solution, but only when configured properly.
Your documents may organically evolve in disparate and disorganized ways and become difficult to navigate, with decreasing performance and growing user dissatisfaction, if you do not first think through the organizational hierarchy and map it to overall Office 365 structures, and leverage the built-in enterprise metadata management and search capabilities.
If the SharePoint consultant does not know how to create a data hierarchy, you may not have found the ideal fit.
True experts will even go so far as to restructure and remap, and classify your data and file/folder structures before migration to remove unnecessary data from the system during migration or to migrate to a refined pre-agreed structure.
The migration partner assists you in ensuring that your migration content is safe and properly organized for the destination Office 365 environment, all planned in advance, with throughput benchmarked and early test migrations surfacing the user experience early in the process to allow for refined timelines and adjusted user experience.
3. Training Services:
Implementing SharePoint is only half the battle. Training is something that is needed on an ongoing basis.
When looking for a SharePoint services firm, inquire about professional training for during and after the project itself ends.
It is best to retain some level of internal proficiency in basic SharePoint administration and have a second-tier partner available for support on an ongoing basis.
To ensure this, core training should always be included in the project hand-off.
When you select a SharePoint services firm, you will have an expert on your team who can provide key training on demand.
SharePoint experts have unique training methods from experience across many clients to ensure that selected team members learn SharePoint quickly.
Their practical experience and guidance will simplify the transition and provide the fastest level of support for common requests and tasks.
Office 365 is designed about usability, and that can be leveraged to provide some level of proficiency for in-house SharePoint support.
4. Post-migration Support:
Any reputable migration partner will offer you post-migration assistance for the long term.
Such a partner with extensive migration experience will ensure that documentation is provided to assist in your post-migration support services.
By offering accompanying documentation, your users can determine how to utilize the new features and manage them effectively. The ideal SharePoint migration partner will also offer you access to support services that can fix practically any issue encountered.
Ideally, such a support services center can analyze and handle any issues raised that your organization may have, ranging from support, enhancements, security or licensing.
Other post-migration support issues may include synchronization, navigation, search optimization, performance and basic collaboration functionality. Best to line this up in advance for responsive support and user satisfaction.
5. Ensure a Service Level Agreement (SLA):
A service-level agreement (SLA) is a type of standardized service contract that formally defines a service.
The service provider and the user agree on specific service features such as scope, quality, responsiveness and obligations. The contracted delivery time is a common aspect of an SLA (of the service or performance).
Outsourcing SharePoint assistance aims to ensure that any issues are fixed immediately or within the timeframe specified in the SLA.
As a result, it is crucial that your SharePoint services partner agrees to a guaranteed service-level contract that is suited to your business needs.
An SLA will also assist you in measuring your partner’s performance against key performance indicators and ensuring that the service they provide is consistently high.
6. End-to-End Customization Services:
Ideally, SharePoint services consultants recommend and try to leverage the “out-of-the-box” (built-in) capabilities of SharePoint to satisfy the specific demands of your business.
This is generally faster and more reliable, with lower maintenance and lower effort. However, sometimes, going with out-of-the-box functionality requires some compromise and trade-offs against full-blown customization.
Your SharePoint consultant is your partner for assisting in making such trade-off decisions.
You’ll be disappointed if you want customization, and the SharePoint Services architect can only execute basic configuration, so selecting a knowledgeable service provider with extensive experience and demonstrated success is key.
On the other hand, if a SharePoint consultant only tries to promote customization when you merely need something basic, that can lead to a lengthy, expensive and higher maintenance solution.
7. Cost-Effective Solution:
The cost to the company is one of the most important elements that most organizations consider when looking for a SharePoint services provider or migration partner.
Although this is vital because you must be able to afford their services, going with the cheapest partner is rarely the greatest option.
When selecting a partner, consider how much value their services will provide your firm in the long run, and ensure they have the depth to provide the capabilities and breadth to deliver them.
If SharePoint services would help you become more competitive and technically advanced in your operations, the cost is only one of the factors to consider.
It is frequently a good idea to consider the worth of the service in terms of the productivity you will enjoy once the solution is configured.
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Conclusion:
These suggestions help you choose a SharePoint services company to support your deployment.
Due diligence for any technology services and solution is an important step in the journey, and the selection process is generally far smoother if you can work with a partner who not only has the experience to deploy SharePoint in a way that meets your business requirements but who is also open and transparent with its processes, delivery, and team.
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