It is not a point to deny that in many of the companies that are using SharePoint, are using it for the purpose of document management. And why not – SharePoint is built (also) for that. It has a brilliant logic for document libraries under every site, whether it is on intranet or team sites. In addition, it is pretty straight-forward to build document centers, content types and even document lifecycle on SharePoint sites. (For the latter you most propably need some customization.) That’s pretty much for a platform that can handle also intranet, web sites and collaboration tools.
In the “real-life“ of organizations using SharePoint, the content designers (i.e. the businesses) fall into the basic sin of document management – meaning not re-thinking it and continuing in the same model they have done it before for last decades. By this I mean for exampIe filing instead of using metadata. This is one problem in SharePoint culture to be said. By not even using metadata, it is impossible to track and analyse what kind of documents your SharePoint has, not to mention the quality of them.
What if you could track the documents in your SharePoint environment? Have you ever thought about the value of information you have there? Well, think again. More over, ask your businesses to start to do the thinking. Soon they will realize that the information is the king. In the end of the day, this is all about information management and information governance.
Finally, it seems it is usually always easier to create content than to manage and govern it. We know that there is information and it has value but we might not have methodology to scan the valuable and business-critical information. In addition, businesses do not usually understand is the importance of the pre-work needed before the dough can be baked into cookies. Not to mention eating those cookies.
What is needed, is to dig into businesses’ information and let them guide you to find out and process the information that is in fact bringing the food to their and your table.
Noora expertise lies in online and digital business service development, concepting and training. Noora is an expert in SharePoint 2010 platform and Ofiice 365 services. In addition she has experience in renewing intranet environments in global corporate projects and as specialist in IT. Lately she has grown expertise in managing digital business and digital customer service related projects, web site renewals, InfoPath form and workflow development, supporting business processes with solutions conducted with SharePoint (e.g. reporting services) and implementing video solutions.
Follow Noora on Twitter: @dandelionest
