delivering 1 business value with a sharepoint ... · business value with a sharepoint collaboration...

1DELIVERING BUSINESS VALUE WITH A SHAREPOINT COLLABORATION SYSTEMMARWAN TAREK BRIGHTSTARR HEAD OF CONSULTING

Collaboration is, at a basic level, people working together. It is the driving force behind most organisations and companies today.

MARWAN TAREK BRIGHTSTARR HEAD OF CONSULTING

DISCOVER MORE AT WWW.UNILY.COM

CONTENTS1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2

2. WHAT IS COLLABORATION? 3

3. WHAT IS SHAREPOINT? 4

4. DELIVERING BUSINESS VALUE 5

4.1 ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT 7

4.2 BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT 9

4.3 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT 12

4.4 SOCIAL COLLABORATION 14

5. ABOUT UNILY 16

6. REFERENCES 17

http://hubs.ly/y0dxxs0

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Collaboration is, at a basic level, people working together. It is the driving force behind most organisations and companies today.

Due to advances in Information Technology, Collaboration is now almost synonymous with Digital Collaboration - people work with digital documents, use a range of software systems, and predominantly interact with people electronically.

SHAREPOINT IS THE SOLUTION

SharePoint 2013 offers a range of functionality to help support and foster good Collaboration, specifically addressing the four areas to the right. This paper looks at each of the four areas in turn, and describes how SharePoint can deliver the right results with features like:

• Team sites

• Content types

• Workflow

• Business Connectivity Services

• Search

• Office Web Apps

• Yammer

BRIGHTSTARR’S INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE

BrightStarr have been working with SharePoint for over eight years and are a Microsoft gold partner regularly cited for our technical excellence in delivering solutions on the Microsoft enterprise platforms. The following whitepaper is far more than simple supposition and is in fact backed by the results of hundreds of BrightStarr owned surveys, which have received thousands of responses. It is this directly sourced and independently gathered data that provides our deep intrinsic knowledge of the market in which we operate and allows us to provide truly world class solutions for our clients. Our research is what helps us to not only understand our clients, but also empowers us to contribute to the thought leadership within our industry. As such our whitepapers will always be supported by our high quality data so that you can get the most up to date and relevant information to inform your organisational decisions.

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For this Collaboration to deliver business benefits, careful thought needs to be given to exactly what systems are put in place to foster it, and what objectives are set out to be achieved. This paper will cover four key areas:

1. ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Organisations create and maintain vast quantities of content, which takes many forms. An Enterprise Content Management system must help maintain a single version of the truth, aid ‘Findability,’ and help to connect the right resources.

2. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

The automation and management of business process requires significant thought to be given to how processes are defined, how their implementation can be simplified, and how they can be successfully embedded with users.

3. DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

While many organisations maintain Document Management systems, the majority struggle with good organisation and governance, effective search, and how to enable true collaborative working.

4. SOCIAL COLLABORATION

Social is the most recent category of enterprise tool many organisations find themselves dealing with. Organisations are struggling with the challenges of making it work alongside modern working practices, an over reliance on email, and changing user expectations.

THE BUSINESS PROBLEMS

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Forbes magazine estimates over $180 billion will be spent on cloud software by the end of 2015.

$180 BILLION

Collaboration is a term that many organisations and companies use to describe how their employees and stakeholders work together to create value. This value can take many different forms.

For some groups it is purely about financial progress (typically turnover and profit), others seek to develop and maintain knowledge (academic institutions and governments), while other organisations have more altruistic objectives (not for profit groups and charities).

However this value is defined, it is generally agreed that it can only be generated by the productive work of individuals and teams, through Collaboration. At the same time there are many hindrances to collaboration that tend to greatly inhibit the creation of value.

