<![CDATA[SharePoint Community Blogs]]>en-us<![CDATA[The Adoption Peak and why it’s not a good thing]]> The last couple of years have been thrilling times for social software within the enterprise. Several case studies showed the positive impact social software had on businesses around the world. Most of these early adopters were sure that their first steps into social software would soon be extended to the whole organisation. However, if you revisit these companies today many of them are still at the pilot stage or are – due to lack of acceptance by the employees – considering a change to different software. All of these companies proceeded rapidly from the heights of optimistic adoption to the depths of the adoption desert. This is the adoption course I have seen in many companies. Common indicators of being on the declining slope of adoption are:

  • 10:90 A few employees love it – the majority doesn’t care
  • The existence of more closed sites than areas of open communication
  • Complete lack of management contributions
  • (“welcome to our social _____” posts do not count)
  • Social software is just an additional tool added to the stack
  • Employees are using social software for work – but on the internet
What went wrong? All of the companies I worked with had not understood the different nature of social software and had been deluded by the quick initial success of the adoption process. Let us look into the causes for this in more detail.
 
 
It is not just further software to unwrap
 
Quick adoption sounds good but a detailed examination of the users who logged onto such a platform usually reveals that only a small group of enthusiastic users within the company were involved. Neither word of mouth nor internal marketing campaigns nor training courses managed to bring the other 90% of the employees on board¹. And this is where the lack of comprehension of internal social software and social networks comes in. The value of social software is generated by the people themselves, their creation of self-organized networks and the content they voluntarily share. The value does not arise from the social software itself. This represents a huge difference to business software such as ERP, DMS or CRM, which is about digitizing processes, workflows, filing etc. Social software comes to life when people collaborate and communicate. Employees can only be motivated to participate when they see the benefit for their personal work and their peers. This means that you must have a clear concept of what you wish to achieve for your employees and your company before you unwrap that shiny new piece of software for your employees.
 
False expectations combined with flawed priorities
 
Do not expect help from your social software vendor. I have been talking to various companies such as IBM, Open Text or Newsgator: they are all aware of the fact that they have to resolve the adoption problems but they are not yet able to deliver. So, the question of subsequent adoption of the software should really be considered before it is purchased. However, in many companies, the very reverse is happening: Software is merely purchased to avoid uncomfortable questions from C-levels “why the internal social software project is not moving forward”. Significant money (easily 1m EUR/USD and more with software, trainings, internal resources allocated etc.) is spent on stuff that is unlikely to work for the employees. And even worse: The business potential of social collaboration is impaired through bad user experience with subsequent rectification measures pushing the costs up even more.
 
Press to deliver the answers needed to succeed
 
There is no sense in plunging into such a project without taking the time to find answers to a few essential questions, such as:
 
Motivation
Why should the _____ (marketing, controlling, etc.) employee care and become engaged? Why should an experienced employee with a well-established personal network participate on a social platform? Identify the use cases in which social collaboration contributes to an improvement for the individual employee and the company and rank through increased business impact.
 
Migration 
How can you help people make the transition from old platforms or their proprietary tools to the new social space? How can you make people engage on a long-term perspective? Little things like email notifications to pull in users can make a difference. Leading by example is also a must – especially for team-leaders and middle management.
 
Management Buy-In 
Does C-level management really understand the benefits of social collaboration for their own company? Are they aware of the urgency in adapting their business model to a globally networked world? Are they able to identify the areas of their business strategy where internal social media can make an impact? Will they themselves also participate in social collaboration and discussions? Investing into social software projects without C-level awareness of the change involved is a waste of money.
 
If the three areas mentioned above are sufficiently covered, your company can say goodbye to the adoption peak and move forward on its path to full adoption. The path won’t be straight and may change along the way but with people being the core of success of social software this is an intrinsic component. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that companies which embrace social collaboration are more successful and adjustable and can rely on a highly engaged workforce to meet the increasing complexity and speed of today’s business.
 
¹ It might be worth talking about the different reasons for this in another blog post.
 
 
]]>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 05:12:10 GMT<![CDATA[Taking advantage of SharePoint’s capabilities]]> Bringing in any new system or solution to address business needs is always a tricky task. This TechTalk blog, written by Jonathan Matcho, director of SharePoint Solutions at Sitrof Technologies, addresses what IT directors need to know if their team is looking to implement a SharePoint strategy. Just because something looks easy, writes Matcho, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy to implement. –Bryan Reynolds, managing partner, Sitrof Technologies

 

Taking advantage of SharePoint’s capabilities

By Jonathan Matcho, Director of SharePoint Solutions, Sitrof Technologies, Inc.

SharePoint, with its wide array of capabilities, is an ideal platform for solving an equally wide array of challenges.

Perhaps your organization needs an enhanced Intranet? Maybe the current practice for project collaboration is the creation of a new network file share – an obvious opportunity for SharePoint! Or perhaps you have a need to create an executive dashboard that integrates with an external system and rolls up key business metrics for easy access by management? Just build a SharePoint farm (if one doesn’t already exist), deploy a few sites, and you’re soon-to-be realizing the benefits and efficiencies of online collaboration and sharing among the workforce!

Not so fast … the problem with this “that was easy” approach is twofold:

  1. SharePoint does indeed make it easy – the technical effort required to address a business requirement is often estimated in days/hours (as opposed to weeks/months).
  2. Given that all things SharePoint are perceived as “easy,” we therefore do not need to follow any semblance of a formal procedure for enabling its capabilities.

