Common Business Applications of Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft SharePoint is a popular solution with many different business use cases. From document management to personalised company intranet portals, SharePoint's flexibility and collaborative abilities allow the solution to be used in many different scenarios.
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Microsoft SharePoint is often the solution of choice for many organisations, with 50% of Fortune 500 companies using the solutions. A highly flexible and customisable solution, Microsoft SharePoint lends itself to a number of business use cases. SharePoint is used by organisations globally for everything from content management to a corporate intranet portal and workflows providing many benefits such as increased productivity, easier collaboration, seamless integration with other Microsoft technology and enhanced security.
As a solution that can be customised in so many ways, business leaders may question which business application of SharePoint would best address the needs of their organisation. Below we explore the top business uses of SharePoint.
Document Management System
In many organisations, employees often struggle to find the correct documents or files when they need them. Employees often spend a portion of their day searching for the correct files which can hinder productivity flow and waste time. This is where SharePoint can help. Acting as an effective document management system, SharePoint ensures the easy management of the entire document life cycle. Streamline the document process with a central space for all company documents with powerful search and retrieval functionality and the ability to manage user permissions at multiple levels. SharePoint document management systems also allow for easier collaboration with version control and co-authoring. Systems such as this are often critical to remote workers.
Company Intranet
SharePoint intranets can act as a digital doorway to your company, providing a central space for employees to access all company news and updates, relevant links and an easy way for employees to engage with other colleagues. Intranets can be highly customised to meet your specific business needs including branding to match your company’s branding as well as customising the navigation and page content. Company intranets work to increase employee productivity and connectivity helping users to feel part of a working community, especially when working remotely.
Extranets
SharePoint extranets can be defined as a restricted online environment provided by a company where external users can gain access to relevant information or content. External viewers must authenticate to gain access to this site. Some benefits of using an extranet include building closer relationships with external parties, easier distribution and collection of information and data from multiple parties, improved communication with a central space for all relevant data as well as the ability the automate processes between internal and external parties. Some examples for using an extranet include customer portals to track orders and access support, supplier portals to help manage the supply chain and training portals.
SharePoint Spaces
One of the lesser-known use cases of the solution is SharePoint Spaces, a feature of SharePoint online that allows for the creation of immersive environments to produce mixed reality experiences. First launched in 2020, SharePoint Spaces was the start of Microsoft integrating new mixed reality and 3D experiences into Microsoft 365. Although it may be something that businesses are still relatively new to, some use cases include data visualisation, product development, sales catalogue or education.
These are just some of the ways SharePoint can be used within a business, but as a highly flexible solution, there are more ways it can be deployed to solve specific business problems. If you would like to learn more about Microsoft SharePoint, get in touch today to speak with Storm’s expert team.
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