As Information Technology has come to dominate every facet of our personal and working lives, the traditional meaning of collaboration has shifted slightly. It still refers to how organisations create value, but now with particular focus on the role IT systems play in these processes. Indeed for many enterprise organisations Collaboration actually means ‘Digital Collaboration’ – the use of software and technology to help people work together. Gartner defines this Digital Collaboration as:

“ Collaboration comprises software products, tools and hosted services to organize, access, use and share content. Collaboration initiatives involve managing and interacting with a multitude of content types, including documents, records, images, forms and, increasingly, digital media.”1

In a world where content and communication are predominantly digital, Collaboration has almost become digital by default.

In the early days of Information Technology, Collaboration involved email and network drives. It is a testament to the power and popularity of these two systems that both are still around today. They have now been joined by more sophisticated options, innovations in software and services, driven by the explosion of the web and its associated trends. Intranet systems are an extremely popular example, taking much of what is good about the World Wide Web and using it to help companies collaborate internally. More recently social software has bridged the personal-business divide, and begun to give work based users a voice and outlet they have not previously had. Most recently of all a new technology trend has started to influence collaboration - ‘The Cloud’.

The surge in popularity of cloud services over recent years has been immense. Forbes magazine estimates over $180 billion will be spent by on cloud software by the end of 20152. This in turn has had a huge effect on collaboration tools and services. It has implications for the type of tools on offer to organisations, as well as how users access and pay for these tools. The cloud has even changed what users expect and demand of collaboration software, as they grow accustomed to services like LinkedIn and Twitter, and using their own devices at work.

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Collaboration is, at a basic level, people working together

Collaboration is the driving force behind most organisations and companies

The term Collaboration is now almost synonymous with Digital Collaboration

Collaboration is working online or offline, interacting with digital content and assets, and communicating with other users

A vast array of software tools and services exist to facilitate better Collaboration

IN SUMMARY

2. WHAT IS COLLABORATION?


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SharePoint is a Microsoft enterprise platform that can be put to work in a number of ways. These include as a website content management system, an Intranet/Extranet, a document management system, or an enterprise social network.

This paper will look at a number of these scenarios, focusing in the main, on those that facilitate better Collaboration between business users.

First launched in 2001, SharePoint is now on its fourth major release (commonly referred to as SharePoint 2013). SharePoint 2013 was released in October 2012, and the platform received its first significant update (known as a ‘service pack’) in March of 2013. SharePoint is available in two flavours:

1. AS A STANDALONE PRODUCT

SharePoint 2013 is available as a standalone product, which can be installed and run on the appropriate server hardware. This type of setup is commonly known as ‘SharePoint on Premises’ as the software is typically run locally by the company using it, like many traditional enterprise platforms. All data and content is stored locally.

2. AS A CLOUD PRODUCT

SharePoint 2013 is also available as a cloud product, specifically as part of Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud service. In this instance SharePoint is hosted and maintained in Microsoft data centres, and all access and configuration is done via the web browser. SharePoint is available on its own, on a per user per month basis, or as a component of the larger Office 365 product (which includes Office 2013, Exchange Online, Yammer, and a number of other enterprise tools). All data and content is stored in Microsoft data centres around the world.

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SharePoint makes it easy to connect with other users and any work they have previously authored.

MARWAN TAREK BRIGHTSTARR HEAD OF CONSULTING

3. WHAT IS SHAREPOINT?


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SHAREPOINT FUNCTIONALITY

The On Premise and Cloud versions of SharePoint 2013 generally offer the same feature set (though this is slowly starting to change as Microsoft bakes more cloud services, like Yammer, into the SharePoint toolset) Microsoft categorises3 the functionality of SharePoint 2013 down into five groups;

1. SHARE

SharePoint 2013 includes a large number of social features, including the ability to track and follow colleagues and the content they create. Content can be published easily from any Office application (like Word) and taken offline on mobile phones or tablets.

2. ORGANISE

SharePoint 2013 integrates with Outlook and Microsoft Project, allowing for easy tracking of tasks and project deliverables. Team sites offer a central location to store documents and collateral, with sharing and permission controls to ensure only the right users have access. OneDrive for Business provides a seamless way to store and sync offline documents, with advanced document management features like versioning for those that need them.