While an ad hoc “grass roots” approach can work in some cases (such as an environment consisting of many technical people singing in perfect technical harmony), it is often a recipe for disaster; resulting in an environment that demands support, overhead, begs for critique, and soon grows to be unmanageable. The problem is that most organizations do not qualify what SharePoint is, effectively leaving it defined as “many things to many people.” Left unchecked and unqualified as to the problems that it is to solve, SharePoint sites will sprawl with each having their own peculiar manner of organization and structure – frustrating to end users and embarrassing to management.

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is not a turnkey application. Turn SharePoint on and it does absolutely nothing out of the box. SharePoint is also not just a tool or platform. SharePoint might be considered to be the toolbox or the plumbing, but I like to think of SharePoint as a home improvement superstore. I can use what’s inside to build anything from a birdhouse to a mansion (not to mention that I’ve also gotten myself into a fair amount of “trouble”).

Using our home improvement superstore analogy, SharePoint is nothing without people to implement its parts and components – SharePoint welcomes a range of skills, from do-it-yourself types to certified professionals skilled in the use of the tools and frameworks capable of building enterprise-class solutions.

There’s a better question to ask: “Where and how can we benefit from using SharePoint?”

Read the rest of Matcho’s TechTalk blog – and more about SharePoint’s strengths and pain points – here.

]]>Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:54:07 GMT<![CDATA[Content is king in SharePoint 2013]]> To kick off, it should almost go without saying that uploading ongoing, quality content – in a variety of formats – is an integral part of any thriving intranet. In previous versions of SharePoint there were a number of clumsy processes which content authors needed to master to enable them to publish content – and I am pleased to report many of these hurdles have been removed with the improvements to SharePoint 2013.

Copy and paste from Word
Content authors are now able to pull content directly from Word docs and drop it into a rich HTML field within SharePoint. The resulting HTML appears in the correct style as defined by the site designer. This is a huge improvement to what was previously a rather painstaking process.

Cross site publishing
The new SharePoint 2013 publishing models allows content authors to write content and surface it in other locations through search. This means content stored within a site collection can be published in a variety of locations, and even tailored for mobile device channels. And, as cross site publishing removes the site collection barrier, content can now be disseminated across web apps and farms, as well as site collections.

Content Search Web Part
An improvement from the previous version of SharePoint is the ability to use the Content Search Web Part across site collections and web apps while providing a more flexible way of displaying the results. This allows information to be effectively driven to the user based on audience.

Improved digital asset libraries
I see hugely improved functionality within digital asset libraries. The uploading of videos in particular is a far better experience as videos can now be embedded into libraries and social streams, streamed to mobile devices and thumbnail images easily rendered once a video is uploaded. Content authors can also choose to select a particular frame from a video to feature as the thumbnail image. This is a big advantage for many of our clients who have a growing amount of IP in video form and need a place to stream and store it.

Image renditions
This refers to the ability to display the same image in different sizes across multiple locations. For example, you may prefer to show a thumbnail on the Corporate News feed landing page of your intranet, and the larger source image in the actual news item. This is particularly handy when it comes to improving site performance as it will reduce downloads.

Site navigation
Global and current navigation menus can now be easily dragged and dropped directly onto the page, making life easier for site managers and designers.

Mobile devices
Content and design can now be specifically rendered for different device channels like tablets or smart phones.

Friendly URLs
Authors can now build user-friendly URLs based on terms specified in a term set. This involves using managed navigation and category pages – two additional features of SharePoint 2013 which I will look at in further detail in a future entry.

Overall, content authoring is a far smoother experience in SharePoint 2013 which ultimately means a better User Experience – and happier content authors who will be much more inclined to contribute.

]]>Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:14:52 GMT<![CDATA[How automated forms unlocked 9,000 man hours]]> You are a major transport provider in Australia, carrying 15 million plus passengers a year. You have well over 1,000 employees and almost 100 operating sites. Every member of your workforce applies for leave approximately three times a year – each time completing a paper form which takes 1.5 hours (on average) to complete the approval cycle.

9,000 company hours spent endorsing workers to spend time away from the business! Or – as we calculated for our client – somewhere in the vicinity of $500,000 per year.

It’s an all too common situation, faced in some measure by every organisation in every industry. No business is immune to these lost hours of productivity and the associated costs.

Streamlining business processes through SharePoint Workflow and InfoPath is one of the simplest, most effective ways to eliminate these issues – and will result in drastic increases in productivity for your business.

By integrating InfoPath forms with SharePoint you can set a dynamic process in motion and keep each individual form moving towards resolution. No more bottlenecks, duplicates, lost forms, printing or storage costs – just a seamless end-to-end workflow that is 100% traceable at all times.

The client we outlined earlier is a prime example. Their business had an internal mandate to automate many of their forms and workflow processes and, after we helped them to evaluate a number of forms, several HR forms with a combined access rate of 10,000 per year were prioritised.

We set about constructing an intricate approval hierarchy that would keep each form moving forward and eradicate the operational delays being experienced. This involved accessing external line of business systems to query the approval hierarchy and using this information to build dynamic form and workflow controls. The way in which controlled documents were revised, converted to PDF and published was also critical. Ultimately, we automated the forms in a way that enabled the client  to govern and control them within their own operating environment.

The resultant savings of half a million dollars a year speak for themselves. However the added bonus is that the workflows removed an entire layer of work for several employees, giving them the ability to invest their time in other areas.

When it comes to eating away at productivity and profit, HR forms are certainly not the only culprits. There are any number of operational processes within your business which could be dramatically improved and optimised through an automated SharePoint workflow.

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