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Thursday, 05 August 2010 00:00 |
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The Info Tech research group recently published a study titled "SharePoint for ECM". The study offers some interesting insights into SharePoint's capabilities and challenges as an enterprise content management platform, and some actionable advice for a SharePoint implementation strategy. The following are some of the key findings of the study:-
- SharePoint can do almost anything, but not easily or well. SharePoint can serve as a powerful development platform to create applications fine tuned to the needs of a company, in addition to its out of the box features like document management, social networking etc. However, it is complex, and does not serve each specific purpose as well as a point solution dedicated to that specific purpose would. These factors combined make it suitable for large enterprises with highly customized needs, and an IT workforce which can easily handle the complexity.
- Extending SharePoint with third-party tools is an important component of SharePoint project success. At times, third party tools will be needed to bolster SharePoint for particular uses.
- End-user adoption is the critical component of SharePoint deployments. The success or failure of any software tool depends on whether end users actually use it in their day to day activities or not. SharePoint, being complex has traditionally not been very end user friendly. Strategies have to be devices to ensure wide end user adoption.
The study also lays out a deployment strategy for companies which want to implement SharePoint. However, i would like to add that SharePoint's particular strengths and weaknesses make it suitable more for large organizations. Small organizations will find that out of the box "sharepoint alternatives" provide a more viable option for them because they bring the right mix of out of the box features, implementation and management simplicity, customizability and user friendliness.
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