Collaboration is crucial to the efficiency, profitability and, ultimately, reputation of your business. However, adopting the right collaborative practices can be surprisingly difficult – not least when traditional communication methods like phoning, emailing and messaging are utilised.
A major problem here is that phone and email platforms are often used independently of each other, leading to fragmented information, Small Business Trends warns. To get entire teams on the same page, you need them on the same platform – and that platform could be Microsoft SharePoint.
Microsoft SharePoint in a nutshell
SharePoint is among the many services in Microsoft’s Office 365 productivity package. While you might already be familiar with such Office 365 services as OneDrive, Sway and Stream, you mustn’t underestimate SharePoint’s ability to place various vital details right at your workforce’s fingertips.
As succinctly explained on the Microsoft Office website, SharePoint can provide you with “a secure place to store, organise, share and access information from any device”; the only essential, aside from obviously SharePoint itself, is a web browser like Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft’s own Edge.
A team effort… or, should we say, multiple team efforts
If you are at the helm of a skyrocketing business, you will know that keeping everyone on track with relevant details is far from simple. After all, your workforce is probably segmented into many different, close-knit teams, each with its own responsibilities and resources to carefully heed.
However, this is where SharePoint can prove delightfully useful – as it would allow you to, for each of your teams, create an intranet website stacked with information relevant to the tasks at hand. You can even set aside separate websites for different departments and divisions within the company.
Files, news and resources can all be shared over SharePoint, as the Microsoft Office website notes. Naturally, giving only your company’s workers the right to view such information can be crucial to that company’s security, so it’s reassuring that SharePoint can safeguard such data.
This remains the case even when some members of a particular team are actually outside the organisation. With SharePoint websites remaining accessible across PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets, collaborative work can continue apace even between your on-site and remote workers.
You can boost SharePoint’s efficiency even further
As you start using SharePoint, it might not take you long to spot a myriad of ways in which it could streamline your corporate operations and so make impressive efficiency gains. Indeed, the more you learn about how to use SharePoint, the more you can stand to benefit from it.
Nonetheless, you shouldn’t rule out tasking an external company with implementing SharePoint on your own company’s behalf. After all, it is effectively a move that could enable your personnel to “hit the ground running” with SharePoint.
Consider the example of the London-based firm AddIn365, which can put SharePoint in place as part of a broader Office 365 intranet solution including the complementary services of SharePoint, Delve and Yammer. It can all unleash various powerful methods of two-way conversation.
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