Released by Microsoft Corporation in 2001, SharePoint was earlier viewed only as a browser-based collaboration and document management platform. But over the years, SharePoint has seen much advancement which has further broadened the scope of this technology. There is so much that an organisation can do with SharePoint. Microsoft itself describes SharePoint as a number of things such as collaboration software, enterprise business process management portal, content management system, business intelligence dashboard etc. With so many capabilities contained in itself, SharePoint has completely changed the way organisations function these days. The platform has gone so popular that over three quarters of Fortune 500 companies now use SharePoint. This blog will talk about the different things for which organisations use SharePoint.
- With SharePoint you can create an intranet portal for an entire corporate network. This portal can be used to centralise access to enterprise information and applications. All the important news and announcements can be shared on the intranet portal. Even tasks can be assigned to the employees and access to a variety of information can also be given. The intranet dashboard can be customised by department and role and also different levels of access can be granted.
- Document sharing is one of the most important features of SharePoint. This feature is also the reason behind the initial popularity of the technology. With SharePoint, organisations have a shared space to store documents that can be accessed by anyone (or by those to whom the access is given by the administrator) in the company. This means that the documents can even be shared with employees working in different offices. That too without having to exchange emails for every change made to the document.
- It is not just the employees to which a business needs to share and communicate with. There are many parties, even other businesses, who partner with your business. With SharePoint, you can provide them with an access to all the information they may require from your company and vice versa.
- For big projects, on which a large number of people work from different locations, SharePoint makes interaction very easy amongst a large number of people, transcending geographical barriers as well. Workers provided with an access to SharePoint intranet portal can sign in from any system or even mobile from anywhere to have a constant access to the information of the project they are working on.
- SharePoint also enhances business intelligence. There is a lot of data and information being shared and stored on a SharePoint platform. This data and information can be used by the organisation in numerous ways to make better decisions. What’s amazing about this platform is that SharePoint is capable of displaying trends over time and relationships between different inputs in the form easy-to-understand of charts and graphs. This ready-to-use information can be used to formulate new course of action for further business growth.
- Lastly, SharePoint can also be used to build and manage publicly facing websites as well. It provides all the functionalities of content management system for a website including updating information, adding a new page, using both text and graphics etc.