In May 2016, Microsoft announced the general availability of SharePoint Server 2016. In their own words to ‘provide customers with a foundation for modern, intelligent intranets and content collaboration’. SharePoint 2016 was hailed as a welcome, feature-rich, new generation product that has cloud-inspired infrastructure, sophisticated compliance and reporting and enhanced user experiences.

Microsoft Office 365 has virtually revolutionized the way offices collaborate, function and SharePoint 2016 has found wide acceptance in the office users’ community. With every update and version, there are new features, better productivity and collaboration and higher potential for employee performance. With Microsoft SharePoint Online which begins at $5.00 per user per month, organizations can build team websites that are basically smaller intranets. You can integrate free online apps from the office lineup and overlay SP Online including document management, mail and contacts. The possibilities are immense.

However, there are times when simply purchasing or subscribing to an Office product is not enough. With some training and dedicated efforts, you can perhaps master the nuances of SharePoint and collaborate like a pro. But you many need the services of SharePoint consultants to guide you through the development and customization so that you make optimum use of this resource. It is worth finding out what an expert SharePoint consultant brings to the table:

1. Tailor-made solution for your requirement:
SharePoint was never intended to be a plug and play solution. It always requires a varying degree of customization and tweaking before it can be rolled out to your teams. An out of the box SharePoint solution is not user-friendly at all. So, you have two choices. Dedicate in-house teams of employees to manage everything from infrastructure, to administration to development for building interface or hire SharePoint development consultant who can figure out how best to personalize it for your office.

2. SharePoint is not DropBox: You need a full-time resource to handle it: Some organizations harbor the illusion that SharePoint is similar to DropBox and all you need to do is dump your files from old network drives or from DropBox to SharePoint. They couldn’t be more mistaken. SharePoint is far more advanced and complicated with sites, pages, web parts, apps, security, navigation, document management.

You need full time resources to tame the beast. Learning and mastering its use is no mean feat. There are many layers and levels of usage for different types of team. On top of these, there are several types of solutions that you can leverage with SP – on-premise, mobile, and/or cloud. You can apply SharePoint technology to solve many industry issues.

3. SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture: Site Collections, Sites, Libraries, Lists, Folders, Metadata, content types – these are just a few of the building blocks of SharePoint Content Management. A SharePoint consultant can design and deploy your intranet/extranet to create the most intuitive and user-friendly option for sharing and collaboration. Your business needs a long-term content strategy when before you start using SharePoint.

It needs a well-thought out site structure, user logic, extensibility to grow and incorporate various types of content, minimizing steps in the user journey and optimizing the interface. Deploying a user-friendly SharePoint solution that does get ‘used’ is an art in itself and you need an expert to design it for you.

Summary:

A SharePoint app development company can get one SharePoint expert and help your organization to achieve the efficiency and speed that it seeks with the investment in SharePoint. An experienced SP professional would also help you in integrating the best collaboration tools to make the experience more personal productive. Have you hired a SharePoint consultant before? What are some benefits of seeking a consultant? Please let us know in the comments section below.