Can Microsoft's enterprise content management tool be all things to all users? The answer is, well, yes...and no! Here's what you should know to optimize performance.
Microsoft Office SharePoint
Server 2007 (MOSS) and
its lesser cousins could well be dubbed
the “McDonald’s of the enterprise content
management world”. The Web-based collaboration and document
management platform has taken the
content management world by storm. In early
2008, Microsoft said it sold
more than 100 million Share- Point
licenses since launching the product in 2001–and
that by the end of 2008,
sales would exceed the $1 billion mark.
SharePoint is also gaining ground by virtue of its familiar user interface
and integration with other Microsoft Office applications and the complementary
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) offered to anyone with a Windows server
client-access license. But do MOSS and its brethren deserve respect? They do,
according to many enterprise content management (ECM) insiders. But caveats
abound to “proceed with caution” in rolling out the solution at the enterprise
level in an unregulated fashion.
Many enterprises are integrating Share- Point with solutions from other
providers. “Most of our clients are using SharePoint from an integration
perspective along with document management, records management, and features of
other solutions,” says Bill Chambers, vice president at the Chicago-based ECM
consulting firm Doculabs. He’s noticed a trend toward using SharePoint as a
front-end application and using other ECM platforms such as Open Text,
Documentum, or IBM’s FileNet, as a back-end repository. “The question is what
role SharePoint is playing and what role the ECM vendor is playing,” says
Chambers.
According to a September 2008 comment by technology research giant Gartner,
enterprises can expect to see the continued coexistence of SharePoint with other
ECM solutions. Gartner posited that the adoption of WSS and MOSS for mass
deployment while using an ECM suite for content-centric processes and
best-ofbreed Web content is a useful strategy for the next three to five years.
A portal into the business
SharePoint is more than just a traditional ECM
solution, however; it’s a portal product, says Alan Weintraub, director of ECM
solutions for Perficient, a technology consultancy based in Philadelphia. “It’s
not a technology implementation. It’s really about how the business wants to use
information.”
Weintraub cites SharePoint deficiencies in the areas of more complex tasks
around workflow, records management, and archiving, where many users still
prefer best-of-breed players. Weintraub also notes a number of limitations to
SharePoint around size, such as the number of documents in a library and a
folder. “Size limitations have to be built into a certain design premise in
order to optimize performance.”
Errin O’Connor, president and founder of EPC Group, a .NET development firm
and SharePoint integrator in Houston, likens the platform to a giant Swiss Army
knife with all the bells and whistles. “We preach SharePoint as a service that
meets the business and functional requirements of the enterprise—an application
development service, a platform. It’s the biggest Swiss Army knife in the
world.”
EPC Group takes a gallery approach to features and functionality so they can
be re-used by other departments, and O’Connor likes the full-service solution
that SharePoint embodies. “It’s a one-stop shop for all of your needs. Users
have their day jobs and they shouldn’t need to be trained extensively on this.”
The key, he says, is using SharePoint as a platform for intranet, content
management, knowledge management, workflow, and the like. “The portal is the
platform for all of these different features and functionalities.” Indeed,
application development is often needed to leverage SharePoint’s more advanced
capabilities. Doculab's Chambers says: “SharePoint is an out-ofthe- box,
easy-to-deploy application with plenty of features, like collaboration and
documentation, that are easy to set up, but it’s also a .NET development
platform.” Workflow, for example, requires a lot more work-around integrations
to pull information from other systems, he says.
Governance avoids dead-end data
Whether the organization is using Share-
Point alone or in coexistence with other ECM solutions, a phased and measured
approach is warranted. As users and industry insiders attest, the solution gets
out of hand quickly without governance. Consider the woes of firms that
literally have thousands of SharePoint-based websites and no one “driving the
bus” around standard metadata, content management, or security policies. Records
management and compliance go awry when you can’t search business records.
“It’s almost like a viral marketing campaign that goes all across the
organization. You have to designate an organization or group to be responsible
for SharePoint,” Chambers says, cautioning against an IT team or a lone staffer
managing SharePoint in a vacuum. “You need to set up an organization that’s
responsible for deploying it, implementing it, and setting up standards.”
Prior to rolling out SharePoint, Chambers advises querying users about their
needs as part of governance planning. Perform a demand analysis and forecast by
talking to business users and find out their needs in workflow, document
management, and collaboration, he says. “That doesn’t happen today. Typically
you call up IT and get a site set-up.”
Finally, Chambers says, set up policies and procedures based on that demand.
“You’ll find out some people just need an Internet site for the workgroup. Some
people need workflow, so you set up these common SharePoint applications.”
One-fourth of EPC Group’s client engagements are based around picking up the
pieces after poor implementation of SharePoint, O’Connor says. “From a business
perspective, governance is critical for provisioning sites and content,
guidelines, and communication strategies.” He recommends setting up a
centralized site-provisioning process where users go to one place to fill out
requests, which are e-mailed to a SharePoint administrator who can approve or
deny the request of that new site.
