The SharePoint server is an exciting product from Microsoft, which allows companies and their employees to collaborate on content and information, making it much easier for employees within different departments to share information.
One of the many advantages of the SharePoint system is that users are able to work within familiar environments, eliminating the need to learn new systems. Another key advantage is that everyday tasks such as reviewing and approving documents, processing purchase orders, and things of those nature are simplified and streamlined, allowing the employees who need to access the documents to do so easily and quickly.
From an IT professional's point of view, the SharePoint system is powerful, because IT policies and security rules can easily be put into place, to put into effect the necessary security restrictions to protect proprietary information. Through the SharePoint system, it's easy to push tasks to familiar applications, which in turn will notify employees of specific security restrictions. All of these things ensure that everyone is aware of regulatory requirements, which in turn will reduce a company's potential exposure to lawsuits.
Just imagine this: you have several employees who need to work on a project which requires the use of an Excel spreadsheet, but they are in different areas of the building, or maybe even in different buildings altogether. With SharePoint, this is absolutely no problem, because they will all be able to access the spreadsheet through a Web browser environment. At the same time, proprietary information, such as financial figures, can be protected as needed. With the SharePoint system, productivity will be increased because multiple employees can collaborate rather than waiting for one person to finish and then hand it off to the next.
All the Microsoft Office applications, including Word and Outlook, can be integrated with the SharePoint system, increasing a company's ability to compete by being able to process documents such as a sales presentation faster than a company who does not use a collaborative system. With SharePoint, a company can process a sales presentation, even if key employees are spread out all over the globe. In the business world, competition is everything, and the company that can get the quote to the customer first may just find themselves
the successful company, leaving those who do not avail themselves of new technology in the dust.
Because your company's data is stored in one central area, you no longer need people to be in the same department, area, building, or even the same state. That is the beauty of the SharePoint system, and by its very nature, it's designed to increase productivity, and decrease promises, both of which are critical to business. The advantages of SharePoint are many, and a company will likely find that it will pay for itself rather quickly, given that the program gives employees the power to work together without actually having to physically be together. And that's key in today's global marketplace.