SeanFromCanada's Blog

The Christmas season is a great time of year for so many reasons, one of which is all the social events that bring me together with friends I don’t often see. I’ve ran into several lifelong friends this year. Over the course of us catching up, I’ve been asked what I’m doing these days. When I mention the word “SharePoint”, each has said something along the lines of “man, we could really use some help with that”.

Because my friends run companies in industries other than the energy industry, I know NeoStream won’t be selling them our energy-focused SharePoint software… (and I’m sorry about that. I would be proud to put NeoStream’s software into my best friends’ companies). But I still want to help them, so I share as much knowledge with them as I appropriately can at a cocktail party…or family brunch.

The first thing I promote is to have a proper conversation about information within the company. Include all the senior people (including them, as CEO’s). I encourage them not to relegate the SharePoint conversation to IT. My sales pitch is quick…if you don’t include your executives, it will cost you a lot of time, money and energy trying to connect all the ‘departmentally bought and custom built’ SharePoint solutions. You’ll have your own internal software company, or the consultants you hire will never leave…you’ll never stop paying them.

If I didn’t fear being boring as hell or having no sense of cocktail party couth, I’d share that there are 7 areas of SharePoint guidance a leadership team can provide with respect to their information management direction. With this direction, the leader of the IT department/team can execute on this direction. They are:

1. On premise or in the cloud:
What is the company’s philosophy on hosting information and infrastructure outside of the organization? In what cases does it make sense? In what cases doesn’t it?

I’d let them know there are right and wrong answers for both, but in short, a lot of SharePoint can be hosted in the cloud…but I wouldn’t push too hard on this, if they’ve got the money, people and desire, it’s fine to host internally.

2. Build vs. buy:
Do you intend to buy commercial software and solutions or write the software yourselves?

I believe in buy (if you can find SharePoint solutions built for your industry). I would warn my friends of the massive scope, time and cost that often creep up with SharePoint projects. I would also caution them about thinking that 1 person can perform all the skills required to make SharePoint work. It usually takes 6 different skill sets…which can be hard to find and expensive.

3. Customization:
What level of involvement do you want your operational personnel to have with the roll out of software? Do you intend to go with ‘off the shelf’ or will you highly customize your solutions?

I’d connect this question to the last one about buying the software. I’d encourage my friends to see how few changes they could make to the software they buy, so that upgrades, support and training are all simple and standard for their SharePoint partner.

4. Partners:
Who is your SharePoint partner going to be? How are you strategically engaging and regularly communicating with them?

You need a SharePoint partner. My point would be made by referencing how specialized our society has become…you hurt your ankle, you go to an ankle specialist…you get in a car accident, you go to a car accident lawyer…why would IT be any different? You want SharePoint, you need a SharePoint specialist (either you build that team internally, or you partner with a company). Given that SharePoint experts are expensive and hard to find, I suggest going with a partner. And partners need to be invited into conversations if they going to provide the expertise you’ve hired them for.

5. Capital or operational expense:
Do you intend to capitalize or operationalize IT expenditures? What options are you open to?

I’d tell them that operational expenses are the best way to buy SharePoint. I’d acknowledge that operational expenses in IT raise G&A costs (which are seen in monthly reports). However, I’d tell my friends that subscription-based pricing puts you in control of your SharePoint cost structure, it holds your partner accountable in the most productive way and it prevents you from ever getting into that awkward IT moment of “we’ve already spent way too much on this, and it’s not even working yet, but we need to spend ‘just a little more money’ to get it there”… Subscription based SharePoint licensing basically gives you an expert SharePoint department for 1/50th of the cost.

6. Priorities:
What are your areas of need? How do these align with your strategic objectives?

I’d encourage my friends not to look at SharePoint as an IT project, or an IT tool, but to think of it as a bunch of people who were hired to help you organize things about your projects. It’s like a bunch of house maids running around cleaning everything up, knowing where everything is and letting people know when a conversation is required. I’d encourage them to point SharePoint at their most active and important projects to start helping their people manage the activities, data and documents associated with the operations of the business. Don’t start slow and useless, start somewhere meaningful.

7. Internal vs. outsourced skills:
To what extent do you intend to develop internal expertise to support and change SharePoint over time? Who and how will external relationships be managed?

I’d let my friends know that SharePoint is a very dynamic tool…once their company starts to use it, they will constantly evolve the way they use it. There will be many requests for small things like changing a view, adding a content type, changing the indexing on a report, and adding a form. Someone needs to be there to do this work, or the solution will grow stale and people will innovate around it. Think through the budget and how you’re going to sustain access to knowledgeable SharePoint people. You will need them after SharePoint goes live.

It’s funny, but perhaps obvious, that the advice I give my friends is the business I built for NeoStream’s clients. I care so deeply about doing SharePoint well, I wish NeoStream had solutions for my friend’s industries too. I sincerely hope my friends don’t end up having a terrible SharePoint experience. I will continue to help them succeed with their SharePoint projects in any way that I can.

This has been a cross-published blog post. For more posts on SharePoint, check out NeoStream’s company blog at neostreamtech.com/blog.