Partnering up
SharePoint’s popularity is also netting opportunities for
Microsoft’s partners and its competitors as they look to supplement and extend
SharePoint. Boston-based CMS Watch, a technology evaluation firm, found many
customers are avoiding SharePoint for Web content management projects but adopt
it for document collaboration. As a result, integrating documents with Web
publishing systems is an area where content management vendors have stepped in
to fill the void, offering connectors to access documents in SharePoint
repositories. Other providers are expanding linkages for records management,
workflow, and storage.
Getting paper documents into records and workflow is often the bane of many
workgroups. On the hardware side, Fujitsu teamed with Knowledge Lake, a provider
of document imaging and capture software for ECM solutions on SharePoint.
Fujitsu offers low-volume scanners bundled with Knowledge Lake’s Connect image
capture software. The solution provides fast and easy imaging, capture, storage,
and indexing for ECM with SharePoint.
“About 80 percent of scanning is in the workgroup category,” says Jeff
DeCarlo, director of business development for Fujitsu Computer Products of
America in Orlando, Fla. “We’ve created this very simple data on-ramp to
SharePoint specifically for those information workers that don’t have a
sophisticated scanning operation. They want ease of use.”
Getting documents into enterprise systems with proper taxonomy for search and
retrieval is half the battle, DeCarlo says. “The Connect software allows users
to type in index data. That functionality is now being more widely used at the
desktop level.” He notes that key sectors being served are government agencies
as well as healthcare and financial services firms. As one workgroup adopts the
solution, he says, others typically follow, based on impressive productivity
gains.
At Morgan Street Document Systems, a Chicago-based provider of “digital
vault” or document management services for consumers and businesses, SharePoint
is the backbone of its enterprise infrastructure with the Fujitsu-Knowledge Lake
solution for scanning in records such as financial statements, insurance
policies, and many others for its clients.
The company has been using SharePoint since it opened its doors in 2006.
Consumers can scan in documents using their own scanner or have the company’s
professional archivists do the scanning onsite with Fujitsu compact scanners.
Andy Grygiel, chief marketing officer at Morgan Street, explains: “Our users
don’t know the technology, but we use Share- Point and built a very robust
application on top of it. The user sees a very visual representation and catalog
of their information with nothing to install, just a Web browser.”
Due diligence of ECM solutions led the company to SharePoint. “We had to make
it easy to get information in and make it easy for people to search and get
information out. The ability to search and find things is key,” adds Grygiel.
Where’s it going?
Especially for firms that don’t rely on SharePoint as
their sole ECM solution, Gartner’s September 2008 research comment recommends
that IT leaders and application managers review the performance of SharePoint
applications and evaluate future releases of SharePoint as a platform for
content management and determine whether a continued coexistence strategy makes
sense. Notably, Gartner sees SharePoint emerging as the infrastructure platform
of choice for workgroup and departmental applications by 2012.
When done right, O’Connor says, SharePoint has the potential to become the
dominant player in the ECM world, much for its prowess in Web-based content
management and collaboration. He actually sees it replacing e-mail as the
dominant form of communication as users venture out into the organization to
find critical, relevant information they need. MOSS 2007 will remain strong for
the next few years, he says.
While Microsoft hasn’t yet announced a launch date for SharePoint 2009, get
ready.
Marcia Jedd is a Minneapolis-based marketing
consultant and writer. Her website is www.marciajedd.com.
Case Study: One-Stop Shopping
at American Nulear Insurers
American Nuclear Insurers
has found a measured approach
works when adding on
SharePoint capabilities.
The Glastonbury, Conn.,
based company uses MOSS
2007 to manage a realm of
business functions around
document management, collaboration,
and communication
with business partners.
In addition members, consultants,
and policyholders
access an external portal.
American Nuclear
performs training and communication
outreach around
SharePoint, and is drumming
up user interest in Web 2.0
features like blogs, wikis,
and discussion threads,
even for such mundane elements
as travel notes from a
business trip than can help
another employee going to
the same destination.
"We're moving toward
a SharePoint-centric
environment where all of
our non-structured data
will be on SharePoint and,
if possible, we'll use it as
a platform to interface
with our structured data
as well," says Dan Antion,
vice president of information
services.
Among point solutions,
American Nuclear taps into
backup utility by AvePoint.
The company is also
considering integrating with
point solutions for managing
user rights and permissions,
e-mail archiving,
and more formal document
management.
Before dipping into the
waters with SharePoint
Services and SharePoint
Server 2003 several years
ago, American Nuclear
relied solely on networkshared
drives. "Getting access
to information is much
easier across departments
now with SharePoint than
it is with file folders from
network-shared drives,"
Antion says.
By the end of 2007, the
company had moved most
of its key functions to SharePoint. Business partners
can check-in and check-out
documents across several
libraries and lists.
That's worked well, Antion
says, despite a weak
list-structure in the solution.
"The software has definitely
improved. The individual
lists are excellent, but we
end up with duplicate lists
because it's difficult to
relate lists to one another."
Assessing information in an
aggregate or global fashion
can also get cumbersome,
he adds.
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