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January 10 |
SharePoint’s Business Value: What is SharePoint’s Return on Investment (ROI)
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By Errin O’Connor, Founder & CEO, EPC Group
Whether your organization already has an existing SharePoint
implementation in place, or you are pursuing a new implementation, the overall
strategy of a successful SharePoint 2007 deployment needs to be approached in a
very unique manner.
SharePoint 2007, (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), offers a broad array of solutions. To properly
discern the solutions you are looking for – and subsequently, the platform you
need – you must first step back and take a look at the big picture. Ask
yourself: “What do I need this platform to deliver, from a business
perspective?” This process helps you understand what your concrete goals are,
and how these goals will add true business value to the organization. Something
I do diligently is work with our client’s IT staff and executive teams to
discern where SharePoint can add tangible, measurable value. Can it replace
other existing systems? Are there software licensing costs associated with
disparate legacy systems that can be saved through the implementation of
SharePoint? What technologies is the organization utilizing for Enterprise
Content Management, web-based collaboration, and the company Intranet? Can these
technologies be replaced by SharePoint at less cost and with better results?
Part of this process involves the development of a SharePoint ‘Business-Value
Case’ or ‘Road Map’ for your organization.
I always wonder why a given organization would spend $2 – 3M yearly for
licensing and maintenance costs on a Documentum or LiveLink environment that is
user-unfriendly, hard to customize and significantly more expensive than a
SharePoint Enterprise Content Management solution. Even though I am a somewhat
biased SharePoint consultant, this baffles me on a daily basis. After two years,
the organization would have spent $4 million on a Documentum or LiveLink
environment, but still $500,000 on a SharePoint ECM solution. I would not just
throw numbers out there like this if I hadn’t literally seen this over and over
again. That is real business value and cost savings within your organization.
Why does this happen at organizations all over the country? In truth, it is not
management, or even the executive sponsor’s fault, considering Microsoft did not
offer much in the way of ‘dynamic functionality’ with their SharePoint 2003
release, and these costly ‘500 pound gorilla’ solutions were really all that was
available. Thankfully, that is not the case anymore, and now it’s time to start
seriously considering SharePoint 2007 as a means to cost savings and adding
value to your organization.
SharePoint 2007 delivers a level of ease and functionality (specifically with
regard to adding custom workflows and automating business processes) that are
not approached by other solutions. Supplement these functionalities with the
potential business value of utilizing an external security model to your
SharePoint 2007 implementation – to open the platform to partners, customers,
vendors, or employees from other business units – and you really start seeing
some potential. With SharePoint 2007, you can have one software platform,
support skill set, physical hardware model, backup and disaster recovery
solution, and governed ‘look and feel’ that can replace so many costly and
disparate solutions that it quickly makes real business sense and can actually
add to your organization’s bottom line.
How to View SharePoint? Dashboards, KPIs, and Reporting
Quick wins for the business will not only garner additional support for your
overall initiative, but will help spawn new ideas and solutions that will add
business value to your organization. SharePoint 2007’s dashboards (or KPIs) can
deliver end-users a holistic view of the environment, allowing them to make
quick decisions based on key-indicators that can swiftly add to the bottom line
and prevent costly risks or mistakes.
During your decision-making process with regard to platforms, I would recommend
pursing a ‘proof-of-concept’ for one department or business unit within your
organization. This process lets you test out functionalities and gauge value.
Additionally, many organizations already invested in Business Objects or other
enterprise reporting platforms have not yet initiated SQL Reporting Services
(SRS) and its integration capabilities with SharePoint. The potent reporting
capabilities that can be achieved with SRS allow for the generation of reports
from both data residing in SharePoint and from external data sources.
In summary, we can achieve:
- An enterprise content management system (ECM)
- A business process automation platform
- A knowledge management solution
- An externally accessible environment
With SharePoint 2007, your organization can also achieve:
- An enterprise intranet solution
- Executive dashboards and KPI’s
- A centralized enterprise reporting platform
- A centralized (SharePoint) governance model that will support all the
solutions listed above
Remember, always plan the design and implementation of your SharePoint platform
as truly a ‘service’ to your organization. SharePoint typically becomes very
popular, very quickly. Due to these phenomena, developing a reliable, highly
scalable and truly indestructible platform is extremely critical.
Errin O’Connor is Founder and Chief Executive Officer for EPC
Group. He focuses his efforts on implementing Microsoft Technologies in
organizations throughout the country. Errin also manages EPC Group’s corporate
strategy as well as architects the proven methodologies around collaboration,
enterprise content management and custom application development that have set
EPC Group apart from its competitors. He is the author of “Windows SharePoint
Services 3.0 Inside Out” by Microsoft Press. Errin has completed more than 83
highly successful individual SharePoint implementations and has worked with some
of the largest organizations in the United States. For Article Feedback, contact
Errin at errino@epcgroup.net
 
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