3. DISCOVER

Often good collaboration starts with finding the right people. SharePoint makes it easy to connect with other users and any work they have previously authored. SharePoint also offers powerful analytical and search tools to analyse and understand content, helping make it more useful.

4. BUILD

SharePoint facilitates eye catching Intranet and Extranet sites and is extensible via an official app store. The Cloud App model allows custom functionality to be created using common web technologies.

5. MANAGE

The cloud version of SharePoint can help manage infrastructure costs, while any version can manage risk with powerful records and case management capabilities. SharePoint frees users to spend more time on collaboration, scaling performance and power as needed.

3. WHAT IS SHAREPOINT? 5



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A Collaboration system, once built on SharePoint or any other platform, must deliver business benefits for it to be useful.

The single biggest benefit is the generation of value, described in section two. But this value can be broken down further, and a number of associated benefits defined. These are:

1. FUNCTIONAL

Functional benefits are the easiest to define, as they generally deliver new capabilities to the organisation in question i.e. A search tool to find documents, or a social tool to allow colleagues to post updates. All of the business benefits looked at in this paper deliver functional benefits, they all deliver new capabilities that any modern organisation can harness to deliver better collaboration.

2. TECHNICAL

Technical benefits generally deliver improved ways of doing tasks that were already possible i.e. Email offers a number of technical benefits over hand written notes (as well as a multitude of functional benefits). A more involved example sees SharePoint 2013 offering a number of technical benefits over other collaboration platforms. These include things like search capabilities, security, and performance. The benefits looked at in this paper all have technical elements, which are highlighted in the relevant section.

3. FINANCIAL

While collaboration can be about new capabilities and technical improvements, it can also help reduce costs. This could be by delivering similar services for a reduced outlay, or delivering capabilities that lead to a wider company saving. The benefits looked at in this paper can all have a positive impact on an organisation’s bottom line, and examples of this are highlighted in the appropriate section.

This paper looks in detail at four key business areas where a SharePoint Collaboration system can deliver benefits to an organisation. These benefits are defined as:

• Enterprise Content Management

• Business Process Management

• Document Management

• Social Collaboration

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4. DELIVERING BUSINESS VALUE


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4.1 ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENTWithin many organisations there is a wide array of content which has often grown over a period of many years. This knowledge comes in many forms such as documents, briefs and proposals to presentations and policies and is often managed in very different ways by different people. In terms of Collaboration, ECM is concerned with how company content is created and shared amongst users. Users can be internal or external to the organisation in question, and typically collaboration occurs between a mix of the two. In the context of Collaboration, ECM is a significant area of interest.

DEFINING THE PROBLEM

Our own research indicates that businesses and organisations still have deep rooted issues when it comes to finding and managing enterprise content. A recent survey6 indicated that even a simple case of finding out the latest company news isn’t as easy as it could be:

“70% of employees know where to find company news but only 58% are aware when new content is published. Directors are much more likely to be aware of new information than other staff.”6

More complex use cases, such as co-authoring a document online, or updating an Intranet system with the latest HR policies, are even more problematic. Three of the biggest issues companies face today when it comes to ECM and Collaboration are:

1. No single version of the truthTraditionally, organisations have stored their content on local machines – local hard drive, local server, shared server – allowing users to create folders within folders and applying very little control or governance over the location, classification or structure of the files in an enterprise context. The siloed nature of the data means many users don’t know where to find the content they need to work effecively. They don’t know what exists already, and often more importantly, what doesn’t exist at all.

2. Findability IssuesClosely following on from the first point, users who do find their way to specific Enterprise Content Management systems often can’t find what they want within those systems. Search and ‘Findability’ is generally lacking, meaning content can’t be found. Time spent looking is time that could be better spent productively.

3. Allocating the right resources

Collaboration is partly about finding the right people to work with, and often Enterprise Content Management suffers from not being able to allocate the right people to the job. The creation and management of enterprise content can involve a wide range of content types. Examples include documents, images, videos, audio, as well as more complex data structures and associated metadata. This wealth of information needs to be handled by the appropriate human resources – something made impossible if this information can’t be adequately identified.



The strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organisational processes.

THE ASSOCIATION OF INFORMATION AND IMAGE PROFESSIONALS (AIIM)

ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT DEFINITION

70%

58%BUT ONLY

of Employees know where to find company news

Employees are aware when new content is published

FINDING OUT THE LATEST COMPANY NEWS COULD BE EASIER




THE BENEFITS OF GOOD ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Implementing SharePoint as an Enterprise Content Management system can help to address the issues above:

1. A single version of the truthSharePoint supports structured data and content in a wide variety of ways, allowing the creation of an Enterprise Content Management system that acts as a single version of the truth. When combined with the SharePoint permissions model, organisations can be sure that not only is their data collected and stored in the right manner, but it is accessible only by those with the right permissions.

SharePoint supports sites, pages, lists, and content types - which when combined offer the tools to store and organise almost any form of data:

• Sites act as containers, collecting together sets of content (such as documents) in a collaborative environment. Sites enable users to quickly create, publish, and share many types of content and information using the SharePoint Ribbon, out-of-the-box templates, and Web Parts that simplify and speed site development with little or no coding. This environment empowers end users and allows them to spend more time analysing and discussing decisions, rather than gathering and reconciling content. Pages within a site provide a means to logically separate rich text, image, and video content

• Lists are the primary means by which SharePoint stores custom data (e.g. contacts lists, tasks lists, Excel or externally sourced content). Using powerful list management tools users can store and interact with a range of enterprise data types

• Content types enable lists to be created and managed in structured reusable ways. They also allow list templates to be defined, and can include complex metadata, record, and audit definitions.

2. FindabilitySharePoint now ships5 with Microsoft’s most powerful enterprise search engine ever. Combining the power of its SharePoint and Bing Search teams, the technology makes finding the right content a faster more interactive experience than ever before. Not only are search results rich, including document previews and inline videos where appropriate, but the refinement controls make it easy to tweak the returned results.

3. Allocating the right resourcesThe latest version of SharePoint puts people at the very heart of the platform. Not only can each user have their own profile and private document/content area (Pulled together in a dedicated ‘MySite’), but they can add extensive biographical details about their expertise and experience. This, combined with a dedicated ‘people search’ component, means SharePoint can for the first time offer a powerful ‘expert finder’ tool for any organisation.

In addition SharePoint 2013 supports the following new ECM features:

• Powerful publishing and approval workflows ‘Out of the box’ support for video content, including mobile ready HTML5 video player and a new video content type

• Drag and drop user interface for document libraries, allowing files to be added right on the page with minimum user intervention

• Improvements to search, including new interactive refiners and more detailed search scopes.

BrightStarr Project Manager Zafir Behlic, based in Surrey, has worked with SharePoint since 2002 and seen its Enterprise Content Management features really change how companies work:

“SharePoint offers some really powerful tools that I have seen first-hand transform how businesses create, manage the flow of, and consume content. A recent project saw an Intranet team managing tens of news updates a day, pulled from a range of different sources and systems, all pushed through a very complex approval system. The new SharePoint system resulted in them being able to publish large volumes of engaging content throughout the day, to thousands of users. They managed this using less resources than the previous system required.”

TOP TIPS

Understand the content life cycle – from creation to archive

Define the suitable governance strategy and content management policies

Analyse how the end users are going to find the content

Zafir Behlic

THE BRIGHTSTARR VIEWPOINT


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4.2 BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENTBusiness processes themselves are sets of activities that require completion to achieve a specific business task. Automating these processes using software applications has been heavily discussed over the years and early attempts at reflecting real life processes were fraught with failure. However the technology, using systems like SharePoint 2013, has finally come of age.


