Intranet and Business Intelligence

Microsoft SharePoint

SharePoint is an enterprise information portal, from Microsoft, that can be configured to run Intranet, Extranet and Internet sites. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 allows people, teams and expertise to connect and collaborate.

A SharePoint enterprise portal is composed of both SharePoint Portal and Windows SharePoint Services, with SharePoint being built upon WSS. WSS is typically used by small teams, projects and companies. SharePoint Server is designed for individuals, teams and projects within a medium to large company wide enterprise portal.

Why should you use SharePoint?

• As companies grow so does the amount of their files. It soon becomes difficult to keep track of the multiplying documents and their locations. SharePoint overcomes this by allowing you to store and locate your files in a central site. Files can also be located through companywide searches of your SharePoint enterprise portal.
• Sharing work files through email is a cumbersome process. SharePoint eliminates this by allowing files to be stored in one location, allowing easy access to all team members.
• Today's work occurs over multiple locations, whether it is in different countries, office locations, and separate departments or at your home office. SharePoint enables teams and individuals to connect and collaborate together regardless of where they are located.
• SharePoint allows anyone to create sites for use within their company's Intranet, as they are needed, whether they are departmental sites, document libraries, meetings sites, survey sites, or discussion boards.

Reduce business costs by increasing efficiency

Simplify compliance efforts and keep business information more secure through a comprehensive set of tools to manage and control electronic content.

Streamline the everyday business processes that are a drain on organizational productivity by using electronic forms and out-of-the-box workflow processes that users can initiate, track, and participate in through familiar Microsoft Office applications, e-mail, or Web browsers.

Microsoft SharePoint has six main components and each component is designed to address different business requirements.

Collaboration provides teams with a web site where they can access and store all the relevant information for their team. They can manage team documents, team tasks and share team calendars. In addition, they can manage meetings, schedules, minutes, discussions and supporting documents.

Portals provide departments with web sites to share information. Web sites can be easily created to reflect your company's structure e.g. Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR and Operations. Sensitive information can be secured and protected in secure sites.

Search allows you to search for and retrieve documents previously created in your company that may at present reside in file shares or company databases as easily as if you were searching the web.

Content Management provides people with web sites where they manage documents and their content. Paper documents can be scanned in or electronically uploaded. You can check in and out documents, apply automated version control and document publishing approval.

Business Forms allows you to create business forms that can be completed on-line. The forms can then be submitted into an automated workflow and routed to the next person in the process. Drop down menu options can be created to reduce incorrect data being entered and mandatory fields can be created to ensure key data is captured.

Business Intelligence provides you with up to date business information. If you think of the dashboard of a car providing a motorist with all the relevant information about their vehicles performance, then a company dashboard can present key indicators on how that company is performing.

SharePoint facts

• SharePoint is the fastest-growing product in the history of Microsoft
• Over 75 million licenses of SharePoint have been sold worldwide
• SharePoint is listed, by Forrester Research, as the number 1 portal product
• SharePoint is positioned as a leader within the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals products
• Over 400 case studies have been published on SharePoint