Turning SharePoint from good to great

I touched a while back on the problem with SharePoint trying to be all things to all people and in our offering to clients this has recently taken shape in a meaningful way. With 100 million (yes, 100,000,000) or more seats sold over the last some years there is no getting away that SharePoint has a powerful place in the business software landscape.

The CEO of our author partner - FlowCentric - has published a white paper on turning SharePoint from Good to Great. This harks back to my previous points that it attempts to be all things to all people and in doing so fails to be great at anything.

In reality as we see Microsoft mature its marketing message it appears to move away from the quite exact terms in 2007 of "Streamline Processes" and "Business Intelligence" to more generic terms in 2010 of "Composites" and "Insights". Reading between the lines this suggests to me an acknowledgement that all-things-to-all people is not a viable path to success. Rather it shows an acceptance that SharePoint is a framework and perhaps the plumbing that underpins an array solution sets delivering outcomes to end users.

In the area of Streamline Processes/Composites this allows for and supports the existence of specialist fit-for-purpose tools to address composite areas across the business whilst standing firmly on the foundations that SharePoint brings in the server layer.

So how do we turn it from good to great? By bringing worthwhile and tangible benefits to the key stakeholders - more control for the IT department, better and more visible process outcomes for the business, less confusion for end users.

Get a copy of the whitepaper "FlowCentric turns SharePoint from Good to Great" here.

Operating in a constrained resources environment

With employment hovering around 4% in Australia these days the brutal reality is that the people available for work quite frankly can't or won't. Many businesses, my employer included, are scrambling to find quality people to fill the vacant positions throughout the company.


This brings two interesting issues to the fore:

- you need to be efficient and effective in what you do

- you need smart tools and systems for people to work with


Why?


Efficiency and effectiveness enables your people to do more with less or the same. It allows people to process the 80% straight through activities with the least amount of perturbation and confusion. It frees time for the smart and skilled people to focus on the issues of importance, the 20% exceptions that really need the rigour and focus of the human touch.


Smart tools and systems encourage people to see the value that is placed in their own skills and experience. If you seduce new hires into the business and then present them with fractured and flawed processes that demand they spend an unreasonable amount of time and effort in administration they may well decide to look around again for somewhere that respects them more.


So what can we do as businesses to become better employers of choice then the next guy? Well my employer takes part in the Hewitt Best Employer initiative which measures and reports on the work force engagement across a wide range of focus areas - this is a great initiative and well respected within the business.


At an operational level over the last few years we have implemented a number of improved business management systems including time sheeting and CRM. We have also automated a wide range of internal finance and HR processes within FlowCentric that have radically improved the content gathering, verification and delegated approval activities and unbelievably reduced the time lag. These processes including adding and changing financial customer and supplier records, personal expense claims amongst others. This is an endless journey, there are always new processes to automate and improvements to make to the existing ones.


Interestingly the change management was not as challenging as we had thought it would be. The take up of these improvements and the employee survey feedback has been extremely positive. The web and email environment for the automated processes reduce to virtually zero the amount of face-to-face training required. The speed of process initiation and execution has been pretty much universally welcomed. Indeed now the level of expectation has risen to a point where what was "special" has become just "business as usual".


We are proud of the process improvement solutions we bring to market, we use them ourselves, they work well and deliver genuine and measurable benefits. Our people are more efficient in their jobs and respected in their workplace. We know we have to operate in a constrained resources environment for the foreseeable future and we continue to focus on improving.


Try it out for ourselves - we could deliver a measurable benefit in a key process in your business within 30 days - not must risk or cost in that.

Be audacious and start small with BPM

Time and again we see a pattern re-playing in our business process management projects - attacking these things at an enterprise level for most organisations is just a bridge too far. The budget, resources, buy in and intellectual and emotional stamina required are simply too great for a successful project.

Having an audacious goal is laudable and an important part of the impetus to get started, however BPM is a marathon not a sprint and it generally succeeds by achieving small, digestible wins along the way rather than a big bang burst.

Find a point pain that has vocal stakeholders and tangible but modest value to the business (modest value = modest risk) - possibly an internal or backoffice process. Map, model and automate it. Communicate the success and recruit the next volunteer. After a couple of below-the-radar operations a queue of patients will materialise outside the surgery door with increasing benefits and value to the business - commonly in the customer facing area.

Don't think you will get it right first time around - map, automate, deploy, learn, modify - progressive improvement is the reality. Oh, and any number of unexpected events can come along and turn it upside down overnight - celebrate them, embrace them - automated changes are much quicker and easier to deploy and far less upsetting for people than manual process changes.