While technology platforms like SharePoint feature the tools to implement complex business processes, many firms are still unable to execute even the most basic of tasks. Research6 conducted by BrightStarr found that conducting a search, a very simple process, is still far from simple for some:

“78% employees said searching is time consuming and 74% said the results returned were irrelevant”6

More complex business process tasks, those with elements of workflow, form entry, and data processing have proved equally difficult for companies to digitise successfully. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Difficulty in defining the problem

Often the first step to implementing a business process is defining the problem at hand. Many organisations fall at this first hurdle, failing to get to grips with the core activities and actors involved. Requirement gathering of this nature is often a team requiring workshops and input from disparate stakeholders. It is difficult work to coordinate and document.

2. Complex development Once a problem has been defined, building the solution can prove troublesome. Often business process projects, once defined on paper, struggle in the implementation phase. Traditional software development issues come into play, especially in a Waterfall delivery model, where code is written and rewritten as requirements fluctuate; testing suffers and the end product often isn’t fit for purpose.

3. Embedding changeOnce an adequate solution is in place, many organisations find it difficult to embed its use within their organisation. This is often due to a lack of awareness, but also the difficulty people have in accepting and embracing change to the status quo.



BPM is a way of looking at and then controlling the processes that are present in an organisation.7


BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT DEFINITION




THE BENEFITS OF A GOOD BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

SharePoint can help to address some of these issues described on the previous page, and implement really usable BPM in an organisation:

1. Defining the problemWhile pure definition of a problem isn’t really a technical challenge to solve, SharePoint can help in bringing together the right people to discuss the issue in the right way. SharePoint sites, document management features, and social tools, can all provide the ideal collaborative environment for the right set of users to discuss and analyse an issue and really get to the root pain points.

In addition SharePoint 2013 offers a number of dedicated project management features:

• A site mailbox acts as a single location to store and retrieve project specific communications. With its own email address and dedicated storage within a SharePoint site, a mailbox can be the perfect way to centralise project communications.

• Document management has always been a strong feature of the SharePoint toolset. Specific features include check in/out, versioning and metadata. Using Office Web Apps documents can even be co-authored and edited online via a browser.

• A site notebook, based on Microsoft OneNote technology, is the perfect place to store and contribute to adhoc notes within a project site.

78%

74%&Employees Said searching is time consuming

Employees said the results returned were irrelevant

SEARCH COULD BE FASTER AND HAVE GREATER RELEVANCE




2. Reduced development risk and complexity

SharePoint really excels as a ‘Power user’ platform, one that can be customised and configured by end users via its graphical user interface. This means SharePoint can be put to work solving difficult problems without resorting to complex development projects and long risky waterfall projects.

These ‘no code’ principles even extend to complex workflow tasks, which can be created and customised in a number of ways:

• A number of standard workflow processes are available ‘out of the box, and can be configured to suit specific requirements

• More complex workflows can be built using the graphical tools provided by SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Visio 2013

• Third Party tools like Nintex Workflow allow almost any workflow process to be designed and deployed without resorting to writing code

3. Successfully embedding change

SharePoint 2013 is an engaging and usable platform, featuring a number of user interface and usability enhancements over previous versions. These include adopting the innovative Microsoft ‘Modern’ UI now seen across Office 2013 and Windows 8, and also modern web enhancements like document drag and drop.

Many organisations already run versions of SharePoint to power their website, Intranet, or Extranet presences. By using the same tool to power business processes, and integrating directly with other systems, users can reap the benefits of business process automation without having to learn or use a totally new platform. SharePoint offers key features called Business Connectivity Services to support this ‘ joined up’ approach, allowing it to connect and synchronise between disparate enterprise systems.

BCS enables organisations to connect with other business systems and provides read / write capabilities directly to back-end systems and tools. For example, an organisation can connect to a CRM system, retrieve opportunity and sales data, and tie it with sales projections in the sales portal to track in real time how the opportunities are converting into actual sales— and the likelihood of meeting the sales target for a given period. Or, users attempting to review trends in expenditures from one month to the next can quickly access the appropriate ERP data on an internal team site, rather than identifying an appropriate contact, sending multiple emails, starting and/or re-doing work already completed, and so forth.

Senior SharePoint Consultant at BrightStarr, Marwan Tarek, has seen proof of the power of SharePoint workflow many times:

“The SharePoint workflow tools have always been very useful in a lot of projects we work on, and in SharePoint 2013 things have improved a great deal. There is actually a brand new workflow engine that allows us to do much more interesting things, connect with systems in new ways, and ultimately help users Collaborate much more effectively.”

TOP TIPS

Always map your current situation and highlight problem areas

Map as many simple processes to automated SP forms to help achieve greater user adoption

Avoid automating inefficient processes

Marwan Tarek



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4.3 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT Nearly every modern company operates some kind of document management system, from the Windows ‘My Documents’ folder, to file shares, and more bespoke systems like SharePoint. Documents are now almost always created digitally, and some remain so for their entire lifecycle, so good management of this environment is crucial to achieving effective collaboration.


BrightStarr has conducted surveys6 with a large number of its clients. Analysis of this data revealed many still struggle with good Document Management. For example:

“74% of employees are aware of their document management portal, however, 71% still store their documents on laptops”

Poor document management can lead to a number of problems:

1. Lack of good organisation and governance

Many organisations are still using old fashioned file shares to store documents, with some using nothing more than the Windows ‘My Documents’ folder. These rudimentary file stores make it impossible to organise files in a useful way. Not only are concepts like metadata unheard of in these environments, but even well

thought out folder and file structures are near impossible to maintain. Files are located in numerous local stores and access is fragmented - central policies simply cannot be enforced.

Much more seriously is the lack of governance in many of these systems. Lack of version control means file changes and updates cannot be tracked properly (between single or multiple authors), and some systems do not even implement basic backup rules.

2. Limited collaborative working Many of the organisations we see use desktop applications to create files, local folders to store them, and email to share them. In these environments collaborative working is almost impossible. Users cannot access the same file, multiple versions exist in different locations and coordination of any activity is extremely difficult. While the cycle of ‘draft -> email -> comments -> redraft’ can produce results, it is a very base form of collaborative working.

3. Ineffective searchA consequence of the type of fileshare systems described above is a lack of adequate search. Documents siloed on desktops, local machines and even fileshares simply cannot take advantage of the sort of search and retrieval technology that many users now expect and require to do their jobs.



Document Management is the use of a computer system and software to store, manage and track electronic documents.8


DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT DEFINITION

74%

71%BUT

of employees are aware of their document management portal...

...still store their documents on laptops





PROVIDING A SOLUTION

SharePoint can help support and promote good Document Management in a number of ways:

1. Enterprise class organisation and governance

SharePoint supports content types to control the organisation and governance of documents. Content types help to define and control the following:

• The document template that will be used (e.g. How the document itself looks and is laid out)

• The types and formats of columns that will make up any metadata (e.g. Description of a document)

• The workflows that are to be associated (e.g. Approval steps for a document)

• Information Management policies (e.g. how a document may be viewed or printed)

• Records management policies (e.g. how long a document may be kept for)

Content types, when configured correctly and used in conjunction with sites, document libraries, and Views, allow a sensible document structure to be created, enforced, and maintained. Content types also help enforce good governance of documents, by defining records and information management rules.

2. Full collaborative workingSharePoint, and SharePoint 2013 in particular, supports full collaborative working, using a number of tools:

• SharePoint sites and document libraries support user integration, allowing users to be contacted directly from the SharePoint interface where their name appears next to a document. This integration can be expanded with Microsoft Lync allowing real time conversations to be conducted.

• Version control, version history, and check in/out allow controlled collaborative working on documents.

• Office Web Apps, and the Microsoft Office 2013 suite, supports online and offline collaborative working including real time co-authoring of documents.

• OneDrive for Business provides a dedicated personal storage space for documents, and allows external users to be invited in to view and/or edit content. Offline sync allows collaboration to continue when there is no Internet connection.

3. Fully featured searchAs this paper has already looked at, the SharePoint 2013 search engine comes packed with a number of powerful content and people features. It also includes a range of document specific functionality:

• The search engine indexes all file metadata as well as file content

• Results are automatically security trimmed

• Full document ‘hover’ preview (within search results, for Office and PDF documents)

• Inline content pulled directly through in search results

• Icons to identify file formats

• Other useful features include:

• Major and minor versioning, with full history and comments

• Check in and out

• Approval workflows

• Close integration with Microsoft Office

Consultant at BrightStarr, Megan Sibbald, knows from experience that Document Management is a real strong suit of SharePoint:

“Time and time again we see companies adopting Document Management systems without putting in the required planning and governance oversight. We have experience at helping companies go through these planning exercises, and most importantly of all SharePoint is the perfect tool to put good document organisation and governance into practice.”

TOP TIPS

The first thing in a project should be to understand the docs you’re working with to develop an Information Architecture that will support the way your users work

Create a taxonomy that is representative of your company, target market and the terms surrounding your work to tag content appropriately

Use an open permission structure to encourage true collaboration

Megan Sibbald



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4.4 SOCIAL COLLABORATION As we have seen, a key part of any organisations collaboration strategy is working with teams and individuals to achieve common objectives. Social media and social networking tools can have a huge impact on how these objectives are discussed, managed, and met. Social Collaboration is in effect the relationships and conversations between users who are trying to collaborate.

When employees are given a voice, via social tools, they feel they are providing a useful contribution to their organisation. This in turn can help them feel more useful, more engaged and a bigger part of the organisational culture - collaborating more effectively as a result.


BrightStarr spoke6 to a number of its clients to assess how Social Collaboration was impacting on their day to day work. This research uncovered a range of interesting insights, including:

“40% of organisations do not collaborate with clients and partners online”

Social Collaboration can play a huge role in helping clients and partners interact better online. Often these relationships are built as much on conversations and social connections, as they are documents and project deliverables.

At the same time enterprise social networking can address the following problem areas:

1. Varied working locations and patterns

The modern workplace, even for small organisations, is a very different place to that of five or ten years ago. Not only do staff often work in different locations and even time zones, but they work in different patterns. Working from home, flexible hours, part time roles - all of these combine to mean people are in different places and phases of work at any given time. Traditional means of communication - physical meetings, telephone calls, even email - are no longer enough.

2. Too much emailEmail for a long time has been the ‘go to’ social tool. Yet many users are now weighed down by the sheer volume of emails they receive. As a result a new email has lost its impact, its urgency and its importance. At the same time email doesn’t offer much in the way of social context. Email isn’t instant, doesn’t include background information, and is not supported by a connected network.

3. Changing user expectations Social, in the consumer world, is no longer a new tool. People are used to websites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They are used to accessing real time information on people, communicating instantly over the web, and publishing and consuming content in a social fashion. These trends have had a big impact on what these same people expect in the workplace, from enterprise tools.



Social Collaboration is in effect the relationships and conversations between users who are trying to collaborate

MARWAN TAREK BRIGHTSTARR SENIOR CONSULTANT

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT DEFINITION

40%

of organisations do not collaborate with clients and partners online





PROVIDING A SOLUTION

SharePoint has the tools to help organisations collaborate in a social manner:

1. Communications that can adopt to new working practicesSharePoint 2013, when delivered as part of Office 3659 offers a built in social network – Yammer. Microsoft saw the success that Yammer where having in the enterprise marketplace and bought the company outright. They have since been working hard on integrating it fully with SharePoint:

• The Yammer timeline is a key element of the social toolset, showing a chronological view of updates, activity, and messages. It is a quick and easy social domain, designed to address the different communications needs of the modern workforce

• Yammer groups allow specific conversations and special interests to be managed in a really smart way. Using groups, Yammer conversations can be tailored to include the relevant people, and keep a balanced ‘noise to signal’ ratio for everyone else

• Yammer supports advanced notifications, similar to the systems used by sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, which augment the default SharePoint alert system. They are an easy way to stay up to date with social content

• Yammer is a fully integrated mobile experience. Dedicated apps are available for all major smartphones and tablet devices, making it very easy for users to stay connected on the move

The On Premises version of SharePoint also includes its own social feature set:

• A system wide activity feed for updates, announcements, and messages

• The ability to follow people and content

• The ability to tag useful content

• Personalised feeds of followed people and content, delivered to a user’s personal social MySite

2. A range of communications types SharePoint 2013 offers a number of communications tools, designed to fit around different users’ needs and requirements:

• Yammer public messages and updates

• Yammer private messages

• SharePoint specific activity updates

• Messages boards

• Blog functionality

• Wiki functionality

• Site mailboxes

• Email notifications

3. A modern social toolSharePoint 2013 and Yammer are at heart a modern enterprise social tool, designed to address the demands of people used to working in a social way. Not only do the tools take design and functionality cues from the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook, but Microsoft has also worked hard to integrate them with its own cloud and social services:

• SharePoint features OneDrive for Business, the enterprise version of its popular file sharing service

• Yammer is starting to power a number of Microsoft enterprise applications in the same way e.g. Dynamics CRM

• The Office 2013 desktop applications integrate directly with SharePoint e.g. OneNote files can be stored and synced directly in SharePoint.

Project Manager at BrightStarr, Matt Parker, is excited by the future of social in SharePoint:

“Microsoft has already announced some really exciting social developments with SharePoint 2013, and the continued integration of Yammer bodes well for the future. SharePoint has always lead the way with enterprise social tools, but Yammer is something we have seen really interest our clients. We think it could be huge over the next couple of years.”

TOP TIPS

Define community managers to maintain groups

Define a social strategy – what do you want to get out of it?

Carry out launch events and do a certain amount of on boarding to get people engaged

Matt Parker



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“THE INTRANET AS A SERVICE UNITING THE VERY BEST OF THE MICROSOFT CLOUD”

Developed on Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint, Unily draws on the full power of the Cloud and the capabilities of Office 365, SharePoint and Yammer to provide a united Intranet solution that will support and grow with your organization.

Developed by four time Microsoft Gold Partner BrightStarr, Unily is built upon 8 years of experience delivering Intranets, Extranets, Websites and Portals for leading brands around the world. Developed with the perfect

balance of form and factor, Unily provides unique user experiences that have been designed to drive user adoption, delivering an Intranet solution that your users will love.

9. ABOUT UNILY

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1. http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/content-communications-and-collaboration

2. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/201/Volumes/CurrentWork/Work/BRIGHTSTARR/BS005_Sharepoint_whitePaper/Artwork/BS005_Sharepoint_whitepaper_v8 Folder/Links/iStock_000024052230XXXLarge.jpg4/01/29/cloud-computing-united-states-businesses-will-spend-13-billion-on-it/

3. http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/sharepoint/sharepoint-2013-overview-collaboration-software-features-FX103789323.aspx

4. http://www.aiim.org/what-is-ecm-enterprise-content-management

5. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607742(v=office.15).aspx

6. Survey data collected from BrightStarr clients

7. http://www.aiim.org/what-is-bpm-business-process-management

8. http://www.aiim.org/What-is-Document-Management

9. https://about.yammer.com/product/office365/

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6. REFERENCES

http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/content-communications-and-collaboration

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2014/01/29/cloud-computing-united-states-businesses-will-spend-13-billion-on-it/




http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/sharepoint/sharepoint-2013-overview-collaboration-software-features-FX103789323.aspx

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/sharepoint/sharepoint-2013-overview-collaboration-software-features-FX103789323.aspx

http://www.aiim.org/what-is-ecm-enterprise-content-management

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607742(v=office.15).aspx

http://www.aiim.org/what-is-bpm-business-process-management

http://www.aiim.org/What-is-Document-Management

https://about.yammer.com/product/office365/
